Blood Bricks: Examining the Climate Change-Modern Slavery Nexus in the Cambodian Construction Industry

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'Climate change and slavery: the perfect storm?' - this was the prescient headline of The Guardian (2013) which called for more international conversation on the links between these urgent threats to environmental and human security. This study forwards this call by examining the inter-linkages between climate change, different axes of structural inequality (e.g. gender, age), and vulnerability to trafficking into modern slavery. The project asks who is most at the 'receiving end' of climate change, is most likely to enter into modern slavery, and who has fewer capabilities and resources than others to adapt to climate change in alternative ways?The research is based in Cambodia, the world's second most climate vulnerable country in 2014. This status derives not only from the heightened climate risks its faces in the form of floods and droughts, but also the lack of capacity to adapt and respond. Eighty percent of the population lives in rural areas with limited knowledge, infrastructure and opportunities; and more than 70 percent rely on agriculture that is heavily sensitive to climate change (UNDP 2014). In 2016, Cambodia also recorded the third highest proportion of modern slaves per capita in the world. Under these compelling set of circumstances then, the project focuses on the Cambodian construction industry as a means to examine how climate change facilitates trafficking into modern slavery and ongoing livelihoods within it. UK and Cambodian scholars will undertake challenging research that aims to combine qualitative interviews with construction industry informants and victims of modern slavery working in brick-kilns and construction sites; agro-ecological profiling, a quantitative household survey, and interviews in brick-kiln sender villages; and analysis of longitudinal secondary data (Cambodia Socio-Economic Study 2014). Findings will improve understanding of the 'deadly dance' of environmental destruction and modern slavery.