How trade can become a gateway to climate resilience

Most people don't think about climate change when they lift a café latte to their lips or nibble on a square of chocolate — but this could soon change.

Based on current trajectories, around a quarter of Brazil’s coffee farms and 37% of Indonesia’s are likely to be lost to climate change. Swathes of Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire — where most of the world’s chocolate is sourced — will become too hot to grow cocoa by 2050.

Climate-related droughts and deadly heatwaves across the world have coincided with severe storms, cyclones, hurricanes, and, of course, a pandemic. As a consequence of these shocks, millions of people have been left without homes, and a growing number of people now face starvation and a total collapse of livelihoods as growing and exporting staple crops becomes untenable.

We must immediately rethink the shape of our economies, agricultural systems and consumption patterns. Our priority is to manufacture climate resilience in global economies and societies — and we must do it quickly.

Trade can kickstart the emergence of climate-resilient economies, especially in the poorest countries. Trade has a multiplier effect on economies by driving production growth and fostering the expansion of export industries. By shifting focus to production and exports that increase climate resilience, there is potential to exponentially increase the land surface and trade processes prepared to withstand the climate crisis.

Adapted from: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/07/trade-can-be-agateway-to-climate-resilience

From Nail bars to car washes: how big

is the UK’s slavery problem?

by Annie Kelly

Does slavery exist in the UK?

More than 250 years since the end of the transatlantic slave trade, there are close to 41 million people still trapped in some form of slavery across the world today. Yet nobody really knows the scale and how many victims or perpetrators of this crime there are in Britain.

The data that has been released is inconsistent. The government believes there are about 13,000 victims of slavery in the UK, while earlier this year the Global Slavery Index released a much higher estimate of 136,000.

Statistics on slavery from the National Crime Agency note the number of people passed on to the government’s national referral mechanism (NRM), the process by which victims of slavery are identified and granted statutory support. While this data gives a good snapshot of what kinds of slavery are most prevalent and who is falling victim to exploiters, it doesn’t paint the whole picture. For every victim identified by the police, there will be many others who are not found and remain under the control of traffickers, pimps and gangmasters.

There are also many potential victims who don’t agree to go through the mechanism because they don’t trust the authorities, or are too scared to report their traffickers. Between 1 November 2015 and 30 June 2018, the government received notifications of 3,306 potential victims of modern slavery in England and Wales who were not referred to the NRM.

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The police recorded 3,773 modern slavery offences between June 2017 and June 2018.

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(Source: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2018/ oct/18/nail-bars-car-washes-uk-slavery-problem-anti-slavery-day. Access: 20/10/2018)