The Global Slavery Index 2023

Spotlights 4 

The Costs of the Climate Crisis (Part 1)

​Compounding crises serve to heighten the risks of all forms of modern slavery. The COVID-19 pandemic, armed conflicts, and climate change have led to unprecedented disruption in employment and education, as well as increases in inequalities, distress migration, and reports of gender-based violence and forced marriage. 
 
Climate change intersects with modern slavery in multiple ways. The impact of climate change hits hardest those who are already in precarious situations, such as women, children, indigenous people, and members of marginalised communities, increasing their vulnerability to modern slavery. Its effects may push people to migrate and magnify drivers of displacement such as loss of livelihoods, food insecurity, and a lack of access to water and other natural resources. Migration in these contexts can be unplanned, with people lacking the resources they need to move safely. The greater precariousness that is generated out of these situations exposes populations to higher risks of modern slavery.
 
Modern slavery is also linked to environmentally degrading industries with high climate change impacts. Forced labour is pervasive in key industries that are driving deforestation around the world. Conversely, there is increasing evidence that renewable industries vital to our urgent transition to clean energy are also reliant on forced labour for the mining, processing, and manufacturing of critical minerals and inputs. 
 
Yet modern slavery is seldom mentioned in the intensifying debate over how to protect the world’s most vulnerable people from climate change while accelerating the global transition to clean energy. As a global community, we must give more focus to these issues to ensure that we understand the different ways climate change is driving modern slavery and how at-risk and affected communities can be brought into the process of designing better solutions. 
 
The intersection between modern slavery, climate change, and migration 
In recent years, the negative effects of climate change have forced millions of people to leave their homes and move elsewhere. People on the move, a group already vulnerable to severe exploitation6 are at particular risk when moving in the context of climate change. This is because they are likely migrating as their livelihood and survival opportunities at home are severely threatened or have ceased to exist. In these circumstances, migration takes place “in distress,” meaning in a situation of severe need and precariousness.

As a result, people become more vulnerable to forced labour as they are already lacking adequate livelihood options and may be more easily tricked into accepting risky opportunities for survival. Overall, research by Anti-Slavery International and the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) demonstrates that “climate change acts as a stress multiplier to factors driving modern slavery.” 
 
Governments are failing to respond to the challenges that migration in these circumstances poses to individuals. The latest summary report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations expert body providing scientific evidence on climate change, suggests that severe climate events are pushing people to migrate in most of the world’s regions. People are moving across borders as well as within their country’s national boundaries. In 2021, climate- related disasters led to the displacement of nearly 24 million people globally. Most were attributed to rapid-onset weather-related events such as storms, floods, wildfires, droughts, landslides, and extreme temperatures. The World Bank highlights that unless urgent climate action is taken soon, then by 2050 more than 200 million people will have moved within their country’s borders as a result of climate change. 
 
Walk Free 2023. Global Slavery Index 2023. Minderoo Foundation Ltd. Australia.