China’s Supply Chain Challenge – From Timber to Minerals

As the world’s factory, China’s international supply footprint for extractive raw materials is expansive and growing, from timber to minerals, such as copper, and cobalt. However, China’s domestic policies don’t adequately regulate Chinese outbound investments and Chinese industry has few incentives to green their supply chains or monitor the social impacts. In countries such as Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, illegal and environmentally unsustainable logging practices have been driven by the overwhelming demand for timber from China and other countries.

Please join us for a discussion of on-the-ground investigations by NGOs and lawyers into the environmental and social damage from Chinese and other foreign extractive industries. Drawing on a new report by Global Witness, Lela Stanley will talk about the illegal logging in the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea, two countries that supply about 50% of China’s tropical log imports.  Jim Wormington will relate findings from extensive research and interviews in Guinea, the biggest supplier of bauxite to China’s aluminum industry. Jingjing Zhang, a longtime Chinese environmental lawyer, will share a collection of stories on her work investigating the environmental and human rights violations in Africa and Latin America, from helping a community in Equator win a court case to suspend a Chinese-owned gold mine in a mountain nature reserve to interviews of bauxite mining-affected communities in Guinea. She and other speakers will highlight necessary legal changes in China and in host countries and increased community involvement will be critical to create more sustainable and humane supply chains. 

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