Building Sustainability in All Endeavors, From Ethical Construction to This Publication

• Author: By Wm. Cary Wright
• Pages: 4-5

THE CONSTRUCTION LAWYER

4 Volume 42 Issue 3

Published in

The Construction Lawyer

, Volume 42, Number 3. © 2023 American Bar Association. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved. This information or any portion thereof may not

be copied or disseminated in any form or by any means or stored in an electronic database or retrieval system without the express written consent of the American Bar Association.

COMMENTS FROM THE CHAIR

As we learned at the Forum’s

Annual Meeting in April in

Vancouver, “sustainability” is

an important word in the con-

struction industry, having a

broad meaning, both nancially

and morally. The theme of the

Forum’s Annual Meeting was

“The Future of Construction

Law.” We covered topics such as “Transformative Events

in Construction Law,” “Data, Data, and More Data: The

Implications of Big Data on Construction Claims,” and

“Current Trends and Future Approaches to Renewable,

Recyclable, Sustainable, and Ethically Sourced Mate-

rials”—all timely and relevant topics to construction

practitioners. The most impactful for me, however, was

the Diversity Breakfast presentation by Sharon Prince,

CEO and Founder of Grace Farms Foundation, because

it shed light on the existence of forced labor and slavery

in the built environment, from sourced materials to the

construction site.

Grace Farms Foundation’s mission is to pursue peace

through ve initiatives—nature, arts, justice, community,

and faith. Its stake in the ground is to end modern slav-

ery and gender-based violence, and create more grace and

peace in our local and global communities. These are lofty

and worthwhile goals that we, as construction practitio-

ners, can join in helping to achieve—or, at least, move the

needle in the right direction.

Grace Farms has teamed with industry leaders, includ-

ing AIA New York, Ford Foundation, Gensler, Yale

School of Architecture, and many more, to study and

tackle the issue of forced labor by forming its Architecture

and Construction Working Group. In 2020, the Work-

ing Group produced a 96-page report titled “Design for

Freedom,” which is meant to raise awareness about slave

labor in the built environment and propose an industry-

wide call to action. The report presents achievable calls to

action, including the development of slave-free specica-

tions and rigorous auditing standards in the procurement

of construction materials, as well as the use of big data

and technology, to dismantle the illegal dependence on

slave labor. Important to our clients, the report also lays

out an ethical business model to reduce reputational risks

and increase long-term gains.

Wm. Cary Wrig ht

By Wm. Cary Wright

Building Sustainability in

All Endeavors, From Ethical

Construction to This Publication

The statistics and information in the report are startling.

Globally, almost 25 million people are held in servitude

for forced labor and close to 152 million children from the

ages of ve to seventeen years old are subjected to child

labor. This problem spans the gamut in the construction

industry, and is present in the sourcing of materials, man-

ufacturing, and at the construction site. The following

global materials are the top twelve building materials at

risk of being made with forced and child labor:

• Rubber

• Electroinics

• Copper

• Glass

• Bricks

• Iron

• Fiber & Textiles

• Timber

• Minerals

• Steel

• Stone

• Precursors

For example, timber is one of the most widely used

construction materials in the world and is ranked as the

fth largest product (by value) imported into the U.S. at

risk of forced labor. The most offending countries where

forced labor is prevalent are Brazil, Peru, and Russia. In

Russia, an estimated 80 percent of all timber is illegally

harvested and primarily located in eastern regions that

contain old-growth forests. The timber workforce in this

region is typically comprised of North Korean migrants

sent on a state-sponsored labor-export scheme, who are

isolated in remote, prison-like logging camps. A large por-

tion of the timber produced under these modern slavery

practices is exported to China, where it is blended with

legally sourced material and exported worldwide. It is

routed to the U.S., to retailers such as Lumber Liquida-

tors, which was ned under the Lacey Act, and is now

known as LL Flooring,

In addition to bringing awareness to modern-day

slave labor, Grace Farms Foundation is organizing and

rallying the construction industry—owners, designers,

contractors—to do their respective parts. For owners, it

is to demand sustainable buildings free of materials and

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