It's very possible that we could act quickly to limit climate change, and yet still end up making the world significantly worse. The best way to ensure we do this is to let the worlds mega-wealthy - the 3,000 plus people who have wealth of over a billion dollars or, even worse, the 15 or so who own over $100b - to keep their wealth.
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| Cover of 'Cobalt Red' |
If you want to know why this is, read Siddharth Kara's book, Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives. Published in 2023, the book is an investigation into the cobalt mining industry in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
Cobalt is an essential component of rechargeable batteries. This means it is integral to the process of decarbonisation. Mobile phones, laptops, electric vehicles, grid-scale 'big batteries' - every electrical device big and small uses cobalt. The end users of this wonder metal are among the world's most recognisable and profitable global corporations - Samsung, Apple, Huawei, GE, Tesla, BYD, etc. These companies have made their shareholders and rockstar CEOs unbelievably rich. Less so the people who dig up the cobalt that makes their devices rechargeable.
All these companies make nice, reassuring statements to the effect that their supply chains are fully audited and are free from slavery, child labour or other human rights atrocities. Kara, a British/Indian academic who has written extensively about modern slavery, wanted to know if this is true. To find out, he made several journeys to the DRC and visited sites throughout the Katanga region where the mining takes place. This involved considerable risk to himself and even more to the local people who helped him - the DRC military guard most of the sites, and they don't take kindly to outsiders poking around and asking questions. All his informants are anonymised and many of his interviews with miners took place in secret locations.
About 70% of the world's cobalt comes from the DRC which, while it is a republic and straddles the Congo River, is decidedly not democratic. A substantial proportion of it - maybe 30% but who would know? - is dug up by 'artisanal miners'. The term sounds nice but the reality is not. These are people who mine cobalt with noting more than picks, shovels and pieces of rebar. They dig pits or tunnels, or dig into the side of hills. They have no safety equipment, no protection from the radioactivity of the ore they dig (uranium is often an associated element with Cobalt, along with copper), no labour protections, no sick leave or proper health care, no nothing. For their efforts, they mostly earn less than the equivalent of $2 per day.
Many of these miners are children. Officially, every child in the DRC is meant to have access to free education. In practice, their families need to pay a few dollars each month for them to attend, which pays the teachers' wages. It is hard for a family of artisanal miners to make enough to pay for this as well as to eat, so the children inevitably drop out of school and join their parents in digging up cobalt. Everywhere Kara went he found children working either alongside their parents, or in teams on their own behalf. Adult men and teenagers did the digging, then younger children would cart the ore to the nearest water source (lake/pond/river) where they or the women and girls would wash it in polluted, fetid water.
This operation is incredibly dangerous. Tunnel collapses and landslides are frequent, burying people alive and maiming those lucky enough to escape. The ore itself, the dust kicked up by its mining, and the water in which it is washed are all toxic. Miners have chronic coughs, skin conditions, and huge risk of cancer. There is no free health care, and miners (including children) who are seriously injured will be patched up at the expense of the mining welfare organisation and then sent home, where they receive no rehabilitation or follow-up treatment. They often suffer from infected wounds and without antibiotics they die a slow, painful death. If they escape this fate, they are likely to spend the rest of their artificially shortened lives slaving through their daylight hours then going home at night to a meagre hut or tent where, if they are lucky, they will eat enough food to work the next day.
As well as many of these workers being children some of them, child or adult, are actual slaves. They may be trapped in forms of debt slavery - typically, they will work in a team for a boss who pays them to dig a tunnel, and then demands the advance be repaid once they reach the ore. Others are simply forced at gunpoint to work for a soldier who is moonlighting as a small-scale mining entrepreneur.
Depending on the location, the output from these activities is likely to be about 10-20kg of ore per worker. They will sell this for somewhere in the region of 100-200 Congolese francs per kilogram, equivalent to less than 10 cents. Yes, you read that right. If they are fortunate enough to be digging in an area with a high level of purity they may be paid more, but even then their pay will not be commensurate with the extra value of the ore they dig up.
They sell either to a depot, if there is one close enough, or to a negociant, middle man who transports it to the depot. The depot will then sell it to one of the large mining companies (generally owned by either a Chinese or American multi-national in partnership with the local government-sponsored company) who will process it and ship it overseas. Each transaction involves the middle man clipping the ticket, so people get richer the further they are up the chain. By the time the ore reaches the factory, nobody knows if it was dug up by an artisanal miner, or comes from a big industrial mine - it is all delivered in the same trucks and loaded onto the same conveyor belt.
Why does the Congolese Government tolerate this rampant exploitation of its citizens, you might ask?
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| Map of the DRC - the mining areas are the southern provinces in blue |
If so, you have asked the wrong question. The government does not tolerate it or turn a blind eye, it is one of the main perpetrators. The system is enforced by the military, and government (or regime) owned corporations share the profits. At the top of the chain, the military dictators who have ruled the DRC since the 1960s engage in shameless corruption, raking off millions from every deal and making themselves and their cronies unimaginably rich.
Meanwhile, in the wealthy world we remain blissfully unaware. The companies claim that they audit their supply chains and even name the independent auditors, but Kara saw no trace of them anywhere in the DRC. In our news we are treated to every inane word that comes out of Donald Trump's mouth and get to watch the genocide in Gaza in real time, but most of us would struggle to point to the DRC on the map and know nothing about it. Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise.
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There is some cause for hope. For a start, Siddharth Kara has written this book, which has been widely read and received some prestigious awards. This will surely increase the pressure on wealthy corporations to clean up their act. At the local level the DRC has a new President, Felix Tshisekedi, who has promised to clean up corruption. Although perhaps we shouldn't rely on that too heavily given he is the handpicked successor to the massively corrupt Joseph Kabila, who still has his fingers in the pie. If President Tshisekedi at least takes his foot off the throats of the miners enough that they feel a little safer protesting then their massive anger at their situation could fuel powerful grassroots action, although the power and the guns continue to be in the hands of those who exploit them.
Yet although the exploitation of Congolese miners is particularly flagrant and brutal, it is sadly far from unique. Foreign colonial powers, aided by local oligarchs, have been plundering the poor of the Congo since Europeans first managed to sail down the west coast of Africa and found the mouth of the great river. In the centuries since they have enriched themselves by selling African humans, ivory, rubber and copper among other things, all paid for with the blood of Congolese people. Cobalt is simply the latest form of plunder.
Similar things have gone on across Africa, as well as in other places. For the past 200 years, British Australians have enriched themselves with land stolen from its prior owners. The same has happened throughout the Americas. In the Middle East, Palestinian Arabs have been sacrificed ever since 1947 to carve out a country for European Jews. The list could go on, but this article is not the place for it.
The point is, we can do better. There is a reason why the Congolese government and the global mega-corporations that mine and use cobalt go to great lengths to prevent outside scrutiny. Ordinary people would be horrified if they knew, so it is safer to make sure they don't. Much as we are happy to be willfully blind, most people visiting the mines, or hearing or reading the accounts of the artisanal miners, would feel anger and revulsion at the price being paid for their smart devices. They would almost certainly be willing to pay more to prevent these atrocities, but really there is no need. There is already money to burn in this supply chain, but it is trickling upwards. If you take out the hundreds of millions paid in bribes to government officials, along with the obscene profits raked off by the global corporations and allowed each a just return for their labour and investment, there would be plenty of money to pay miners a decent living wage, provide safety equipment, set up a good quality health system and fund schooling for the children.
This is why I focused so much or wealth redistribution in my articles on degrowth. The key to unlocking the shift from an exploitive to a circular economy, and hence living within our means, doesn't lie in some whizz-bang new technology. It lies in simple fairness, a just distribution of the abundant wealth we already have, not just within wealthy nations but across the global supply chain. If you're not happy about the idea of a child dying to supply you with a smartphone, get on board.
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| Young Congolese children washing ore. Would you paddle in that water? |
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