Climate Change, Forced Labour, and the International Labour Organization in Cambodia: Disentangling Decent Work, Economic Growth, and Environmental Damage

Abstract

This paper contributes to the gap in current research surrounding the reinforcing relationship between climate change, exploitative labour, and environmental damage by analyzing bonded labour in Cambodian brickwork. Relying on the Marxist theory of labour exploitation, this paper highlights how structural economic changes contributed to agricultural dispossession and increased vulnerability among Cambodian smallholders to indebtedness and debt bondage. Relatedly, this paper analyzes the International Labour Organization as a hegemonic actor through a neo-Gramscian framework to highlight how its Decent Work Agenda and Decent Work Country Programmes are unlikely to eradicate forced labour. On these bases, it makes two independent yet interrelated contributions. First, forced labour in Cambodia is intimately linked to agrarian insecurity, driven by neoliberal economic reforms and anthropogenic climate change, and causes further local environmental degradation. Second, the International Labour Organization’s Decent Work Agenda and Decent Work Country Programme are doubly ineffective in eradicating forced labour due to inconsistencies between their ideological assumptions and goals. In light of its findings, this paper advances recommendations for the Royal Government of Cambodia and the International Labour Organization, including decoupling environmentally sustainable and decent work from expectations of economic growth. Keywords: brickwork, Cambodia, climate change, environmental damage, forced labour, International Labour Organization.