Modern Slavery and the Destruction of Brazilian Forests

Feb 19, 2008 - 11:40 AM PST

Does buying products made with steel from Brazil advance the destruction of Brazilian forests and support the existence of modern slavery? How about that for a question! I’m a little intimidated by the serious and complicated nature of this subject, but I will try to do my best to show how unbeknownst to us, our purchasing habits can contribute to environmental degradation across the globe and maybe even support the practice of slavery, something that I imagine most of us thought was knocked out of existence over a hundred years ago.

As kids most of us learned in school about the global importance of the Amazonian Rainforest. We also learned that it was being cleared at an incredible rate to make way for cattle farming operations. What we weren’t told was that another reason forests in Brazil were being cleared with blistering speed was to make charcoal. This charcoal is then used to produce steel from raw iron ore. This steel then goes into a full ¼ of Brazil’s exports. The enormous amount of charcoal needed to fuel these steel plants comes from the burning of wood in low oxygen conditions. Making charcoal is hard, dangerous work and is done in very remote areas of Brazil. Most of the labor that goes into making charcoal is provided by poorly fed slaves that are routinely threatened with violence. Charcoal camps are surrounded by wilderness, making escape almost unthinkable. Workers at these charcoal plants clear-cut surrounding forests for miles around. Making charcoal at these camps uses a LOT of wood, which is harvested in a very non-sustainable manner. Trees are first cut and burned to make bricks that are used to build the enormous ovens that more trees are then slowly burned in to make charcoal.

The Brazilian government has begun to tackle this problem, but continued international pressure is needed to eradicate slavery in that country. Slaves freed in high profile government raids have been found back in charcoal camps just months later. One way to help slow this environmentally destructive practice and unthinkable abuse of human rights is to ask companies you buy products from if they can assure you that their products don’t contain steel produced using charcoal made with slave labor. For more information on this issue I encourage you to read “Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy” by Kevin Bales or visit www.antislavery.org.

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