6個月前，我與攝影師塞巴斯蒂安·梅爾一道來到了剛果民主共和國，撰寫了一篇有關數千名少年兒童挖鈷礦的報道，他們每天工作14個小時，薪酬僅有數美元。鈷是一種非常重要的礦物質，存在于每一部手機、電動汽車和計算機之中。這一場景令人感到心碎。生活在極度貧困之中的兒童一直都在為巨型科技和汽車行業提供服務，但可以確定的是，這些孩子一輩子都買不起這些公司生產的產品。

如今，少數幾家公司拿出了一個可行的方案：使用區塊鏈來跟蹤和監控其鈷礦的開采和銷售過程。福特汽車公司、韓國電池生產商巨頭LG Chem、中國華友鈷業以及總部位于倫敦的負責任供應鏈的公司RCS Global于上本周宣布，它們將聯合打造首個區塊鏈分布式平臺，以覆蓋鈷的整個生產環節。IBM將為其提供技術支持。

該組織稱，區塊鏈中上載信息不可變的標識將允許公司監控和評估生產的所有過程，自鈷礦從剛果南部偏遠地區（全球大部分鈷礦儲量都集中在這一地區）地下開采出來的那一刻起，一直到亞洲的熔煉廠和精煉廠以及最終的全球交易市場。RCS Global的首席執行官尼古拉斯·加勒特對我說：“我們關注的風險涵蓋運營健康和安全、暴亂資助和童工。”按照新區塊鏈系統的要求，每一家公司都將報告其流程階段。他說：“每一個參與者都會按照負責任實踐對自身進行評估。”此舉的初衷在于擴大區塊鏈規模，從而允許更多的采礦和冶煉公司加入這一平臺。

任何未能滿足這一盡職調查標準的公司將被趕出平臺。對于加入區塊鏈的公司，平臺為其提供的獎勵包括：繼續開采剛果巨大的資源；可繼續對外界聲稱公司遵循道德的業務規范。福特公司的全球采購和動力系統運營業務副總裁麗莎·德雷克稱：“我們依然非常重視全球供應鏈的透明度。”福特最近宣布，公司未來幾年將在電動汽車生產領域投資110億美元。德雷克稱，區塊鏈“將有助于公司履行保護人權和環境的承諾。”

區塊鏈技術真的能做到這一點嗎？

我們對剛果的報道顯示，剛果鈷礦開采業務多年來一直充斥著人權侵犯和腐敗，而且暴力沖突事件在剛果這個遼闊的中非國家也是時有發生。

鑒此，新區塊鏈項目的實際效果可能與這些公司的宣傳內容有一定的出入。該項目最初只設立了一個試點，即位于剛果南部省份魯瓦拉巴的Luswishi Industrial Mine公司，后者使用機器技術來開采鈷礦。因此，該動議（如今）并未覆蓋人工采礦，而工業分析師認為，人工挖礦占鈷礦生產的約20%，同時，這一部分公司仍在雇傭童工挖礦，而且我們去年在剛果便見到過，例如11歲的丹尼爾和15歲的盧卡薩。

起草了采礦業行為規范的巴黎經合組織礦產供應鏈法律顧問拉夏德·阿貝爾森表示：“可追溯性并非是最終目標，只是實現目標的一種手段。”他說：“當前的一個風險在于，眾多公司都將區塊鏈技術看成是一種能夠解決一切問題的萬能藥。”

幾乎可以確定的是，只要條件允許，像丹尼爾和盧卡薩這樣的兒童還將繼續長時間地挖礦，因為童工問題的根源——赤貧以及缺乏教育和工作機會——依然沒有得到解決。

即便撇開童工問題不談，這里還存在著其他問題：我們在村莊、鈷礦市場和鈷礦中看到，礦場沒有什么精力來約束工人的工作習慣。在華友運營的卡蘇羅鈷礦，我們看到數百礦工拿著手工工具挖礦，而且并未穿戴保護手套或安全帽。然而，這是剛果當地省政府官員主動向我們展示的案例，而且還是作為良好采礦實踐的典范。

阿貝爾森擔心，剛果這種貧乏的環境可能會導致不良的信息被上載至新區塊鏈平臺，因為有些地區文化水平低下，基本沒有軟件技術經驗，而且有些地區甚至還未接入互聯網。此外，人們難以判斷區塊鏈上數據的真假。他說：“我們還沒有完全弄清楚，這一技術如何解決外界欺詐信息的驗證問題。”

解決鈷礦生產過程中的非法勞工和腐敗問題存在很高的風險。倫敦鈷礦交易公司Darton Commodities公司稱，由于人們更多地采用電動汽車來取代化石燃料車型，全球對鈷礦的需求到2030年將增加700%。

如今的問題在于，世界工業是否能夠在采用綠色科技的同時依然堅持道德標準。（財富中文網）

譯者：馮豐

審校：夏林

Six months ago, I traveled to the Democratic Republic of Congo with photographer Sebastian Meyer and revealed how thousands of young children were working 14-hour days digging cobalt—an essential mineral found in every one of our mobile phones, electric vehicles, and computers—for just a few dollars a day. The scene was heart-breaking. Children living in desperate poverty were servicing giant tech and auto industries, whose products they would surely never be able to own in their lives.

Now a few companies have seized on a possible solution: Using blockchain to track and monitor how their cobalt is mined and marketed. Ford Motor Company; the Korean battery-manufacturing giant LG Chem; China’s Huayou Cobalt; and RCS Global, a London-based organization for responsible supply chains, announced last week that they will jointly create the first blockchain distributed platform to encompass the entire production cycle for cobalt. IBM will power the technology.

The group claims that the immutable identity of the information uploaded on to the blockchain will allow it to monitor and assess every step of production, from the moment cobalt is dug out of the ground in remote southern Congo—where most of the world’s cobalt reserves lie—to the smelters and refineries in Asia, and finally the global trading market. “The risks we are looking for are operational health and safety, conflict financing, and child labor,” Nicholas Garrett, CEO of RCS Global, tells me. Under the new blockchain system, each entity will report its stage of the process. “Each player assesses for responsible practices,” he says. The idea is to scale up the blockchain, allowing more and more mining and refining companies to join the platform.

Any company failing to meet due-diligence standards will be ejected from the platform. The incentive for companies joining the blockchain is to keep extracting Congo’s huge resources, while still claiming to the world that they are following ethical business practices. “We remain committed to transparency across our global supply chain,” says Ford’s vice president for global purchasing and powertrain operations Lisa Drake; the company recently announced it is investing $11 billion on EVproduction over the next few years. Drake says the blockchain “will help meet our commitment to protecting human rights and the environment.”

But will it really do that?

As our reporting in DRC showed, cobalt mining in Congo has been riddled with human-rights violations and corruption for years, and operates in a vast Central African country beset by violent conflict.

Given that, the new blockchain project might deliver fewer results than the companies claim. It is beginning with just one pilot site, Luswishi Industrial Mine in DRC’s southern province of Lualaba, which uses machine techniques to extract cobalt. As such, the initiative does not (for now) tackle artisanal mines, which industry analysts believe account for about 20% of cobalt production, and which continue employing the child miners we met in the DRC last year, like 11-year-old Daniel and 15-year-old Lukasa.

“Traceability is not the final objective, it is just a means to an end,” says Rashad Abelson, legal advisor on mineral supply chains for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris, which has drafted codes of conduct for the industry. “There’s a risk that companies could treat blockchain technology as a panacea that is going to solve all the problems,” he says.

Children like Daniel and Lukasa will almost certainly continue digging for cobalt as long as they can, since the root causes of child labor remain: Deep poverty, and a lack of education and job opportunities.

Even leaving aside child labor, there are other problems too: As we saw in the villages, cobalt markets and mines we visited, there are few resources to scrutinize people’s work habits. In the Kasulo mine, which is operated by Huayou, we watched hundreds of men digging cobalt with manual tools, and with no protective gloves or hard hats. And that was the site Congo’s local provincial officials wanted us to see, as an example of good mining practices.

Abelson fears that the bare-bones conditions in Congo could also lead to bad information being uploaded on to the new blockchain platform, in areas where there is low literacy, and almost no experience of software technology; in some areas, there is not even Internet access. In addition, there will be few ways to know whether the data on the blockchain is true or false. “It is not yet totally clear how this technology would resolve the issue of validating information that is fraudulent from the outset,” he says.

The stakes for fixing the labor violations and corruption in cobalt production are high indeed. As people increasingly choose electric vehicles over fossil-fuel models, global demand for cobalt could increase 700% by 2030, according to the cobalt-trading company Darton Commodities in London.

The question now is whether the world can embrace green technology, and still adhere to ethical standards.