Blood and Earth: Modern Slavery, Ecocide, and the Secret to Saving the World

Blood and Earth is a gripping account of the deadly link between slavery and environmental destruction. Kevin Bales is a social scientist, human rights activist, and journalist and he's also one of the world's leading experts on modern slavery. In his work he began to notice the connection between environmental decline and slavery: the two almost always went hand-in-hand, whether in the hellish gold mines of Ghana or the miraculously beautiful mangrove forests of Bangladesh. But why? He set off to find the answer on a fascinating and moving journey that took him into the lives of modern day slaves and along a supply chain that leads directly to the cell phones in our pockets. He found solutions that redeemed both the lives of the slaves in the world's most threatened places and the environments they live in. This is a clear-eyed, inspiring, and profoundly hopeful book that brings us dramatic stories from the world's environmental and human rights hotspots and offers solutions to our most pressing crises.