Child slave labor in producing EV batteries raises serious questions about clean, green technologies

The Gold Report Staff

March 11, 2024

“It is a major paradox of the digital era that some of the world’s richest, most innovative companies are able to market incredibly sophisticated devices without being required to show where they source raw materials for their components.

"The abuses in mines remain out of sight and out of mind because in today’s global marketplace consumers have no idea about the conditions at the mine, factory, and assembly line. We found that traders are buying cobalt without asking questions about how and where it was mined.”

Emmanuel Umpula, Afrewatch (Africa Resources Watch) Executive Director as quoted by Amnesty International

Rosy prospects for clean, green technology

Last year the IEA (International Energy Authority) painted a rosy picture of the financial prospects for clean, green energy technologies that support a better future. Its Energy Technology Perspectives 2023 report analyzed the “global manufacturing of clean energy technologies today – such as solar panels, wind turbines, EV batteries, electrolysers for hydrogen and heat pumps – and their supply chains around the world, as well as mapping out how they are likely to evolve as the clean energy transition advances in the years ahead.”

The analysis included the projected value of the technologies by the year 2030 to be approximately three times more than the current level:

The analysis shows the global market for key mass-manufactured clean energy technologies will be worth around USD 650 billion a year by 2030 – more than three times today’s level – if countries worldwide fully implement their announced energy and climate pledges. The related clean energy manufacturing jobs would more than double from 6 million today to nearly 14 million by 2030 – and further rapid industrial and employment growth is expected in the following decades as transitions progress.

The dirty underbelly of the clean, green technologies

However, behind the clean and green picture lie destroyed environments and destroyed children, the unseen cost of mining cobalt for the lithium batteries for “clean, green technologies,” such as electric vehicles (EVs) and smartphones.

Big Tech companies like Apple, Google, Microsoft, Dell and Tesla that purchase cobalt for EV and smartphone batteries were recently exonerated from responsibility for the child trafficking that is part and parcel of cobalt mining. Much of that mining takes place in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the main supplier of cobalt. The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit judges ruled that since the companies purchase the product from a global supply chain and do not have control over the suppliers, they are not liable for what takes place at the beginning of the supply chain.

Amnesty International calls out tech brands

Amnesty International called out major tech brands, including Apple, and Samsung, in a 2016 expose (video below) about children being used to mine metal for smartphone and EV batteries. Mark Dummett, Business & Human Rights Researcher at Amnesty International, described the hypocrisy of the fancy phone displays as juxtaposed to the dangerous working conditions faced by cobalt miners:

The glamourous shop displays and marketing of state of the art technologies are a stark contrast to the children carrying bags of rocks, and miners in narrow manmade tunnels risking permanent lung damage.

WEF cites ethical dilemma of using forced labor to combat “climate change”

The World Economic Forum (WEF) did not ignore the problem of extracting the metal using forced child labor either. WEF senior writer Sean Fleming, in an article titled “The hidden cost of the electric car boom – child labour,” brought to the fore the ethical dilemma of using child labor in combating “climate change:”

People want electric vehicles for many different reasons, including ethical ones as we become increasingly aware of the impact of both climate change and air pollution. Yet the growing market for electric cars may be causing harm to people in one of the world’s most vulnerable countries.

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where most of the cobalt is mined, has a history of conflict and exploitation, as Fleming wrote:

Dangerous working conditions, risks to people’s health, and child labour are a huge problem in the cobalt mines of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

Electric vehicles are the prime technology, Fleming continued, fueling the cobalt rush, and which is responsible for the continued misery in the area:

As a critical raw material in lithium-ion battery production, cobalt is in high demand. It is needed to power smartphones, tablets, and laptops as well as electric vehicles, but it is the latter where astronomical growth risks perpetuating misery.

Two-thirds of the world’s cobalt is found in the DRC, which is one of the world’s poorest and least developed countries with a gross national income per capita of just $481.

He explained that children as young as ten are recruited into this work for $3.50 - $10 a day for dangerous and dirty work:

Children as young as 10 are involved in cobalt mining, earning as little as $3.50-$10 a day for the dangerous and dirty work, which can involve digging underground, carrying very heavy sacks, and washing the mined cobalt in the river.

Fleming concludes by mentioning tech firms' and car manufacturers' commitments to tackle these problems in the supply chains, the near impossibility of determining the source of cobalt for any particular battery, and the WEF's Global Battery Alliance expected to address these challenges.

While tech firms and car manufacturers have pledged to do more to tackle the problem in their supply chains, there are no easy ways to tell if their batteries have been produced using cobalt mined in slave-like conditions.

The World Economic Forum's Global Battery Alliance seeks to address these thorny challenges. According to the group, "As a global collaboration platform, it will catalyse and accelerate action towards a socially responsible, environmentally sustainable and innovative battery value chain to power the Fourth Industrial Revolution." [Emphasis added.]

Clean and green — not any time soon

All this has led to charges that “clean and green” is only for show, at least for the foreseeable future. Tech companies and car manufacturers may have “pledged to do more to tackle the problem in their supply chains,” but as is evidenced by the recent ruling in favor of Big Tech, they don't seem to be doing very much in that direction and have succeeded in using the court system to allow them to continue avoiding responsibility.

So the question remains — how far up the supply chain does responsibility go? How far removed does one have to be from the source of the battery in their product to be absolved of responsibility for the dangers faced by child miners?

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