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	Global Goods, Local Costs by Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting   Behind almost every product we buy and the GDP numbers we worry over, there is a story whose trail crosses the globe. Every physical product starts as raw material somewhere, from the gold in our jewelry to the shrimp at our favorite restaurant and the minerals within our mobile phones and laptops.   The rapid industrialization of countries like India, China and Brazil and a voracious consumer culture in Europe, the United States and Japan mean ever greater demand for these raw materials--and ever greater pressures on the individuals, communities and environments that bear the cost of providing them.   These local costs too often remain hidden. They are obscured by companies and governments that put a premium on production and exports. They are little understood by consumers, whose concept of "price" and "value" doesn"t include damage done to people and places far away.   The Global Goods, Local Costs Gateway is an effort to make those connections plain, to show the true costs of producing the commodities that have become essential to our lifestyles but that mostly we take for granted. These reports touch on goods and challenges across the globe that share a common theme: the implications of a vision of endless prosperity set against the reality of a finite planet.   November 2012   The Philippines produced more than 1 million troy ounces of gold in 2011, ranking 18th in world production. More than half of that gold came from small-scale mines, according to the government''s Bureau of Mines. In these mines, many of them illegal, entire families, including very young children, dig, pan, crush and haul rock. Adults and older teenagers extract the gold from rock by hand, usually using mercury in a process that contaminates the land, water and food supply and exposes them to highly toxic mercury fumes. Tools are primitive. Children risk injury and death and face long-term health problems caused by back-breaking labor, exposure to dust and chemicals and, worst of all, mercury poisoning.   In compressor mining—the most dangerous of all mining practices—older teenagers and slight young men descend in deep pits filled to the surface with muddy water. Breathing through a tube attached to a compressor on the surface, they work in the watery darkness, filling bags of ore that are hauled to the surface. Sometimes miners die when the sides of the pits collapse, and they are buried alive.   Child labor is against the law in the Philippines, but is nonetheless rampant. The United Nations Environment Program estimates that more than 18,000 women and young children work in the Philippine gold mines. The U.N. International Labor Organization is trying to eliminate child labor, but without the support of local officials, it is an almost impossible task.   Ivory Coast: Where Does Chocolate Come From?   The story begins innocently enough. Fertile soil attracts labor from far and wide. Factories provide employment, farmland is plentiful, and for a time the economy of Ivory Coasts boomed as a much-desired commodity – cocoa – is exported across the globe.   But the story of cocoa has never been an innocent one. So valuable in the Aztec court that it was used as currency, blood has been shed over cocoa profits since Europeans first developed a taste for chocolate. Over the past two centuries, farming and production have moved from country to country, from the Caribbean to West Africa, always dependent on rich farmland and cheap labor.   Ivory Coast’s ethnic strife is the most recent chapter in cocoa’s troubled history. Initially migrant workers from across West Africa were invited to the country to share in its farmland, helping Ivory Coast become the world''s top producer. (Today it provides some 40 percent of the world''s crop.) But once the economy went sour in the 1980s, cocoa profits became more jealously guarded. Land disputes erupted, sparking xenophobic violence that became a ten-year civil war   With the close of post-election violence last year and the ascendance of a new government, the war is supposedly over. But new attacks are still carried out between rival factions; thousands of people still live in refugee camps; and those who return to their destroyed homes swear vengeance. As always, cocoa production continues through the strife, but reconciliation and a true end to conflict may still be a long way off.   In a World Hungry for Cheap Shrimp, Migrants Labor Overtime in Thai Sheds.   At an age when she should have been in a classroom, Thazin Mon discovered her knack for peeling shrimp. To help support her Burmese migrant family, the 14-year-old pulled 16-hour shifts, seven days a week, for less than $3 a day. “I am uneducated, so I work. I have to work bravely,” she says.   Although she was the best peeler in the factory, speed was never enough. Mon was beaten if she slowed down, she said. And when she asked for a day off to rest hands swollen with infection, her boss kicked her and threatened rape.   Thanks to a bottomless appetite for cheap shrimp in the West, Burmese migrants such as Mon are the backbone of a Thai shrimp industry that is the world’s third largest. The United States is Thailand’s top customer, accounting for a third of the country’s annual shrimp exports.   Rights groups say that overseas demand for shrimp products in greater volume has fueled a culture of exploitation in the Thai industry. They insist the failure of foreign companies to sufficiently verify the origin of the shrimp they import allows abuses to persist.   “If you look at the cost of shrimp overseas, it’s very, very cheap, and that comes from the exploitation inherent in the shrimp industry,” says Andy Hall, an expert on migration at Mahidol University who tracks Burmese labor in the Thai seafood industry.   Brisk business with major U.S. retailers such as Wal-Mart, Costco, Sam’s Club and Red Lobster pumps more than a billion dollars in revenue each year into the Thai economy, the second largest in Southeast Asia. As Thai living standards have risen, a shortage of unskilled labor has attracted tens of thousands of Burmese migrants looking to escape the poverty and job scarcity that has gripped their homeland for decades.   * See: http://pulitzercenter.org/global-goods-local-costs Visit the related web page
	Our current development path is simply too risky for humanity by Gro Harlem Brundtland UN High-level Panel on Global Sustainability Norway   June 2012   The scientific evidence is clear that the environmental dangers are rising quickly. Based on current trends, we are likely to move toward a world warmer by 3 degrees, and we may well cross tipping points with potentially catastrophic consequences.   Human activities are likely propelling the planet out of the climatically and ecologically stable state, the Holocene, which has sustained human development over the past 10,000 years. Science reports that we are now instead entering a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene, where humans have become the most potent force.   With our current growth and development model we are indeed changing the earth system, and as a result rapidly undermining the resilience of the planet and the future of humanity. The pressures of ecosystem decline, pollution and resource depletion have become immense, drawing down on the economic prospects of present and future generations.   We are the first generation with scientific understanding of the new global risks facing humanity. We must respond decisively, equipped with the best available evidence as a basis for decisions.   This new predicament is recognized in the report by the United Nations secretary general’s High-level Panel on Global Sustainability, of which I am a member, which maintains that tinkering at the edges will not do the job. If its recommendations are fully and rapidly implemented, we would be well on our way toward a more sustainable world.   Results from the Nobel Laureate Symposium Series on Global Sustainability also show that nothing less than a fundamental transformation will be needed, where human societies are reconnected with the biosphere to reverse global environmental change and move toward fair and lasting prosperity.   Twenty years after the Earth Summit it is clear that humanity has been a poor steward for the Earth.   Institutions must be developed and strengthened at all levels in order to integrate the climate, biodiversity and development agendas and help address the legitimate interests of future generations. Global governance must focus on ensuring that economic and social development evolves within a safe range of the carrying capacity of the planet.   A new contract between science and society is urgently required. World leaders are urged to support new integrated Earth-system research, which can facilitate the transition to global sustainability. Trans-disciplinary cooperation and innovation are also needed. Priorities for immediate action are meeting the global needs for food, water and energy, while at the same time avoiding dangerous climate change, safeguarding biodiversity and managing the oceans sustainably.   Science tells us global greenhouse gas emissions must peak no later than 2015 if we are to keep warming below 2 degrees and avoid dangerous climate change. For that to happen, governments must take action on many fronts.   While continued investments in innovation are needed, technology is not the obstacle. We also need to accelerate and scale up investments in poverty reduction, clean technology and ecosystem management, not to mention education.   Achieving equality for women must be a priority if we are to develop more sustainable livelihoods. Fulfilling the Millennium Development Goals, especially on women’s health, education, empowerment and economic status is a good and necessary first step.   There are compelling reasons to rethink the conventional model of economic growth. It is vitally important to de-couple growth from resource use, while simultaneously generating new employment opportunities. We should move beyond G.D.P. as a measure of society’s progress, apply the “polluter pays” principle, ensure the full accounting of natural capital and ecosystem services in all economic decisions and greatly enhance resource efficiency by moving production systems toward a “circular economy” that is regenerative by design.   Our current development path is simply too risky for humanity. In the Anthropocene, all nations must learn to live within the safe operating space of Earth’s boundaries. This requires an agreement between the world’s governments for a fair and sustainable use of Earth’s natural capital.   The proposed Sustainable Development Goals, if aligned with the latest science, offer the prospect for a viable and equitable future for humanity.   Like no other generation before, we can choose the type of future that we will leave to the next generation. A transition to a safe and prosperous future is possible, but will require the full use of humanity’s extraordinary capacity for innovation and creativity.   Real leadership is required now to tackle these systemic issues. We therefore call upon world leaders to move beyond aspirational statements and exercise a collective responsibility for planetary stewardship, to set our world on a sustainable path.   * Gro Harlem Brundtland, a former prime minister of Norway, is a member of the U.N. secretary general’s High-level Panel on Global Sustainability and a member of The Elders. Visit the related web page
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