#childlabour — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #childlabour, aggregated by home.social.
-
#SodiumIonBatteries offer an alternative to tricky #lithium
Oct 26th 2023
Excerpt: "Fortunately, lithium is not the only game in town. As we report this week, a clutch of firms are making batteries based on sodium, lithium’s elemental cousin. Since sodium’s chemical properties are very similar to those of lithium, it too makes for good batteries. And sodium, which is found in the salt in #seawater, is thousands of times more abundant on Earth than lithium and cheaper to get at. Most of the companies using sodium to make batteries today are also Chinese. But pursuing the technology in the West might be a surer route to energy security than relying heavily on lithium.
"Besides its abundance, sodium has other advantages. The best lithium batteries use #cobalt and #nickel in their electrodes. Nickel, like lithium, is in short supply. #Mining it on land is #EnvironmentallyDestructive. Proposals to grab it from the #seabed instead have caused rows. A good deal of the world’s cobalt, meanwhile, is extracted from small mines in the #DemocraticRepublicOfCongo, where #ChildLabour is common and working conditions are dire. Sodium batteries, by contrast, can use #electrodes built from #iron and #manganese [and wood #lignin], which are plentiful and uncontroversial. Since the chemical components are cheap, a scaled-up industry should be able to produce batteries that cost less than their lithium counterparts.
"Sodium is not a perfect replacement for lithium. It is heavier, meaning sodium batteries will weigh more than lithium ones of an equivalent capacity. That is likely to rule them out in some cases where lightness is paramount. But for other applications, such as #GridStorage or #HomeBatteries, weight is irrelevant. Several Chinese carmakers are even beginning to put sodium batteries in #ElectricVehicles."
Read more:
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2023/10/26/sodium-batteries-offer-an-alternative-to-tricky-lithiumArchived version:
https://archive.ph/7x6JX#SolarPunkSunday #EnergyStorage #SodiumIon #NewTechnology #GiantLeap #Reuse #WasteReuse #NoLithiumMining #NoMining
-
Papuan women will not be silenced while palm oil behemoths consume their land
In the colonised region of #WestPapua, Indigenous Melanesian women’s rights are being forgotten as companies and the Indonesian government seizes ancestral land for palm oil and sugar cane plantations — without owners’ consent. These women are fighting to protect customary lands for future generations. The following is a summarised version of a story published by Human Rights Watch, read the original ‘There will be nowhere left.’
#News: #Indigenous women’s #landrights trampled in #Papua as #palmoil giants seize forests and jostle for power —the women will not be silenced! 🚫🌴☠️ #BoycottPalmOil #Boycott4Wildlife @palmoildetect via @HRW https://palmoildetectives.com/2025/09/10/papuan-women-will-not-be-silenced-while-palm-oil-behemoths-consume-their-land/
Share to BlueSky Share to TwitterHuman Rights Watch. (2025, August 20). “There Will be Nowhere Left: Government, Companies Take Indigenous Lands Without Women’s Consent in Indonesia’s South Papua. https://www.hrw.org/feature/2025/08/20/there-will-be-nowhere-left/government-companies-take-indigenous-lands-without
“Tomorrow, when everyone has sold their dusun (customary land), where will our children and grandchildren find food? There will be nowhere left. They’ll have to go to someone else’s dusun and buy food. That’s why I said no. I won’t let the company into my dusun. Let it remain for my children and grandchildren.”
Imelda Maa via Human Rights Watch
Laurensia Yame is from the Indigenous community, the Awyu. She heard from women traders that workers were surveying the community’s forest for a company’s commercial use, including the hamlet where she farms.
“My brother decided alone to work with the company and allow them into our village lands. He never discussed it with me. Instead, he worked with my father’s nephew, the only boy. But my uncle’s children don’t have land there. That land is my father’s land; it belongs to me.”
Laurensia Yame via Human Rights Watch
Rikarda Maa, a Maa clan member, attended the only meeting held in Ampera village. She recalled a discussion after which several men – including her uncle and a male cousin – signed documents provided by the company. Neither the company nor village representatives read the document aloud to the meeting participants, so women who went to observe didn’t know what exactly their male relatives signed away.
She later found out that her relatives’ signatures were used by the company to represent the Maa clan’s release of its claims to the land—even though her clan never met and discussed the company’s plans.Rikarda Maa via Human Rights Watch
A new investigation by Human Rights Watch finds that the world’s leading palm oil producer, Indonesia is rapidly expanding agricultural frontiers into Papua, especially the western New Guinea region. This aggressive and unrestrained expansion is driving mass deforestation and loss of Indigenous lands, as government and private companies move in—often without the consent of local women.
Customary lands known as dusun are central to the livelihoods and cultural identity of Indigenous Papuans. Women like Imelda Maa warn of the implications: “Tomorrow, when everyone has sold their dusun (customary land), where will our children and grandchildren find food? There will be nowhere left. They’ll have to go to someone else’s dusun and buy food. That’s why I said no. I won’t let the company into my dusun. Let it remain for my children and grandchildren.”
Despite Indonesian law requiring companies to obtain community consent—including through environmental and social impact assessments—the reality is different. Permits are granted after so-called consultations that routinely exclude women, even though under national law they possess equal land rights. As Laurensia Yame, from the Awyu community, explains: “My brother decided alone to work with the company and allow them into our village lands. He never discussed it with me. Instead, he worked with my father’s nephew, the only boy. But my uncle’s children don’t have land there. That land is my father’s land; it belongs to me.”
Corporate strategies to acquire land have included meetings involving only male representatives, leaving women’s voices ignored—even though both women and men inherit and use community lands. These decisions jeopardise food security, traditional livelihoods, and the ability of Indigenous families to sustain themselves.
While legally companies must engage with the whole affected community, testimonies highlight the persistent exclusion of women across South Papua. As the government authorises clearance of old-growth forests for palm oil, rice, and sugar cane, these vital lands are vanishing, sparking fears articulated by many Papuan women: there will be nowhere left for their descendants to survive.
The struggle continues as the Awyu and others campaign for the rights to their lands and forests—advocating for legal recognition and genuine, inclusive consultation, not just box-ticking exercises. The HRW report highlights the urgent need for indigenous-led land management and respect for women’s voices in decision-making.
Indonesia is the top producer of palm oil in the world, and Indonesian Papua – the western half of the island of New Guinea – is its final frontier for agriculture-driven deforestation.
Rather than preserve the old, undisturbed trees, the Indonesian government is authorising companies to clear millions of hectares of primary forests, primarily for oil palm, rice, and sugar cane plantations.
Via Human Rights Watch
To acquire land and establish a plantation, companies are required by Indonesian law to obtain certain permits from relevant local government authorities and conduct environment and social impact assessments, which involves engaging with the affected community.
Despite being half the community’s population and having equal land rights to men under national law, women’s voices were repeatedly ignored, including by the men in the Awyu community.
Via Human Rights Watch
Read more: “There Will be Nowhere Left: Government, Companies Take Indigenous Lands Without Women’s Consent in Indonesia’s South Papua,” by Human Rights Watch.
Original article was written by Juliana Nnoko, women’s rights senior researcher. Edited by a senior program editor, and Amy Braunschweiger, former communications associate director. James Ross, legal and policy director, and Joseph Saunders, deputy program director, provided legal and programmatic review, respectively.
Human Rights Watch. (2025, August 20). “There Will be Nowhere Left: Government, Companies Take Indigenous Lands Without Women’s Consent in Indonesia’s South Papua.” Human Rights Watch. https://www.hrw.org/feature/2025/08/20/there-will-be-nowhere-left/government-companies-take-indigenous-lands-without
ENDS
Read more about human rights abuses and child slavery in the palm oil industry
Greasing the Wheels of Colonialism: Palm Oil Industry in West Papua
A landmark study published in Global Studies Quarterly in April 2025 has revealed that the rapid expansion of the #palmoil industry in #WestPapua is not only fuelling #deforestation, #ecocide and environmental destruction but…
Palm Oil Workers Expose Industry Practices Resembling Colonialism
Palm Oil Workers Expose Industry Practices Resembling Colonialism | A coalition of palm oil workers in Indonesia has unveiled industry practices that mirror colonial exploitation, including land grabbing, poor working conditions, and environmental…
Papua’s ‘Empty Lands’: A Dangerous Myth Displacing Indigenous Peoples
In #WestPapua, on illegally colonised and disputed land taken by violence from Melanesian Indigenous peoples last century by Indonesian forces, authorities label indigenous lands as “empty”. This is done in order to justify…
Research: Palm Oil Plantations Threaten Indigenous Waterways
Research: Palm Oil Plantations Threaten Indigenous Waterways | A study by the University of Massachusetts Amherst reveals that the expansion of oil palm plantations in West Papua’s Kais River watershed has significantly degraded…
New Research: Indigenous Communities Reduce Amazon Deforestation by 83%”
Although #deforestation rates in the Brazilian #Amazon have halved, this globally critical biome is still losing more than 5,000km² every year. That’s an area three times larger than Greater London. By combining satellite…
Load more posts
Something went wrong. Please refresh the page and/or try again.
Take Action in Five Ways
1. Join the #Boycott4Wildlife on social media and subscribe to stay in the loop: Share posts from this website to your own network on Twitter, Mastadon, Instagram, Facebook and Youtube using the hashtags #Boycottpalmoil #Boycott4Wildlife.
Enter your email address
Sign Up
Join 1,398 other subscribers2. Contribute stories: Academics, conservationists, scientists, indigenous rights advocates and animal rights advocates working to expose the corruption of the palm oil industry or to save animals can contribute stories to the website.
Mel Lumby: Dedicated Devotee to Borneo’s Living Beings
Anthropologist and Author Dr Sophie Chao
Health Physician Dr Evan Allen
The World’s Most Loved Cup: A Social, Ethical & Environmental History of Coffee by Aviary Doert
How do we stop the world’s ecosystems from going into a death spiral? A #SteadyState Economy
3. Supermarket sleuthing: Next time you’re in the supermarket, take photos of products containing palm oil. Share these to social media along with the hashtags to call out the greenwashing and ecocide of the brands who use palm oil. You can also take photos of palm oil free products and congratulate brands when they go palm oil free.
https://twitter.com/CuriousApe4/status/1526136783557529600?s=20
https://twitter.com/PhillDixon1/status/1749010345555788144?s=20
https://twitter.com/mugabe139/status/1678027567977078784?s=20
4. Take to the streets: Get in touch with Palm Oil Detectives to find out more.
5. Donate: Make a one-off or monthly donation to Palm Oil Detectives as a way of saying thank you and to help pay for ongoing running costs of the website and social media campaigns. Donate here
Pledge your support#BoycottPalmOil #Boycott4wildlife #BoycottPalmOil #childLabour #humanRights #indigenous #indigenousRights #landRights #landgrabbing #landrights #Melanesia #Melanesian #News #PalmOil #palmoil #Papua #slavery #WestPapua #womenSRights
-
Pushed out of school in the pandemic, they now stitch shoes
Three years after Covid-19 began, its impact can still be felt in the lives of the children who dropped out of school in Agra to join the shoe-making industry.
#UttarPradesh #agra #covid19 #covid #poverty #education #children #ChildRights #ChildLabour #ChildLabor #UPGovt #BJP#india
https://scroll.in/article/1044264/pushed-out-of-school-in-the-pandemic-they-now-stitch-shoes