Rainforest or Sex Slaves?

I think one of the main arguments brought up in the NYT articles is the lack of attention that the slave trade gets, especially from groups and politicians in the United States. The author criticizes groups in the US, especially American women’s group that do hardly anything to acknowledge or combat the slave trade around the world. Additionally, the author points out, “there is far less international effort to save these children than to, say, save the Brazilian rain forest.” As someone who has long felt connected to the environmental movement, this has been something I have thought a lot about. I sympathize more with the environmental movement than I do other groups/political parties that were criticized in this piece and thus will focus my blog on this aspect. I have come to firmly believe that social issues are environmental issues and vice versa, it just depends on how we frame environmental issues. I am currently much more in favor of the environmental justice movement than the classic environmental movement in the United States. The classical environmental movement essentially dichotomizes humans and nature, so under this framework,  Srey Neth, Srey Mom and innumerable other women, are not considered to groups such as The Nature Conservancy or Sierra Club. This isn’t to say that the people in those organizations do not care people, but they view their mission is about conserving pristine wilderness or endangered species, not helping people. In contrast, the environmental justice movement insists on the environment consisting of a whole ecosystem that includes the biophysical environment, the built environment, and the social environment; or where we live, work and play. So, under this framework, the struggle of women treated as sex slaves is something that should be something movements in the US address. That being said, with such a seemingly broad range of things under the umbrella of environmental justice, how should/can we triage and achieve real goals? Clearly the sex slave is something that deserves real, pressing attention. This is something I think a lot about as well, and am still in the process of trying to understand what breaking the human-nature dichotomy truly means. At least for starters, I think such a move could bring people together at the local, national and global level. There would still have to be special interest groups but I think this would bridge the gap between seemingly disparate groups to build a powerful movement. When I think about how rampant issues such as the sex trade or deforestation are today, there seems that there must be some sort of underlying institutions that are causing such disparities and environmental and human assaults around the world. Maybe bringing people together because we at least have an environment, could be a place to mobilize and start understanding and facing the systemic problems as a global community that enable the fates of girls like Srey Mom and countless others.