THELOGICALINDIAN - n-a
Blockchain tech is one of the fastest growing industries in the world, predicted to hit $2.3 billion by 2021. As an arising confusing technology that has the abeyant to transform the acumen industry, can blockchain technology anticipate adolescent activity in all-around azure accumulation chains?
According to the International Activity Organization (ILO), 168 actor children from 5-17 are exploited for their labor, with 85 actor administering assignment in chancy conditions.
Unfortunately, as society’s demands for smartphones and electric cars grow, so does the appeal for adolescent activity in mining. Manufacturers are accordingly ablution a pilot activity that uses blockchain technology to track, reduce, and eventually anticipate adolescent activity in azure mines. Companies throughout the apple including Chinese manufacturers and technology giants like Apple, Samsung SDI, and Sony, calm apprenticed to booty activity by basic the ‘Responsible Azure Initiative.’
Although adolescent activity stems from political and socio-economic problems, if this pilot proves effective, blockchain technology can become the apparatus that holds companies and governments answerable for their actions, and authority them adjoin a new accepted which can abate bent labor.
Blockchain to clue adolescent activity in Cobalt mines
In 2014, according to UNICEF and Amnesty International, about 40,000 accouchement formed in mines beyond Southern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), with abounding complex in azure mining. Accouchement as adolescent as seven assignment up to 12 hours a day in the mines, accustomed abundant endless to acquire one to two dollars a day.
Since a ample bulk of the azure acclimated in smartphone and electric cars comes from artisanal mines, companies like Apple, Tesla, and Volkswagen are beneath growing burden to ensure that azure in their lithium-ion batteries is chargeless from adolescent activity and animal rights abuses.
Cobalt manufacturers are application blockchain technology for the aboriginal time to clue the mineral’s adventure from the mines in DRC to the end product. While the all-around azure accumulation alternation operates in a country of basic lawlessness, if every amateur agrees to the arrangement – and authentic cyberbanking abstracts can be transmitted from alien areas – companies in the azure accumulation alternation can be captivated amenable for their bent practices.
These companies charge to booty albatross and be proactive in preventing bent activity practices from seeping into their accumulation alternation if they appetite to abide aggressive and accumulate their investors and barter happy.
A assignment in progress
‘We are prototyping, iterating, testing, scaling,” said Sheila Warren, arch of blockchain action at the World Economic Forum. While the technology has a big appulse on the project, “the technology is not the adamantine part.” The adversity lies with the cooperation of every affiliate forth the accumulation chain.
However, admitting the complexities “we are actual bullish about the abeyant appulse of blockchain in minerals and metals accumulation chains,” said Harrison Mitchell, administrator of RCS Global, a aggregation that advises others on ethical and amenable sourcing. “Blockchain-enabled accumulation chains will accept the adeptness to bear assurance and accuracy over the assembly of metals such as cobalt. Ensuring that advice from these abundance sites is inputted accurately and clearly is difficult but it is possible.”
Blockchain technology has a lot of affiance and abeyant in the amusing sector, abnormally back it comes to reducing adolescent activity in accumulation chains. While the technology may be immature, the analysis and development invested in blockchain technology will ensure it becomes awful scalable to ambassador a ample circuitous all-around accumulation chain.
The basis of adolescent labor, however, stems from an bare government and absolute socio-economic issues aural a country. While no technology can fix these problems, blockchains can authority governments and companies answerable for their accomplishments – or in this case, their abridgement of activity – and drive them against outlawing actionable and bent activity practices.
