The components of electric vehicles are often made with child or forced labour. Photo / NZME
The components of electric vehicles are often made with child or forced labour. Photo / NZME
Opinion by Morgan Theakston
OPINION
Should you buy an electric car or e-bike or instal solar panels in your home? World Vision’s Morgan Theakston argues that the environmental benefits hide a big hidden human cost in child and forced labour.
The clean energy transition was a hot topic of the 2023 election - from Labour’s policy to scale up solar panels on New Zealand homes to National’s planto build thousands of EV chargers for electric cars.
Our politicians, and our country, certainly have noble intentions. We know that we need to urgently curb our reliance on fossil fuels and renewable energy is critical for this. But every new plan sidesteps the elephant in the room: our clean energy transition is being built on the backs of exploited children and forced labour. Every solar panel, EV and e-bike, bears both stories of promise and slavery.
In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), more than 40,000 children mine the cobalt needed for EV batteries. They risk death from toxic dust exposure, collapsed tunnels, and tumbles down steep mine shafts. The DRC holds more than two-thirds of the world’s cobalt reserves and many of its mines are owned or financed by Chinese companies. This cobalt supplies the EV battery manufacturing industry, which China dominates.
World Vision’s latest report, ‘Risky Goods – Supply Chain Risk Report 2023, reveals that last year, half of all EVs and two-thirds of lithium-ion batteries imported to New Zealand came from China. Mined in the DRC, made in China, and bought by us as a commitment to a more liveable future for all but the people who made them.
The other rising star of the clean energy transition is solar panels, but these are also embroiled in exploitation. China produces around 90 per cent of the world’s polysilicon, a key material in solar panels, a third of which comes from the Xinjiang region where more than one million Uyghurs are in state-sponsored forced labour.
Last year New Zealand imported 81 per cent of its solar panels from China and 8 per cent from Australia, which imports the majority of itssolar panels from China. Before the election, the National Party spoke of slavery within solar panel supply chains and assured New Zealanders “This is an issue that needs attention. For many years, Labour neglected to get onto it – National will.”
Well, Prime Minister Luxon – your time to shine is now.
Across OECD countries, legislation requiring supply chain due diligence and import bans targeting forced labour are rapidly becoming the norm. New Zealand has neither of these measures in place.
Disclosure legislation to report on modern slavery and exploitation in Aotearoa’s supply chains is currently in the pipeline, with the former Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety Hon. Carmel Sepuloni saying it would “be among the world’s strongest reporting systems for tackling modern slavery”. While a good first step, countries with similar laws such as Australia have shown you can’t tackle modern slavery with just a reporting statement.
The reality is that for New Zealand to address modern slavery in its renewable technology supply chains (and the other $8 billion in imports linked to child and forced labour), the new National-Act-NZ First Government must urgently introduce a modern slavery law that includes due diligence requirements. This would mean companies are required to go further than just reporting on modern slavery risks. They will need to take action to identify, address and mitigate those risks. With Brooke Van Velden now at the helm of this porfolio, it is her responsibility to carry this law forward.
The New Zealand Government has previously welcomed sanctions by the UK, USA, EU and Canada and, in a statement led by van Velden, expressed “grave concerns” at the human rights abuses of Uyghurs taking place in Xinjiang. And yet despite ongoing upgrades to Free Trade Agreements, human rights considerations always seem to be absent. In a game of moral “hot potato”, we appear to commend our allies for their principled stance on China while avoiding any action that would risk us being burned.
Morgan Theakston, Advocacy Campaigns and Policy Advisor for World Vision.
COP28 is this week; the perfect time to discuss the ethical dilemmas within the energy transition, especially considering a primary goal is to agree on global targets to triple renewable energy. But in its paper outlining New Zealand’s approach to the conference, the Government didn’t signal any intention to discuss labour abuses in our renewable energy supply chains and confirmed there are no specific negotiations on human rights at COP28.
We will hear the phrase “just transition” repeatedly within the coming weeks, yet the people in supply chains producing the technologies that allow us to make the shift are consistently excluded from this version of justice. The prolific use of forced labour and exploitation within renewable technology supply chains prevents a just transition and means that meeting sustainability targets will come at the expense of human lives.
We are at a precipice. The demand for critical minerals is expected to grow rapidly, with cobalt demand set to double by 2030. Are we fine if our energy transition is powered by exploitation and slavery? Or do we demand that the New Zealand Government intervene to work towards a truly ethical and just transition?
This isn’t an either-or scenario of protecting people or the planet. Climate change destroys people’s livelihoods, exacerbating poverty and increasing millions of people’s risk of exploitation. We need renewable energy to mitigate this.
But if New Zealand continues to source renewable technologies without robust due diligence legislation, it is inevitable that we will profit from forced labour. New Zealand must transition to a low-carbon future, but that transition must not come at the expense of all the people who enable us to get there.
