Climate Change Poses a Child Labor ‘Threat Multiplier’
Global warming is exacerbating the conditions that lead to the workplace exploitation of minors. Now there’s a new way to measure it.
Two young Indian girls, working as child laborers, hold hands after being rescued from a small workshop in New Delhi in 2009.
Photographer: AFP
Child labor is a sensitive and hard-to-measure risk that typically stays hidden in the far reaches of corporate supply chains—and climate change is only making it worse.
Now, a newly developed quantitative approach may help raise its prominence as an environmental, social and governance issue. The AI-driven tool, known as the Child Labor Index, scores companies in three areas: disclosure levels, public perception and the commodity-level exposure of the supply chain to child labor. Fund managers can use the scores to pinpoint high-risk companies and identify others that need to confront the issue.