THE SET-UP: It’s not easy being “green.” That’s particularly true in a globalized economy built on a network of labyrinthine supply chains that often depend upon voluntary compliance and “self-monitoring.” That’s where the “ISCC” is supposed to come in. “International Sustainability and Carbon Certification” is a company. It describes itself thusly:
ISCC is a globally applicable sustainability certification system and covers all sustainable feedstocks, including agricultural and forestry biomass, biogenic wastes and residues, circular materials and renewables. With currently over 9000 valid certificates in more than 130 countries, ISCC is among the world’s largest certification systems. It has been developed through an open multi-stakeholder process and is governed by an association with more than 250 members, including research institutes and NGOs. As a no-deforestation standard with a strong commitment to protect forests, high-carbon stock lands and biodiversity, ISCC strives for a world where biomass and other raw materials are produced in an environmentally, socially and economically sustainable manner.
That sounds admirable and reasonable. So does this recent statement from Mira Schlaus, ISCC’s Senior Communications Manager:
Sustainability certification is based on stringent processes in which each participant in the supply chain is carefully reviewed and certified. This ensures that sustainability information, such as greenhouse gas emissions at various stages within a supply chain, is accurately tracked and disclosed – resulting in a transparent understanding of the environmental footprint of finished products.
But what about slave labor conditions in places like Brazil where, as today’s TRIFECTA demonstrates, slave labor seems alarmingly persistent? What if the parent company is clean, but its subcontractors not so much?
Or is the certification process really just marketing and, therefore, greenwashing?
That’s one potential takeaway from a dust-up last summer.
Per a report in edie, Virgin Atlantic was forced to pull a radio ad touting itself as “the world’s first commercial airline to fly transatlantic on 100% sustainable aviation fuel.” The UK government also touted Virgin’s use of sustainable aviation fuel, or “SAF,” and the government even characterized the advertised flight from Heathrow to JFK as “guilt-free flying.”
That’s patently false and a number of complaints were lodged with the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA). That, in turn, led the ASA to require Virgin Atlantic to point out SAF is not free of environmental impact, a.k.a. free of “guilt,” and to add an admission that previous ads were deceptive.
The rub is the broad implication of the word “sustainable” in “sustainable aviation fuel.” It implies ”green” and “clean” and “low or no-impact” to many consumers. And we hear “sustainable” a lot in corporate ad campaigns. In this specific case, Virgin Atlantic argued it just means “fuels not derived from fossil sources and certified by entities like the International Sustainability and Carbon Certification (ISCC) and the Roundtable on Sustainable Biomaterials (RSB).”
So, they had the ISCC stamp of approval. But what about the fuel itself? How “environmentally, socially and economically” sustainable it is really? Did it ultimately come from an abusive subcontractor in Brazil? And if so, does that mean certification is really just a racket? - jp
TITLE: Certified ethanol produced in Brazil for global airlines linked to slave labor
https://news.mongabay.com/2024/12/certified-ethanol-produced-in-brazil-for-global-airlines-linked-to-slave-labor/
EXCERPTS: As major global airlines embark on decarbonization plans, Brazil, the world’s largest producer of sugarcane ethanol for fuel, could become a key supplier of sustainable aviation fuel.
In January, LanzaJet, the first ethanol-based aviation fuel producer, was launched in the United States. The company, backed by shareholders such as British Airways and Southwest Airlines, plans to source primarily from Brazil and requires sustainability certification from its suppliers. However, according to a new report from Repórter Brasil, at least two certified plants involved in supplying ethanol have been implicated in recent slave labor scandals. The “Enslaved in Ethanol” report also reveals other previously unknown links between multinational corporations and ethanol suppliers involved in severe human rights violations.
The increasing investment in Brazilian ethanol, seen as an alternative to fossil fuels and their climate impact, coincides with a surge in reports of slave labor on sugarcane farms. In 2019, after seven years without any cases reported by the Brazilian federal government, 45 workers were rescued from such conditions in sugarcane fields. These numbers have steadily increased, reaching 361 cases in 2022. The following year saw 258 people rescued, while new cases were identified in 2024.
One of the Brazilian companies certified to supply aviation fuel is Usina Coruripe. In 2022, 18 workers were rescued from conditions akin to slavery on sugarcane plantations exclusively supplying the company in Minas Gerais. A federal inspection revealed that these workers, hired through a subcontractor, were housed 150 kilometers (93 miles) from the fields where they worked, in precarious accommodation without drinkable water or beds.
Although the labor was recruited by a contractor without formal ties to Usina Coruripe, auditors held the company responsible for the slave labor case. The company has denied the allegations, stating it seeks to annul the citations in court. It also noted that a Federal Police inquiry concluded there was no evidence of such practices by Usina Coruripe.
In 2024, Usina Coruripe obtained the ISCC Corsia Plus certification, which is mandatory to access the aviation fuel market. The certification prohibits forced labor and illegal salary deductions for “protective equipment and accommodation.” These standards apply not only to the mills but also to their subcontractors.
The ISCC Corsia Plus program did not respond to contact attempts by Repórter Brasil. LanzaJet, which uses the certification as a supplier approval criterion, stated it maintains a “robust business conduct code across its supply chain,” including human rights audits conducted annually by external agents.
Another plant granted certification, in October 2023, was BP Bunge Bioenergia, a joint venture between agribusiness giant Bunge and British Petroleum (BP). Seven months earlier, 212 workers had been rescued from conditions resembling slavery on sugarcane plantations supplying the company in Minas Gerais and Goiás, marking the largest rescue of enslaved workers that year. Days before the rescue, some workers were reportedly exposed to pesticides sprayed by airplanes, resulting in symptoms like itching, vomiting and headaches.
Despite the high standards required by certifications, Gustavo Ferroni, formerly of Oxfam Brazil and now with Freedom Fund, highlighted flaws in their implementation. He argued that there is “minimal effort by certifiers” and called for more than just reactive audits and passive responses to problems.
Cian Delaney, campaign coordinator at Transport & Environment, which promotes sustainable transportation in Europe, stated that governments must ensure sufficient resources for regulatory institutions. “Offloading the responsibility of monitoring the market to independent certification schemes like ISCC is not enough,” he concluded.
TITLE: 163 Workers Rescued From Shocking Slave-Like Conditions At BYD Construction Site In Brazil
www.carscoops.com/2024/12/over-160-chinese-workers-saved-from-slave-like-conditions-at-byd-construction-site-in-brazil/
EXCERPTS: Chinese automaker BYD has been aggressively expanding its global footprint, with Brazil being a key part of its growth strategy. However, that momentum screeched to a standstill on Monday when Brazilian authorities halted construction on a new manufacturing plant.
According to government officials, the construction company responsible for the project, called Jinjiang Construction, treated its 163 workers like modern-day slaves. These workers, reportedly hired in China by a separate firm, were allegedly brought to Brazil through irregular—and highly questionable—means. To make matters worse, over 100 of them had their passports withheld, effectively trapping them in exploitative conditions.
The workers lived on the construction site. The accommodations offered by the company included beds without mattresses and, in one case, one bathroom for 31 workers. As such, an official report from the government says workers would often all wake up around 4 a.m. so that everyone could have access to the restroom before beginning work at 5:30 a.m.
“In one of the rooms, occupied by a cook, pots with prepared food were found left open on the floor, exposed to dirt and without refrigeration, to be served the following day,” says the Public Labor prosecutor’s office.
“The workers were required to pay a deposit, had 60% of their wages withheld (receiving only 40% in Chinese currency), faced excessive costs for terminating their contracts, and had their passports withheld by the company,” authorities added.
These conditions were bad enough that Jinjiang Brazil LTD is now prohibited from continuing its operations. Authorities are scheduled to meet with BYD and Jinjiang on the 26th to determine the next steps.
BYD, short for Build Your Dreams, is already the top-selling EV car brand in the country and the new facility was supposed to come online next year. However, it’s now unclear how this controversy will impact the company’s plans moving forward.
TITLE: Brazil priest’s efforts against slave labor in the 1980s leads to lawsuit against Volkswagen
https://cruxnow.com/church-in-the-americas/2024/12/brazil-priests-efforts-against-slave-labor-in-the-1980s-leads-to-lawsuit-against-volkswagen
EXCERPTS: Forty-one years after he first denounced the use of slave labor in a Brazilian farm owned by German company Volkswagen, a Catholic priest is finally seeing the case being taken to court.
Labor prosecutors filed on Dec. 4 a civil lawsuit against the car industry for supposedly having used enslaved workers in the operation of Vale do Rio Cristalino farm, located in the city of Santana do Araguaia, in Pará state.
Father Ricardo Rezende was only 25 years old when he arrived in the Diocese of Conceição do Araguaia, in the southern part of Pará state, in the Amazonian region.
He was soon informed by the president of the local rural workers’ union of grave denouncements against a large farm owned by Volkswagen, one of the most important car manufacturers operating in the South American country at that time.
“The rural workers complained about several practices common in situations of slave labor, like the undue indebtedness of workers, the impossibility of leaving the property while the alleged debts were not paid, the use of violence against workers, and even torture and killings,” Rezende recalled.
A report with those accusations, dating from 1972-1976, was handed to the authorities, but nothing had been done. Those were the times of the military dictatorship (1964-1985), when the regime stimulated the operations of international corporations and repressed labor movements.
But Rezende, who headed the local chapter of the Bishops’ Conference’s Land Pastoral Commission (CPT), kept an eye open for the occurrences in the farm.
In 1983, a group of three or four workers managed to escape from the property. One of them, a 17-year-old boy, was the son of a rural labor union leader and told the CPT all about the farm.
Rezende began sending information to international organizations and to the newspaper of the metalworkers’ union in São Bernardo do Campo, in São Paulo state, which represented the workers of the Volkswagen factory. Headed by Luiz Inácio da Silva, the current President of Brazil, the union had already denounced the German company for persecuting workers who struggled against the dictatorship.
One of the union leaders, Expedito Soares Batista, had been elected for the State legislative power, and he began to denounce Volkswagen from his tribune every day.
“The company invited me to visit the farm. I said I would take with me a union leader, journalists, and other state legislators,” Batista told Crux.
“As we were heading to the city, we saw a truck coming in the other direction. We asked the car to stop, because we wanted to talk to the occupants,” Batista remembered.
The visitors were surprised when they saw three or four workers tied up in the truck.
“We talked to the man who was in charge, he was a labor contractor. He told us: ‘Those guys were in debt with the farm, they fled to the city and we had to stop working and go after them.’ I told him to release the men immediately,” Batista said.
During that visit, Batista also heard one worker telling him that the farm promoted a large-scale devastation of the Amazon rainforest in order to create cattle space. They would agree with other neighboring farms to burn portions of the woods at the same time. On one of such occasions, a satellite detected the wildfire. The press revealed that such a fire was the largest ever spotted from space.
Batista produced a report after the trip, but nothing was done. Rezende kept listening to the testimonies of workers who left the farm over the years. He had them sign the testimonies and archived all of them along with other documents, collecting a broad collection about the Volkswagen property with over 600 documents.
In 2012, during the tenure of President Dilma Rousseff, the federal government established the National Commission of Truth, a group to investigate State crimes against activists during the military dictatorship. The commission was subdivided into smaller groups, each one taking care of a specific element. That’s how Batista was invited to be part of a group of former labor leaders who suffered persecution inside Volkswagen and other companies.
Batista and his colleagues gathered evidence against the company and a lawsuit was filed against it. The social and media pressure on Volkswagen ended up leading the corporation to negotiate with the association that was formed to represent the persecuted workers.
“It paid a compensation of $6 million and apologized for its role during the dictatorship. A group of 55 workers who managed to prove they were persecuted was compensated,” Batista said.
But the case involving the farm didn’t have the same success. In the 1980s, the CPT decided to file a labor lawsuit against Volkswagen. The company ended up losing it, but it never accepted to pay damages for the victims of slave labor.
“I think it didn’t want to recognize the crimes it perpetrated,” Rezende said.
After the agreement concerning Volkswagen’s crimes was sealed, Rezende decided it was about time to reopen the case of slave labor in the farm. A prosecutor he knew accepted to conduct it. The priest sent a researcher to the region to encounter at least some of the 26 workers that gave testimonies to him in the 1980s.
“He found 14 of them. They were interviewed by the prosecutors and repeated the stories they told us 40 years ago,” Rezende said.
The statute of limitations for occurrences like murder and labor crimes has already expired. But slave labor doesn’t have a statute of limitations, so the lawsuit could be filed.
Rezende estimates that more than a thousand people faced the harsh reality of the farm in the 1970s and 1980s. Individual lawsuits may follow the current collective process.
“Somebody should be held accountable someday for such crimes. And those people’s memories shouldn’t be erased,” he said.