The Biden administration is shelling out millions of dollars to fight the alleged ties between climate change and child labor in the landlocked South Asian country of Nepal, according to documents reviewed by the Washington Examiner.
To increase “understanding of the link between climate change and vulnerability to child labor and/or forced labor risks,” in the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, the Labor Department is handing roughly $4 million in taxpayer funds to a group in the United States or overseas to conduct “socially-inclusive research,” newly released funding records show. Grant applicants are required to propose solutions based on “gender equity” while considering the purported obstacles those from “diverse backgrounds and underrepresented populations” may face, the department said.
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The award, which hasn’t previously been reported on, comes as the federal government under President Joe Biden has prioritized sweeping green energy initiatives through massive subsidies and agreements that Republicans argue will only financially benefit other countries, particularly China. Ex-U.S. Ambassadors Peter Hoekstra and Joseph Cella recently warned that Chinese companies are taking advantage of U.S. tax incentives to boost American reliance on the country for materials.
Child labor is a widespread issue in South Asia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where tens of thousands of kids as young as seven forcibly mine cobalt, which is used for green energy technologies and critical for electric vehicle batteries, according to the U.S. government and multiple reports.
“The Biden Administration’s priorities are simply absurd,” Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA), who sits on the House Judiciary Committee, told the Washington Examiner over email. “While 5.8 million Americans are out of work, Biden’s DOL is spending money to investigate how ‘a changing climate in Nepal’ impacts child labor?!?”
Johnson added, “This failed, woke approach to governance is destroying our country.”
The newly released grant is through the Labor Department’s Bureau of International Labor Affairs, which publishes reports on efforts by the U.S. government to “eliminate the worst forms of child labor through legislation, enforcement mechanisms, policies and social programs,” according to its website. Thea Lee, the bureau’s deputy undersecretary and leader, was president between 2018 and 2021 of the progressive Economic Policy Institute think tank and has also sat on the board of the Congressional Progressive Caucus Center, tax forms show.
Around 1.1 million children are in forced labor in Nepal, which has a population of over 30 million people, the Labor Department said in a 2021 report. The agriculture sector accounts for nearly one-third of the country’s gross domestic product, though it is “highly vulnerable to climate change,” the agency declared in the new funding documents.
Therefore, the Labor Department is calling for an organization to help build “climate adaptive strategies” that remain “informed by indigenous knowledge and the priorities of local people” while helping to dismantle “existing access barriers that women and other vulnerable groups currently face,” according to grant records. It’s a project that will last for over four years, and groups have until Oct. 9 to apply, the department said.
President Kathleen Sgamma of the Western Energy Alliance, an energy and public lands trade group with 200 member companies, said it appears the Biden administration is trying to use the idea of climate change as an “explanation for everything” while punting on proposing better policy solutions that would lift Nepalese out of poverty.
“One way to do that is by helping them access more reliable, affordable energy in the form of oil, natural gas, and coal, which would actually reduce the poverty that causes families to have to rely on child labor,” Sgamma told the Washington Examiner. “A convoluted study about climate change does nothing to lift families out of poverty and free children to go to school instead of work in sweatshops.”
Meanwhile, applicants to the Labor Department’s Nepal grant should consider “training” adults for “decent work opportunities in climate sustainable fields such as eco-tourism, renewable energy and recycling,” the agency said.
“The real irony is that misguided climate change policies in the West that favor intermittent solar energy over reliable fossil fuels are actually directly leading to slave labor in China, where solar panels are made by enslaved Uigurs,” Sgamma, referring to how China’s government has detained and committed human rights abuses against ethnic minorities in Xinjiang, added.
Revelations of the award come months after Biden’s U.S. Agency for International Development pledged federal dollars on “climate crisis” training for youth activists, who the top foreign aid agency said may deal with “climate-related mental health conditions.” The Labor Department in 2021 published a climate adaptation plan detailing how it will “combat the climate crisis” across the world while pursuing “environmental justice.”
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The Labor Department did not return a request for comment.
“If conservatives are serious about draining the Swamp — and they should be — stopping worthless waste in the name of global warming ought to be a top priority,” Hayden Ludwig, policy research head at Restoration of America, a conservative advocacy group, said.
