Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives

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ARC received from St. Martins Press and NetGalley in exchange for honest review, opinions are all my own. Thank you!*** The author is very, very, brave. The people and children of Congo are very, very, brave [they do what they have to do to have lives, even though it is full of pain and poverty and more often than not, death]. The guides that took the author around and got people to talk to him are very, very, brave. Although ASM is fraught with hazardous conditions, the sector has been growing rapidly. There are roughly forty-five million people around the world directly involved in ASM, which represents an astonishing 90 percent of the world’s total mining workforce. Despite the many advancements in machinery and techniques, the formal mining industry relies heavily on the hard labor of artisanal miners to boost production at minimal expense. The contributions from ASM are substantial, including 26 percent of the global supply of tantalum, 25 percent of tin and gold, 20 percent of diamonds, 80 percent of sapphires, and up to 30 percent of cobalt.3 In February of 2021, Richard Kent, Researcher on Business and Human Rights at Amnesty International wrote “Corruption and child labour have no place in the energy transition.” “Never before has mineral extraction sought to mitigate climate change on such a scale. But there are currently no laws in place to ensure green technologies do not themselves cause harm – and cause harm they do.” Need another clear picture? Did you know that during the pandemic there was increased pressure put on Congolese cobalt extraction? Billions of us relied, more than ever, on our rechargeable batteries to continue remote working and schooling. It put pressure on the artisanal miners and many more children had to join the mining workforce to keep up with the demand and help their families survive. COVID protocols? What protocols? Non-existent. If they didn’t contract the virus and share it with their family causing death, they still stopped their education to provide for US.

Review: “Cobalt Red” by Siddarth Kara - The New York Times

Rarely has a book had such a profound effect on my views of the world, but Siddharth Kara’s writing grabbed hold of my heart and twisted it throughout this eye-opening read. At first I was staggered by the heaviness of the data presented, but then I was drawn into the horrors of these artisanal miners lives and my heart broke for them. Content is profoundly bleak. Siddharth Kara takes us through an industry responsible for horrifying human rights abuses, including severe long-term health repercussions, child labor, and deaths for which no one is held responsible.An incisive investigative reporting of the human toll and brutality caused by our need for the latest and greatest technologies in our smart phones and cars. The author does not report from afar or from a library reading reports, this author visits the mines in the Congo at great risk and peril to him and exposes the horrific conditions and practices in "artisanal" mining and the use of children as labor. "Artisanal" for us conjures images of artisans working their craft in a beautiful bespoke way (and we tend to buy brands that promote artisanal methods. My view of this has changed forever when I learned that artisanal mining is the most dangerous, difficult form of mining using hand tools to extract cobalt and other minerals. I hope this book has the intended effect of being a call to action for the corporations who are benefiting from this and turning a blind eye to what is really happening in the pursuit of precious minerals. It should also be a wake up call for us consumers -- do I really need the latest and greatest smartphone? This is an absolute must read. I highly recommend this book.

Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers [PDF] [EPUB] Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers

Republic of the Congo. The mined product is useful for global production of lithium batteries for digital devices. Meticulously researched and brilliantly written by Siddharth Kara, Cobalt Red documents the frenzied scramble for cobalt and the exploitation of the poorest people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.” Of all the tragedies that have afflicted the Congo, perhaps the greatest of all is the fact that the suffering taking place in the mining provinces today is entirely preventable. But why fix a problem if no one thinks it exists? Most people do not know what is happening in the cobalt mines of the Congo, because the realities are hidden behind numerous layers of multinational supply chains that serve to erode accountability. By the time one traces the chain from the child slogging in the cobalt mine to the rechargeable gadgets and cars sold to consumers around the world, the links have been misdirected beyond recognition, like a con man running a shell game. For Daimler, respect for human rights is a fundamental aspect of responsible corporate governance … We want our products to contain only raw materials and other materials that have been mined and produced without violating human rights and environmental standards.Newsweek’s Meredith Wolf Schizer’s interviewed the author in her article, “ Clean Energy’s Dirty Secret—Human Rights Abuses in Cobalt Mining”