‘Slave-like’: Solar panels may be great for the environment but at what human cost?

Modern-day abolitionist Grace Forrest has warned that the race to decarbonise the world’s economy risks repeating the mistakes of the colonial era by building industries on forced and child labour.

Forrest, who on Thursday evening became the first Australian woman to win the Roosevelt Foundation’s Four Freedoms award for her anti-slavery advocacy, says the green economy is sleepwalking towards another century of exploitation .

Grace Forrest, founder of campaign group Walk Free, in London for the release of the Global Slavery Index 2023.Credit: Grainne Quinlan

The work of her human rights organisation, Walk Free, has exposed modern slavery, forced and child labour throughout the renewable energy supply chain, with evidence of state-imposed forced labour of Uyghurs and other Turkic and Muslim majority groups in China in the making and supply of solar panels and other renewable technologies.

It has also shone a light on the slave-like conditions in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where cobalt is mined by workers for its use in rechargeable batteries for laptop computers and mobile phones.

“We have this tremendous closing window of opportunity to build an economy that isn’t built with its roots in the historical slave trade,” Forrest said. “We have an opportunity to build an economy that isn’t coming from colonial lines and yet, right now, a green economy absolutely will be built on forced and child labour.

“So the message really is, you cannot harm people in the name of saving the planet.”

The 30-year-old founded Walk Free in 2011. It is funded by the Minderoo Foundation, the philanthropic arm of her father mining magnate Andrew Forrest and mother Nicola. Its latest Global Slavery Index estimated that 50 million people were living in modern slavery – either in forced labour or forced marriage – on any given day in 2021.

Nicola Forrest, Grace Forrest and Andrew ‘Twiggy’ Forrest in 2021.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Forrest joins the likes of high-profile global advocates who have been honoured with the award previously, including Malala Yousafzai, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama and former German chancellor Angela Merkel. Former foreign affairs minister Gareth Evans is the only other Australian to have received the award.

Four Freedom awards are given each year to individuals and organisations committed to promoting the four freedoms – of speech and of worship, and from want and from fear – proclaimed by then-president Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1941. Forrest received the award for freedom from fear.

“It is mind-blowing to be included in this incredible line up of recipients, whose work I have admired and studied,” she said. “It is a privilege to represent a team of women who have built Walk Free to what it is today.”

Forrest says while globally there has been a shift towards renewable energy to meet sustainability targets, the use of state-imposed forced labour prevents a just transition to protect both planet and people.

Workers install solar panels at a photovoltaic power station in Hami in north-western China’s Xinjiang.Credit: AP/File

Almost 90 per cent of the global supply for polysilicon, a common raw material in electronic devices and solar panels, comes from China, with Walk Free noting that about half of that came from Xinjiang, the north-western province that is home to the Uyghurs.

The Chinese Communist Party denies the use of forced labour in its factories in the region, and state-controlled media claims that participation is voluntary. However, state-imposed forced labour in China has received heightened attention in recent years, with calls for all companies to restrict sourcing from the Uyghur region as it has become impossible to operate in accordance with the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.

A display of models of solar panels in Hefei, China.Credit: Bloomberg

“From polysilicon solar panels, to the treatment of Congolese people, for the mass production of batteries, those supply chains are heading straight into old historical lines,” Forrest says. “And we have an opportunity, and we’re demanding our leaders, you know, are you going to do something differently? Or are you going to cement the same historical power structures into a new economy? It really is a turning point.”

Forrest has led a push for leading economies worldwide to update their modern slavery laws and was instrumental in a groundbreaking European Union directive recently that will force big businesses to eradicate modern slavery from their supply chains and drastically curb environmental abuse.

She said Australia was also a major importer of products that may have used modern slavery and while electronics and garments were prone to the greatest levels of risk, Forrest said solar panels were a growing area of concern.

“We need strong laws to drive better business practices and protect the most vulnerable,” she says. This is particularly important against the backdrop of increased vulnerability arising from conflict, economic crises and climate change.”

Forrest recently joined former British prime minister Theresa May’s Global Commission on Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking, to work towards putting modern slavery on the global political agenda, especially urging action from G20 countries.

Forrest says she does not want to dampen people’s enthusiasm for a green future, acknowledging the climate change was “a real risk” to Australians and developing countries throughout the so-called Global South.

“All we’re asking people to understand is that the climate crisis is also a humanitarian one and as we rapidly procure these products, we need governments to ensure there is genuine safety and protection of people at the front of supply chains,” she says.

This year’s other laureates are Save Ukraine/Mykola Kuleba (International Four Freedoms), Bellingcat /Eliot Higgins (Freedom of Speech), Uyghur advocate Zumretay Arkin (Freedom of Worship) and Brazilian Indigenous leader Sonia Guajajara (Freedom from Want).

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