Grant Award on Earth Observation for Social Sustainability

Grant Award on Earth Observation for Social Sustainability

Professor Doreen Boyd (Geography) has won a grant from the British Council through the International Science Partnerships Fund (ISPF). The award is the Early Career Fellowships in Research and Innovation 2023/24 and will fund three year-long Early Career Fellowships. The scheme will enable early-career researchers (ECRs) to collaborate internationally and gain access to new research environments, facilities, knowledge and expertise, creating lasting benefits for the ECRs as well as the UK and international country/territory research communities through sustainable collaboration.

Professor Boyd will select three fellows from Brazil to work with her as a team focused on Earth Observation (EO) of potential forced labour sites. This work will likely focus on timber from the Brazilian Amazon: a known high-risk and priority supply chain to the UK, an industry that can be analysed from space, and a forced labour issue that exacerbates climate change and the displacement of traditional communities. The fellows will pioneer techniques for mapping high-risk sites and build on their country networks and knowledge as they develop and deploy EO techniques.

The fellows will be part of the Rights Lab's world-leading programme that is building on UK strengths in “space” to realise the power of EO research for human rights, sustainable supply chains and international development.

Following its work to estimate the prevalence of online child sexual exploitation in the Philippines in partnership with the International Justice Mission (IJM), the Rights Lab is now beginning two new prevalence estimation projects funded by IJM.

One, led by Professor Doreen Boyd (Geography) and with team members from Politics (Todd Landman, Kevin Fahey, Zoe Trodd) and Geography (Giles Foody), will estimate the prevalence of bonded labour in India. The team will establish prevalence, identify key industries with a high prevalence of bonded labour, and understand the factors leading to high prevalence. Delivered in partnership with IJM's India team, it will be the first geographically extensive prevalence estimation for bonded labour in India since the 1970s, and the largest-scale bonded labour estimate ever completed.

A second, led by Professor Todd Landman (Politics) and with team members from Politics (Kevin Fahey) and Geography (Doreen Boyd), will estimate the prevalence of cross-border forced labour and labour trafficking in Malaysia. The team will establish the scale of trafficking for cross-border labour in Malaysia, understand unique destination-side vulnerabilities, and identify key hubs and channels for trafficking. 

Delivered in partnership with IJM's Malaysia team, it will be the largest prevalence estimation study on forced labour among cross-border migrants in Malaysia conducted to date.

Both studies will inform new programmes and strategies for IJM, in India and Malaysia. The world's largest anti-slavery/anti-trafficking NGO, IJM works in 16 countries around the world to combat trafficking and slavery.