Corporate Accountability Lab unleashes the creative potential of the law to protect people and the planet from corporate abuse.
HIDDEN HARVEST
HUMAN RIGHTS AND ENVIRONMENTAL ABUSES IN INDIA’S SHRIMP INDUSTRY
March 2024
Over the past decade, India has emerged as the United States’ leading source of shrimp, the most consumed seafood in the country. However, this success is marred by a production process that relies on forced labor, dangerous and abusive working conditions, and environmental destruction to meet demands for ever-lower prices. While countries like Thailand, China, and Bangladesh have faced criticism for similar abuses, India, which supplies almost 40 percent of U.S. shrimp imports, has remained under the radar with little public scrutiny – until now.
This report challenges the current narrative and issues an urgent call to action. As demand for shrimp continues to grow, so must the pressure on companies and governments to identify and remedy the sector’s pervasive forced labor, abusive conditions, and environmental harms.
FEATURED BLOG POSTS
our work
Research
We study the laws that govern corporate behavior and identify how and why such laws fail to hold corporations accountable for the human rights violations and environmental harms occurring across their supply chains.
Legal Design
We design strategic interventions into global supply chains to better protect human rights and the environment through novel litigation strategy and new forms of worker empowerment.
Collaboration
We collaborate with lawyers, law school clinics, other corporate accountability NGOs, and workers to workshop our designs, coordinate strategy, and implement our strategic interventions.
While the just transition is gestured at as a solution to the climate crisis, the extraction of critical minerals that underlies the transition often violates human rights and causes environmental damage, underscoring the limitations of the growth-focused economic model. A truly just transition is ultimately a regenerative one, of ecological resilience and reduced resource consumption. But until that can be achieved, green energy supply chains must be improved. Workers and others directly impacted by the energy transition’s thirst for critical minerals must be treated with dignity, agency, and autonomy.
Imagery from Kolwezi, DRC, which has been referred to as a disappearing city, because of the encroachment of cobalt mines on its urban area.
Attribution: Map Data: Google, Airbus Technologies, 2023.