本文撰寫過程中曾獲普利策災難報道中心協助。

凌晨5點，剛果民主共和國南部地區一個小村莊里，鄰居大多還在睡夢中，15歲的路卡薩已經起身。他輕手輕腳離開家里的土磚房，開始了一天12小時的奔波勞作，每周他要工作六天。路卡薩身體瘦削，橢圓臉，眼神銳利。步行兩小時后，他從小村到達一處國有礦區。（為了保護路卡薩和其他孩子，《財富》隱去了村名。）下礦井就要開始干活，路卡薩窩在坑里挖礦8小時，礦石里是現代生活不可缺少的鈷。

下午3點，盧卡薩的袋子裝滿了22磅礦石，他背在背上，背不動就在地上拖，走一個小時才送到交易倉庫。“我賣給中國人，”他說的是控制當地市場的中國商品貿易公司買家。星期天，路卡薩終于休息了一天，他穿著胸口印有“Prada”字樣的T恤，坐在村里的樹蔭下介紹自己的日常生活。他挺自豪地說：“如果運氣好一天能賺到15,000法郎。”約合9美元。

身處世界上最貧窮國家之一的盧卡薩不知道，他每年辛苦300天從地下挖出的灰色金屬是數十億美元資本爭奪的對象。路卡薩說，他最近開始意識到自己挖鈷礦賺的錢非常少，尤其跟交易商在全球市場上賺到的錢相比。但對于居住在剛果鈷業中心科盧韋齊附近的人們來說，鈷礦交易還是很難理解。想讓路卡薩之類赤貧的挖礦者明白供求關系影響價格的道理更是困難，目前市場上對鈷礦需求激增，礦石價格上漲約400%，從2016年的每磅約10美元漲到今年4月高點，每磅44美元。

鈷礦的需求之所以飆升，主要原因是當今電子設備驅動的科技經濟：鈷是鋰電池的關鍵組成部分，為成百上千萬臺智能手機、電腦和平板電腦供電。鈷元素比較穩定，而且儲能密度很高，可使電池安全運行更長時間。如果沒有鈷，當今數字生活，至少目前模式下的設備幾乎都會癱瘓。

雖然鈷礦價值很高，人們剛剛開始意識到其關鍵的作用。一個世紀以來最大規模的能源轉型，即全球轉向可再生能源，在很大程度上取決于未來幾年里鈷礦的供應，以及生產和精煉的成本。現在世界各地的許多政府開始推行氣候變化目標以遏制碳排放，當然除了美國政府，汽車制造商也大力增加電動汽車的生產。舉個例子，通用汽車表示在規劃全電動化的未來。大眾汽車的目標是，到2025年四分之一產能分配給電動汽車。

This story was produced with support from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

MOST OF HIS NEIGHBORS are still sound asleep at 5 a.m., when Lukasa rises to begin his 12-hour workday. The slender 15-year-old, with an oval face and piercing stare, slips out of his family’s mud-brick home before dawn six days a week. Then he makes the two-hour walk from his tiny village in the southern region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo to a government-owned mining site. (Fortune is withholding the name of the village in order to protect Lukasa and other children.) Once at the mine, Lukasa spends eight hours hacking away in a hole to accumulate chunks of a mineral that is crucial to keeping our modern lives moving: cobalt.

By about 3 p.m., Lukasa has filled a sack with his day’s haul. He hoists the load, which can weigh up to 22 pounds, on his back and lugs it for an hour by foot to a trading depot. “I sell it to Chinese people,” he says, referring to the buyers from Chinese commodity trading companies who dominate the market in the area. Lukasa is wearing a T-shirt with “Prada” written on the front and sitting under a shade tree in his village on a recent Sunday, his one day off, as he explains his routine. With a hint of pride he says, “On good days I can earn 15,000 francs.” That adds up to about $9.

From his vantage point in one of the poorest countries in the world, Lukasa has little awareness that a multibillion-dollar scramble is underway for the grayish metal he digs out of the ground some 300 days a year. Lukasa has, he says, recently begun to grasp that his cobalt mining earnings are a pittance compared with the sums that traders make selling it on the world market. But that business is hard to fathom for those living near Kolwezi, the hardscrabble center of the cobalt industry in Congo. It’s more difficult still for diggers living in poverty, like Lukasa, to understand a surge in demand for the mineral that has sent the price of cobalt on commodities markets rocketing up some 400%, from about $10 a pound in 2016 to a peak of about $44 in April.

That soaring appetite for cobalt is a product of today’s device-driven tech economy: The metal is a key component in the lithium-ion batteries that power countless millions of smartphones, computers, and tablets. Cobalt provides a stability and high energy density that allows batteries to operate safely and for longer periods. Without it, our digital lives—at least for the moment—would be unable to function as they do.

And yet, as valuable as cobalt is today, its crucial role is only now coming into focus. The global transition to renewables—the biggest energy shift in a century—could depend in good measure on how readily cobalt will be available over the next several years, and how expensive it will be to produce and refine. As many governments around the world—if not the one in Washington, D.C.—begin rolling out their climate-change targets to curb carbon emissions, so automakers are hugely ramping up production of electric vehicles. General Motors, for example, says it is planning for an all-electric future. And Volkswagen aims to have one-quarter of its production devoted to electric vehicles by 2025.

如果電池技術沒有突破性發明，每塊電動汽車電池需要大約18磅的鈷，比起需要四分之一盎司鈷的智能手機電池多出1000倍。大眾汽車公司預計，十年內將建造六座巨型電池工廠供應其電動汽車。

這意味著鈷價飆升可能剛剛開始。總部位于倫敦的鈷貿易公司Darton Commodities分析，到2025年鋰離子電池對鈷的需求將增加兩倍，然后再翻一倍，到2030年達到每年約357,000噸，幾乎是目前產量的七倍。剛果開采鈷礦的熱情已接近狂熱。“如果未來10年想成為世界之王，就必須擁有鈷，”我在科盧韋齊與讓-盧克·卡哈巴·庫肯基交談時他表示，他在中國紫金礦業集團旗下剛果礦山Commus Global擔任副總經理。“未來10年鈷就是一切。”

嚴重依賴單一原材料并不是什么新鮮事：汽車工業存在就依靠地底抽出的原油。但是，一個世紀前的汽車革命與當下的電動汽車革命相比，存在著重要區別。石油儲備分布在數十個國家，各大洋均有油田。然而到現在鈷礦一直集中在小塊土地上。更糟糕的是，該處是深陷沖突、腐敗、貧困且十分混亂的國家：剛果民主共和國，簡稱DRC，之前曾是比利時殖民地。不管是電池技術、汽車還是采礦公司，都要面對緊迫的道德難題，如果問題不解決，相關公司想利用清潔能源爭取數百萬消費者就會受影響。

全世界約三分之二的鈷產自剛果民主共和國東南部省份盧阿拉巴，靠近贊比亞邊境。該地區位于一條名為銅帶省的超級富礦礦脈上，鈷主要伴生于銅和鎳。采礦業占剛果收入80%左右。幾十年來，占據非洲中部的剛果幾乎是“資源詛咒”的現實縮影。盡管錫，金，鎳，銅和鈷礦藏豐富，但普通人年收入僅為700美元。

數百萬剛果人家里沒有自來水也沒有電，生活艱難。2015年，剛果在聯合國人類發展指數中排名接近墊底，在188個國家中排第176位。在非政府組織透明國際的反腐敗指數方面也好不到哪去，指數特別提到執政近18年的總統約瑟夫·卡比拉領導下的腐敗猖獗。12月的選舉中，卡比拉挑選了一個親密的盟友接替自己，可能引發暴動。

Absent a breakthrough invention in battery technology, each electric-vehicle battery will need about 18 pounds of cobalt—over 1,000 times as much as the quarter-ounce of cobalt in a smartphone. Volkswagen, for example, expects it will need to build six giant battery factories within a decade simply to supply its electric-car plants.

That means the spike in cobalt may have only just begun. Demand for cobalt for lithium-ion batteries alone could triple by 2025, and then double again, reaching about 357,000 tons a year by 2030—nearly seven times the current level, according to the London-based cobalt-trading company Darton Commodities. On the ground in Congo, the pressure to produce cobalt has reached a fever pitch. “If you want to be king of the world in the next 10 years, you have to have cobalt,” says Jean-Luc Kahamba Kukenge, deputy general manager of the Congolese mine Commus Global, which is owned by the China’s Zijin Mining Group, when I meet him in Kolwezi. “In the next 10 years, it will be everything.”

The reliance on a single raw material is nothing new, of course: The auto industry owes its very existence to pumping crude oil out of the earth. But there is a key difference between the car revolution that began a century ago and the electric-vehicle revolution that is just beginning. Oil reserves are tapped in dozens of countries and under every ocean. By contrast, cobalt has until now been heavily concentrated in one sliver of territory. Worse still, that territory is within a country beset by conflict, corruption, poverty, and dysfunction: the Democratic Republic of the Congo, or DRC, as the former Belgian colony is known. That reality poses urgent ethical conundrums for the technology, automotive, and mining companies that need cobalt—problems that, if not resolved, could threaten the very ability of those companies to win over millions of consumers to cleaner energy.

ROUGHLY TWO-THIRDS of the world’s cobalt is produced in the DRC’s southeastern province of Lualaba, near the border with Zambia. The region sits atop a dizzyingly rich mineral vein known as the Copperbelt—and cobalt is mostly a by-product of copper and nickel extraction. Mining accounts for about 80% of the DRC’s earnings. Stretching across Africa’s broad midsection, the DRC has for decades epitomized the term “resource curse.” Despite giant riches of tin, gold, nickel, copper, and now cobalt, the average person there earns just $700 a year.

Life is grindingly difficult for the millions of Congolese who have no running water or electricity at home; the average life expectancy is about 60. The DRC ranked near the bottom on the UN’s Human Development Index in 2015, at 176th out of 188 countries. And it fares little better on the anti-corruption index of the NGO Transparency International, which cites rampant patronage among a small elite, headed by President Joseph Kabila, who has held power for nearly 18 years. Kabila has picked a close ally to succeed him, in December elections, which could spark violence.

7月中旬一個寒冷的下午，我們的小型飛機在盧瓦爾巴省省會小城科盧韋齊的簡易機場停下，一點也看不出周圍是全世界鈷礦最豐富之處。只有一座煤渣塊形狀的建筑，上面寫著“科盧韋齊國家機場”，潦草得仿佛手寫。

2016年，我乘坐由瑞士大宗商品巨頭嘉能可租賃的八座飛機去過該地，當時也是為《財富》雜志撰稿。嘉能可的代表帶我前往世界上最大的鈷生產設施Mutanda Mining，該設施光線明亮，裝有空調，技術相當先進，企業管理系統也非常精細，與門外的混亂星系相比簡直像外星球。Mutanda首席執行官佩德羅·金特羅斯是一位經驗豐富的秘魯工程師，他告訴我，剛果銅礦帶的礦物濃度非常高，“職業生涯里從未遇過。”現在我回過頭，看到了故事的另一面。嘉能可開采鈷的產量仍然超過其他公司，還表示計劃在未來兩年內將產量翻番，因為全球供應短缺迫在眉睫。

在科盧韋齊，傳統的獨立礦工聚集在該地區開采鈷，通常工具很原始。挖礦者包括不少15歲左右的兒童，人數不詳，這些孩子徒手挖鈷礦石，賣給中間人，用賺來的錢養家，買家幾乎都是中國人；科盧韋齊附近一個小村莊里的孩子們看到我們就用中文“你好！”打招呼，因為大多數外來者都是中國人。

未成年礦工人數尚未統計，但努力遏止童工現象的剛果活動人士表示，貧困導致童工人數居高不下。“由于經濟危機蔓延，童工約有1萬人，”海倫娜·卡耶克薩·慕斯沙卡說道，她負責協調政府去年在科盧韋齊啟動的監控計劃，主要內容是阻止兒童開采鈷。慕斯沙卡表示，長期以來很多貧困家庭讓孩子去挖礦補貼家用，所以對政府禁令抵制強烈。“他們相信靠著手工采礦也有機會達到中產，” 慕斯沙卡說。

在科盧韋齊，這幾乎是不可能的夢想。

7月一個早晨，在距離科盧韋齊約8英里的手工采礦區Kingiamiyambo附近，我們遇見了11歲的小男孩丹尼爾，他滿身灰塵，背著一袋鈷礦石從挖掘點爬上山坡，準備賣給中國商人。他說自己沒上過學。如今的全球鈷礦石市場中，正是無數丹尼爾一樣的孩子在最底層掙扎勞作。而很多家庭就指望孩子挖礦掙來的一點可憐收入維持生活，基本沒有改善的希望。然而，強令孩子們停止采礦似乎同樣困難，因為鈷就是現成的收入來源。“（如果不挖礦）讓他們干什么，孩子們留在家里不工作？”讓·皮埃爾·穆特巴問道，他是個老銅礦工人，現在負責剛果民主共和國南部一個名叫New Dynamics的組織，負責監督采礦業。“他們總要想辦法生存。在這還有什么活路？“他說。“答案很明顯：去隔壁礦井挖礦。”

When our small plane bumps to a halt one wintry afternoon in mid-July on the airstrip in Kolwezi, the small provincial capital of Lualaba, there is nothing to suggest we have landed in the epicenter of the world’s cobalt wealth. A small cinder-block structure serves as the “Aéroport National de Kolwezi,” as the hand-painted sign names it.

In 2016, I had landed in the same spot, on assignment for Fortune, traveling in an eight-seater aircraft leased by the Switzerland-based commodities giant Glencore. On that trip, the company’s representatives whisked me off to the bright-lit, air-conditioned complex of Mutanda Mining, the world’s biggest cobalt production facility, with state-of-the-art technology and a meticulous corporate management system that felt like an alien planet amid the chaotic galaxy beyond the gates. Mutanda’s CEO Pedro Quinteros, a seasoned Peruvian engineer, told me then that the mineral concentration in Congo’s Copperbelt was so high that he had “never seen anything like it in my career.” Now I was back to see the other side of the story. Glencore still mines and exports more cobalt than any company in the world, and it says it is planning to double its production over the next two years in expectation of a looming global shortfall in supply.

Kolwezi—traditional, independent diggers who have converged on the area to search for cobalt, often with primitive tools. The diggers include an unknown number of children like 15-year-old Lukasa, who support their families by digging small quantities of cobalt by hand, then selling them to middlemen, virtually all Chinese; children in a small village near Kolwezi greet us in Chinese with “Ni hao!” since the only non-Africans most have ever seen are from China.

While it is impossible to know how many underage miners there are, Congolese activists working to end child labor say poverty has driven up the numbers. “Because of the economic crisis, there are about 10,000 of them,” says Hélène Kayekeza Mutshaka, who coordinates a monitoring program in Kolwezi that the government began last year, to try to stop children from mining cobalt. Mutshaka says she faces strong resistance from poor families, who have long sent their children to dig for minerals in order to supplement their meager earnings. “They believe they can try to make it into the middle class if they work as artisanal miners,” Mutshaka says.

Around Kolwezi, that seems an almost impossible dream.

One morning in July, on the edge of an artisanal mine called Kingiamiyambo, about eight miles outside of Kolwezi, we meet 11-year-old Daniel, a small boy walking up the hill from the digging site, caked in dust and carrying a load of cobalt on his back, on his way to sell it to Chinese traders; he tells us he has never attended school. Children like Daniel toil at the very bottom of the global cobalt market. For their families, many of whom depend on the tiny sums their children bring home, there seems little hope of actual life improvement. Yet asking them to stop mining seems equally difficult, so long as cobalt appears a ready source of income. “What do they do then, these children you keep at home, without work?” asks Jean Pierre Muteba, a veteran copper miner who heads an organization in southern DRC called New Dynamics, which monitors the mining sector. “They will seek survival. And what is survival here?” he says. “It is obvious: a mine next door.”

盡管條件艱苦，但孩子們還是愿意繼續挖礦。許多人每天只賺2美元，像騾子一樣幫鈷礦挖掘者運礦石。“如果孩子們不上學，就會去礦井工作，”負責蘋果資助項目的弗蘭克·曼德說，該項目主要培訓挖礦童工新技能。“他們從14歲、15歲、16歲就開始工作了，有的甚至10歲就開始挖礦，”曼德說。

剛果當局表示，正努力禁止兒童開采鈷礦石，但要完全杜絕基本不可能。他們指出，手工采礦者開采量僅占該國鈷產量的20%，礦工大部分是成年人。

對于從剛果采購鈷的公司來說，手工采礦者的存在也引發另一個問題：幾乎不可能向iPad、智能手機或電動車的消費者保證，制造相關產品過程中沒有兒童參與鈷礦的挖掘、粉碎、清洗或運輸。事實上，對于一些公司來說，直接停止向手工采礦者收購似乎更為簡單，但非政府組織和剛果官員表示，一旦這么做會讓數百萬以此謀生的人蒙受致命打擊。

2016年企業界就已開始關注，大赦國際發布了一份深入研究的報告，點名二十多家電子和汽車公司。大赦國際認為，相關公司盡職調查做得不夠，鈷供應鏈里存在童工手工采礦現象。該報告引發了一場風暴，之后一些公司盡可能避免從剛果收購鈷。隨著剛果鈷礦的爭論日漸激烈，問題關鍵在于企業找到替代供應之前該國能否徹底整改童工采礦。在一個幾十年來社會混亂腐敗橫行的國家，很難想象深入監管能迅速見效。

要負責任的還不只是剛果官員。大赦國際也抨擊西方科技巨頭完全忽視童工和腐敗的問題，因為消費者忙著購買各種科技設備，卻沒人質疑行業的黑暗面。“數百萬人享受新技術帶來的便利，但很少關心制造的過程，”當時該組織表示。

情況終于有些改變。因為最近電視里開始報道，講述丹尼爾和盧卡薩之類兒童礦工在艱難條件下挖掘鈷的情況。經濟合作與發展組織駐巴黎的高級法律顧問泰勒·吉拉德協助礦產供應鏈里的公司起草了盡職調查指南，他說：“我們已面臨轉折點，不遵守良好的標準代價會很高。”“公司會發現品牌價值受到嚴重威脅，”他說。“消費者會不會要求無童工，無腐敗的電動汽車？我認為會的。”

Despite the grueling conditions, the temptation for children to keep working is strong. Many earn just $2 per day, often acting as human mules for cobalt diggers. “When kids are not in school, they all go work in the mines,” says Franck Mande, who oversees a project funded by Apple that aims to teach child miners new skills. “They work from 14, 15, 16 years—even from 10 years old,” Mande says.

Congolese authorities say that they are trying hard to stop children from mining cobalt, but that it is almost impossible to end child labor completely. And they point out that artisanal miners—the vast majority of them adults—account for just 20% of the country’s cobalt output.

But for companies sourcing cobalt from the DRC, the existence of artisanal miners creates another headache: It is virtually impossible to assure consumers of iPads, smartphones, or electric vehicles that no children have dug, crushed, washed, or transported the cobalt inside their devices. For some companies, it has seemed simpler, in fact, to end all business with artisanal miners—a decision that NGOs and Congolese officials say devastates millions of people who depend on the work.

CORPORATE CONCERNS have risen sharply since 2016, when Amnesty International issued a deeply researched report naming more than two dozen electronics and automotive companies that, Amnesty concluded, had failed to do enough due diligence to ensure that their supply chains didn’t include cobalt produced with child labor at artisanal mines. The report caused a firestorm—and set some companies scrambling to find ways to avoid the DRC altogether. As the debate over Congo’s cobalt rages on, the question is whether the country can overhaul its mining practices before global businesses succeed in going elsewhere. In a country where dysfunction and corruption have endured for decades, the prospect for far-reaching, rapid change seems hard to imagine.

Congolese officials are not the only ones at fault, however. Amnesty blasted Western tech giants for blithely ignoring the problems surrounding child labor and corruption—in large part because consumers had rushed to buy tech devices, without asking questions about the industry’s darker side. “Millions of people enjoy the benefits of new technologies, but rarely ask how they are made,” the organization said at the time.

But that is finally changing. The shift has come after recent TV reports have depicted child miners like Daniel and Lukasa, digging for cobalt under tough conditions. “We have reached a tipping point where it’s become more expensive not to abide by good standards,” says Tyler Gillard, senior legal adviser to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or OECD, in Paris, who helped draft due-diligence guidelines for corporations on mineral supply chains. “Companies see this as a major threat to brand value,” he says. “Are consumers going to demand child-labor-free, corruption-free electric vehicles? I think it is coming.”

由于童工的負面報道可能引起消費者對剛果鈷業的憤怒，我們報道本文時，剛果官員態度有些懷疑，還有些明顯的敵意。

盡管事先從剛果首都金沙薩的中央政府獲得了媒體認證，但攝影師兼電影制片人塞巴斯蒂安·邁耶和我到達科盧韋齊后，還是得找盧阿拉巴省省長理查德·穆耶申請采訪，不然就是拘留甚至驅逐出境。我們坐在穆耶的辦公室里列出想要采訪的地點。省長穆耶用法語說了好幾遍作為回應，“On a rien à cacher” ——我們沒有什么可隱瞞的。

但我們在科盧韋齊采訪一周的經歷與省長的承諾截然不同。省礦業部和警方只允許我們采訪一個礦場，其他嚴禁進入，還告訴我們未經許可禁止獨立報道。一些采訪是在警方的監視下進行的。

我們唯一獲官方許可采訪的鈷礦是卡蘇洛，在武裝警察護送下省礦業部門官員帶我們匆匆看了下，還告訴我們安保措施是為了防止礦工騷擾。盡管此前我們早跟Pact約好，申請再次前往卡蘇洛采訪時遭到拒絕，Pact是一家總部在美國華盛頓特區的非政府組織,經政府批準在卡蘇洛解決礦山童工問題。

我們在剛果最后一個早上，我問省長穆耶，為什么警察和當地官員每次都阻止我們。“人們總是帶著偏見而來，”他說，還舉了最近寫科盧韋齊兒童鈷礦工的記者當例子。“他們只看壞的一面，不看好的一面。”

自2016年大赦國際發布報告以來，剛果政府確實嘗試整改鈷礦開采，但這是一項艱巨的任務，也可以說有些自相矛盾，因為多年來政府高層一直從不透明的采礦交易攫取利益。

政府新措施之一，就是盧阿拉巴采礦部分將卡蘇洛評為“模范礦”。卡蘇洛礦位于科盧韋齊以北，2012年開始開采，占地420英畝，附近居民挖出的礦石鈷濃度高達14%。后來成千上萬的人蜂擁而至，人人都在拼命挖鈷。

為應付人權組織強烈抗議，去年盧阿拉巴省政府將卡蘇洛礦區圍起來，只開放一個出入口，還安排武裝保安人員駐守。入口旁有法語和斯瓦希里語的手繪標志，寫著18歲以下的兒童和孕婦禁止進入，攜帶酒水也禁止進入。

The prospect that bad publicity about child labor could provoke growing consumer anger toward the Congolese cobalt industry might explain why we faced suspicion and some outward hostility from DRC officials in reporting this story.

Despite obtaining media accreditation in advance from the central government in the national capital of Kinshasa, once photographer and filmmaker Sebastian Meyer and I arrived in Kolwezi, we had to seek permission from Lualaba’s provincial governor, Richard Muyej, to conduct interviews without being detained or ordered out of the country. Sitting in Muyej’s office, we listed sites we wanted to visit. In response, the governor told us several times, in French, “On a rien à cacher”—we have nothing to hide.

But our experience during one week in Kolwezi suggested a very different picture. The provincial Ministry of Mines and the police refused us entry into all but one mine site, telling us that we were forbidden to do any independent reporting without their permission. Some of our interviews were conducted under surveillance by police.

At the only cobalt mine to which we were granted official access—Kasulo, owned by the government—provincial mining officials rushed us around the site under the escort of armed police, telling us that the security presence was to protect us from harassment by miners. They refused our request to return to Kasulo a second time, despite the fact that we had an appointment there with Pact, the Washington, D.C.–based NGO working in Kasulo, with government approval, to end child labor in the mines.

On our last morning in the country, I asked Governor Muyej why his police and local officials had blocked us at virtually every turn. “People come with prejudices,” he said, citing journalists who have recently described child cobalt miners in Kolwezi. “They see all the bad, not the good.”

SINCE AMNESTY’S DAMNING REPORT in 2016, the government has indeed made attempts to clean up cobalt production—a task that is dauntingly difficult, if not paradoxical, given that top officials have benefited for years from opaque mining deals.

As an example of its new efforts, Lualaba’s mining authorities point to its “model mine” of Kasulo. The sprawling 420-acre site sits north of Kolwezi and began in 2012, when locals living on the land struck reserves containing cobalt with an extraordinary 14% mineral concentration; thousands of people poured in, sparking a free-for-all hunt for cobalt.

In response to the human-rights outcry, the provincial authorities last year fenced off Kasulo, creating a single entrance and exit to the site, at which it posted armed security guards. Next to the entrance are now hand-painted signs proclaiming in French and Swahili that children under 18 and pregnant women are banned from entering, as is anyone with alcohol.

現在，每天大約有14,000名挖礦者在卡蘇洛結成小團隊努力開采鈷，傍晚再分配當天收入。該礦的鈷產量占剛果手工礦的四分之一，鈷礦專有權屬于中國的剛果東方國際礦業有限公司，簡稱CDM，該公司是華友鈷業全資子公司。大赦國際2016年的報告中抨擊該公司大肆收購手工開采的鈷，卻毫不關心對勞動條件。華友則表示，2016年開始已對卡蘇洛的礦工培訓由Pact提供的安全教程，還向當地人解釋為什么兒童不能挖礦。目前尚不清楚如何檢查礦工的年齡或懷孕狀況。“你看到有小孩了嗎？沒有，“該省礦業部總干事埃里克·齊索拉·卡希魯說，他帶我們參觀了卡蘇洛礦，說話時正站在數百名正辛苦挖礦的礦工中間。“更沒有嬰兒。”

我去科盧韋齊三個月前，曾在巴黎參加一場由經濟合作與發展組織舉辦的礦產供應鏈論壇，會上剛果曾用卡蘇洛礦當正面典型。剛果官員散發一本印制精美的10頁小冊子，宣稱卡蘇洛礦是“merveille émergente”，意思是新興奇跡。但是卡蘇洛的奇跡一點也不像當代采礦企業，更像19世紀50年代美國加州淘金熱的瘋狂場景。礦坑里，數百男人沒有工作服，沒有頭盔，也沒有任何防護裝備，在深深的礦洞和露天礦坑里挖礦，只用長鋼筋之類最基本的工具鑿開表層，再用長長的繩索把礦石拉出洞坑。

下午4時左右，男人們把一袋袋鈷礦石放在快散架的自行車或摩托車上，推下坡賣給剛果東方國際礦業，收礦石的人就在卡蘇洛礦大門里，在露天棚準備好稱重收礦石。買家使用小型數字儀器Metorex檢測礦石里的鈷濃度，確定收購的價格。手寫的價格都列在露天棚墻上。在封閉礦區里，中國商人拿出一大堆剛果法郎，付給疲憊不堪的礦工。盡管有數字儀器測量，但幾位礦工告訴我們，懷疑買家經常降低鈷濃度數據以克扣工資。他們的懷疑并無實證。但人人搶著采礦似乎已經引發沖突。我就親眼見過六名礦工在卡蘇洛挖礦下班之后，站在礦坑中間坑坑洼洼的路上爭論當天賺的錢該怎么分。這群人當天一共賺了60,000法郎，僅為37美元。

相對正規的卡蘇洛礦之外，還有成千上萬人在挖野礦，他們主要的交易中心是Musompo采鈷貿易市場，市場里約有50個露天倉庫，沿著科盧韋齊的東西向主路延伸半英里左右。Musompo看起來跟一般出售食品或家庭用品的村莊市場沒什么兩樣，卻是大量鈷礦石進入巨大出口市場的關鍵渠道。會說基本斯瓦希里語的中國掮客忙著檢測挖礦者送來礦石的濃度，每天大約有8小時交易活躍。“我最近剛從尼日利亞過來，”30歲的劉旭斌（音）說，他來自中國河北，現在在Musompo市場邊上經營“劉老板”倉庫。劉旭斌坐在用釘子釘起的小木桌旁，桌上蓋著粗麻布，他說收礦石最麻煩的就是討價還價。

據官方口徑，華友旗下的剛果東方國際礦業已不再從Musompo市場收購鈷。但我們想采訪Musompo的一位中國買家時，他說要得到“老板”批準，他的老板是剛果東方國際礦業駐科盧韋齊的管理人員。蘋果、三星和其他科技公司表示，很難證明Musompo的鈷與童工無關，也沒法證明主要來自韓國和中國的電池制造商收購鈷的礦場沒有童工。

Now, about 14,000 diggers converge on Kasulo every day to find cobalt, organizing themselves into small teams, then dividing their day’s earnings at sundown. The mine accounts for one-quarter of the cobalt from the DRC’s artisanal mines, and the exclusive rights to the ore are held by China’s Congo Dongfang International Mining, or CDM, a wholly owned subsidiary of Huayou Cobalt, which Amnesty’s 2016 report assailed for purchasing artisanal cobalt with little knowledge of labor conditions; Huayou says it has since implemented programs for Kasulo’s miners, run by Pact, to teach safety and explain why children should not mine. It remains unclear how people’s ages or pregnancy status are checked. “Do you see any child? No, none,” says Erick Tshisola Kahilu, director general of the province’s Ministry of Mines, standing amid hundreds of miners digging in the ground, as he guides us around the site. “And no babies either.”

Three months before I landed in Kolwezi, I had listened to DRC mining officials espouse their efforts in Kasulo, at a conference on mineral supply chains in Paris, hosted by the OECD. Congolese officials distributed a glossy 10-page brochure, proclaiming Kasulo as a “merveille émergente,” or emerging wonder. But the wonder inside Kasulo’s gates more closely resembles a frenzied scene from the California gold rush of the 1850s, rather than a current-day mining enterprise. Several hundred men chip away in deep holes and open pits without overalls, helmets, or any other protective gear, using basic hand tools like lengths of rebar to hack away at the surface, and hauling up rocks with handmade lengths of rope.

Around 4 p.m., the men load sacks of cobalt atop rickety bicycles or motorbikes, and roll them downhill to CDM traders, who stand ready to weigh the day’s output in an open-air hangar inside the gates of Kasulo. The buyers check the cobalt concentration of the rocks, which determines the price they will pay, using a small digital instrument called a Metorex. The prices are marked on handwritten lists tacked to the walls of the hangar. Inside caged areas, Chinese traders pass wads of Congolese francs to weary miners. Despite the digital measurements, several miners told us they suspected that the buyers routinely lowered the cobalt concentration figures in order to decrease the pay. There is no proof their suspicions are correct. But the free-for-all atmosphere seems primed for conflict. As the digging day in Kasulo ended, I witnessed a fierce argument among six miners standing on one rutted path amid the pits over how to split the day’s proceeds. The group’s total sum: 60,000 francs, or just $37.

For thousands of diggers working outside the more formal structure of Kasulo, the main trading hub is Musompo cobalt market, a cluster of about 50 open-air depots stretching a half-mile or so along the main east-west road out of Kolwezi. Musompo looks like the kind of village market that typically sells food or housewares. But for many tons of cobalt, this is a key gateway to the huge export market. Chinese middlemen, who speak rudimentary Swahili, test the concentration of cobalt brought in by diggers, and for about eight hours each day conduct a brisk trade in the metal. “I arrived recently from Nigeria,” says Xu Bin Liu, 30, from Hebei province, China, who runs the “Boss Liu” depot on the edge of the Musompo market. Seated at a small wooden table knocked together with nails and covered in burlap, Xu says the job involves tough haggling over prices.

Officially, Huayou’s CDM no longer buys cobalt from the Musompo market. But when we asked a Chinese buyer in Musompo for an interview, he said he needed the approval of his “boss,” a CDM official in Kolwezi. Tech companies like Apple, Samsung, and others have said that it is exceedingly difficult to prove that Musompo’s cobalt is free of child labor, and that the battery manufacturers that supply them—largely in South Korea and China—source the metal from child-labor-free mines.

這種情況下，一些公司面臨艱難的選擇：例如停止向手工采礦者收購礦石，甚至暫停從剛果收購鈷，這兩種選擇可能讓剛果經濟遭受嚴重打擊。“如果大家遇到困難就逃走，可能會讓孩子和家庭更受沖擊，”非政府組織Pact的本·卡茨說。“逃避不會減少傷害，只會導致更大的傷害。“

在各大公司內部也在暗自競爭，努力減少電動車電池里的鈷含量，從目前的10%左右降至5%或更低。目前的技術條件下，鈷對于制造高性能電池至關重要。特斯拉首席執行官埃隆·馬斯克曾表示，將為下一代特斯拉汽車制造不含鈷的電池。與此同時，大眾汽車與圣何塞的初創公司QuantumScape合作，發明了一種不含鈷的固態電池取代鋰電池，但獲得成果估計不會很快。“研究還處于非常早期的階段，”大眾汽車研究主管阿克塞爾·海因里希說。“現在還沒法說哪一年能研發出完全不含鈷的電池。”

由于iPad和iPhone中都可能使用有童工參與開采的鈷，蘋果表示已確認鈷供應鏈里每個冶煉廠，確保定期接受獨立第三方審核。去年，蘋果已宣布停止從剛果非正規礦場采購鈷，但并不贊同完全退出剛果。“在剛果民主共和國，手工開采鈷確實存在挑戰，”蘋果發給《財富》雜志的一封電子郵件中稱。“但我們深信，退出市場并不能改善當地人生活，于環保也無益處。”

The situation has prompted companies to make some tough choices: cut all artisanal miners out of their supply chain, for example, or halt purchases of DRC cobalt—either option potentially an economic disaster for the country. “If everybody simply runs, that can put children and families in a more vulnerable position,” says Ben Katz of the NGO Pact. “That is not reducing harm. It’s causing more harm.”

Among companies, a race is underway to decrease the cobalt in electric-vehicle batteries, from the current 10% or so to 5% or less. Under current technology, cobalt is essential in making high-performing batteries. But Tesla CEO Elon Musk has said he intends to produce non-cobalt batteries for the next generation of Tesla vehicles. Likewise, Volkswagen has partnered with QuantumScape, a startup in San Jose, to invent a cobalt-free, solidstate battery to replace the lithium-ion version—but they do not expect quick results. “We are at a very early research stage,” VW’s research director Axel Heinrich says. “I cannot tell you which year we will have batteries with no cobalt.”

Shaken by the possibility that children might be mining cobalt used in iPads and iPhones, Apple says that it has identified every smelter providing cobalt in its supply chain, and that they are regularly audited by independent third parties. Last year, the company announced that it would stop sourcing all cobalt from informal mines in the DRC, but that it did not agree with those pushing to pull out of Congo altogether. “There are real challenges with artisanal mining of cobalt in the Democratic Republic of Congo,” the company said in an email to Fortune. “But we believe deeply that walking away would do nothing to improve conditions for people or the environment.”

為了降低對剛果的依賴，一些公司也在投資開發新的鈷礦；目前在澳大利亞、巴布亞新幾內亞、加拿大，美國蒙大拿州和愛達荷州的勘探項目都在進行中。一方面人們也越來越擔心中國壟斷鈷礦石資源。今年3月，嘉能可同意將未來三年三分之一的鈷賣給深圳的電池回收公司GEM。中國生產了世界上80%的硫酸鈷，即鋰電池中使用的化合物。總部位于倫敦的研究機構基準礦業情報提供數據顯示，到2020年，中國制造的鋰電池可能占總產量56%。

然而，只要鈷需求持續上升，就很難完全離開剛果。距大規模生產不含鈷電池可能還要數年，而剛果之外的新礦可能也要多年才能補上供給缺口。“對于制造鋰電池來說，剛果至關重要，”基準礦業情報的電池技術分析師卡斯帕·洛里斯表示。“沒有剛果就沒有足夠的鈷。這點毋庸置疑。”

科盧韋齊北部是被稱為UCK的小村莊（之前銅礦名字的法語縮寫，發音為“oo-say-kah”）。在當地少年足球的泥濘小道上，能看到硅谷吸引用戶的同時如何努力解決童工問題。

7月一個早晨，村中后巷一個小房子的后院里，三個十幾歲的男孩正彎著腰學習修理面包車。這是蘋果公司資助的計劃，去年年底啟動，由Pact在剛果當局批準后運作。項目的目標是培訓兒童放棄采礦尋找其他謀生手段。現在科盧韋齊周圍的村莊里，約有100名青少年正學習縫紉、手機維修、美發、木工，餐飲和其他技能。

然而，并非所有家庭都欣然接受蘋果的幫助。有些人擔心會失去迫切需要的糊口收入。“爸媽問我為什么要放棄挖礦，”16歲的托馬斯·穆亞姆巴細聲細語地說，他幫著修好了UCK村的車。他說自己12歲開始挖鈷，每天賺3.50美元到9美元，對家庭來說是重要一筆收入。他還說上學基本不可能，因為家里負擔不起學費。所以他勸母親說，當汽車修理工能更好地養家。“我告訴爸媽，學技術在手，未來才有保障，”他說。

In an effort to lessen their dependence on the DRC, some companies are instead investing to develop new cobalt reserves; exploration projects are underway in Australia, Papua New Guinea, Canada, and Montana and Idaho in the U.S. That is partly because of rising anxiety that China is locking up most of the world’s cobalt supplies; in March, Glencore agreed to dedicate one-third of its entire cobalt production during the next three years to GEM, the Shenzhen-based battery recycling company. China produces a whopping 80% of the world’s cobalt sulfate—the compound used in lithium-ion batteries. And by 2020, China will likely produce 56% of those batteries, according to Benchmark Mineral Intelligence in London.

Yet leaving the DRC entirely is hard to manage so long as cobalt demand keeps soaring. Cobalt-free batteries are likely years away from mass production, and new mines outside Congo could take years to come on line. “The DRC is absolutely critical to the production of lithium-ion batteries,” says Caspar Rawles, Benchmark’s analyst on battery technology. “Without the DRC, we are not going to have enough cobalt. There is no question about that.”??

NORTH OF KOLWEZI IS THE TINY VILLAGE known as UCK (pronounced “oo-say-kah” for the French acronym of its original copper mine). There, amid the dirt paths where children kick battered soccer balls, is one sign of how Silicon Valley is trying to grapple with child labor without alienating consumers.

In the backyard of a small house down a side lane in the village one morning in July, three teenage boys were bent over a van, learning how to repair it. They were participants in an Apple-funded program that began late last year, operated by Pact with the approval of Congolese authorities. The idea is to switch children from mining to new moneymaking skills. Today, about 100 teenagers are being taught sewing, cell phone repair, hairdressing, carpentry, catering, and other skills in villages around Kolwezi.

Not all families have welcomed Apple’s efforts, however. Some fear they will lose the income they desperately need to survive. “My parents asked me why I would abandon the mine,” says Thomas Muyamba, a soft-spoken 16-year-old helping to fix the vehicle in UCK village. He says he began digging for cobalt at age 12, and earned between $3.50 and $9 a day—crucial support for his family. Attending school is not an option, he says, since his family cannot afford school fees. So he convinced his mother that being an auto mechanic would ultimately serve the family best. “I tell them it will guarantee my future,” he says.

托馬斯家里對15歲的妹妹蕾切爾抱有同樣的期望，蕾切爾臉頰圓圓的，濃密的辮子像天線一樣勾勒出臉型。加入蘋果資助項目幾個月之前，蕾切爾跟其他10個女孩的工作是在科盧韋齊河的尾礦里清洗鈷，非政府組織認為該工作對兒童肺部會造成極大毒害。如今在科盧韋齊五英里外一個棚子里，女孩們坐在辛格縫紉機前接受培訓，按客戶的訂單縫補衣物賺取傭金。

杜絕鈷礦開采濫用勞工的計劃還有幾項，蘋果的資助計劃只是其中之一。去年，中國五礦化工進出口商會啟動了負責任開采鈷礦行動，召集了同意遵守經合組織盡職調查規則的公司參與，盡力消除供應鏈里的童工現象。參與方包括蘋果、三星SDI、惠普和索尼。另外一項計劃里，華友和其他煉油廠、礦業公司和汽車制造商加入了更健康的鈷項目，該項目由RCS Global今年3月啟動，RCS Global總部位于倫敦，主要負責跟蹤和審核自然資源供應鏈。該組織聲稱要鑒定符合“最高全球標準”的鈷，監督重點是童工和侵犯人權。在科盧韋齊的Chemaf大型礦場,大型商品交易商托克已開始為12,000余名手工鈷礦工注冊，實施健康和安全標準，并建立合作社組織。托克稱礦工們因此收入提升。

除了消費者可能強烈反對，公司也越來越擔心潛在的法律責任，如果有侵犯人權行為可能遭投資者起訴。倫敦金屬交易所7月宣布，從明年1月開始，從剛果手工礦場采購礦石占總量四分之一以上的公司都要接受獨立審計。未達到人權標準的企業可能會禁止在倫敦金屬交易所交易。4月，幾位重要投資者建了一個非正式的WhatsApp小組，與當地人交流有關剛果鈷行業虐待礦工的消息。倫敦Hermes投資管理公司董事克里斯汀·周表示：“如果存在違規行為且本地出現訴訟，索賠可擴大至國際層面，針對在倫敦證券交易所交易的公司。”“我可不愿意用制造過程跟4歲童工有關的手機。”

雖然公司和投資者做出種種努力，但各項目仍有很強的局限性，只要數百萬剛果人貧困狀況沒有改善，問題還是很難解決。

只要去科盧韋齊的挖掘點幾英里外的地方走一走，就會立刻明白。與托馬斯和蕾切爾·穆亞巴見面后的第二天，我們就在他們的家鄉再次遇上。（《財富》隱去村名，擔心當局可能會針對仍在挖鈷礦，未經許可與記者交談的孩子們。）

我們坐在托馬斯和蕾切爾與家人居住的泥磚小房子外，顯然很難說服他們母親和祖父同意不挖礦，加入蘋果公司培訓計劃。孩子們現在的收入遠比不上挖礦，家里的生活很窘迫。

The family has the same hope for Thomas’s sister Rachel, 15, whose bushy pigtails frame her round cheeks like antennae. Rachel is one of about 10 girls who, until joining an Apple-funded project a few months ago, washed cobalt in the tailings in the river in Kolwezi—low-paid work that NGOs believe is particularly toxic for young lungs. Now, as part of the training program, the girls are seated at Singer sewing machines in a shed about five miles from Kolwezi, taking orders for clothes from clients and working on commission.

But the Apple program is not the only one trying to root out labor abuses in cobalt mining. Last year, China’s Chamber of Commerce of Metals, Minerals & Chemicals Importers & Exporters launched the Responsible Cobalt Initiative, bringing together companies that agree to follow the OECD’s due-diligence rules by trying to eliminate child labor from their supply chains. The group includes Apple, Samsung SDI, HP, and Sony. In a separate program, Huayou and other refiners, miners, and carmakers have joined the Better Cobalt project, launched in March by RCS Global, a London-based organization that tracks and audits supply chains of natural resources. The group claims it will be able to identify cobalt that meets “the highest global standards,” focusing on child labor and human rights abuses. And the large commodities trader Trafigura has begun registering some 12,000 artisanal cobalt miners at the large Chemaf mine in Kolwezi, implementing health and safety standards and organizing them into cooperatives. Trafigura claims miners are earning dramatically more money as a result.

Besides the threat of a consumer backlash, companies also increasingly worry about potential legal liabilities, perhaps from an investor lawsuit, should they violate human rights. In July, the London Metal Exchange said that starting in January it would require every company that sources more than a quarter of its metals from Congo’s artisanal mines to be audited independently. Those that fail to meet human-rights standards risk being banned from trading on the LME. And in April, an informal WhatsApp group began among major investors, to share information with locals about abuses in the DRC’s cobalt industry. “If there are violations and there are lawsuits on a local level, the claims can be brought back to an international level, to a company traded on London Stock Exchange,” says Christine Chow, director of Hermes Investment Management in London. “I do not want to use a phone that has been put together by a 4-year-old.”??

FOR ALL THE EFFORTS of companies and investors, the projects nonetheless have strong limitations—so long as grinding poverty persists for millions of Congolese.

That much is clear when you travel just a few miles away from the digging sites in Kolwezi. The day after meeting the teenagers Thomas and Rachel Muyamba, we meet them again, by happenstance, in their home village. (Again, Fortune has not named the community, for fear authorities might target those children in the village still mining cobalt for talking to journalists without permission.)

Sitting outside the tiny, mud-brick dwelling where Thomas and Rachel live with their family, it is clear that their mother and grandfather’s decision to allow them to join Apple’s training programs, and stop mining cobalt, has been difficult. The teenagers still earn just a fraction of what they made in the mines, putting a squeeze on the family.

我們談話時人群聚集在周圍，我問哪些孩子還在挖鈷。幾只手舉起來，其中包括15歲的路卡薩，這孩子早晨5點就得起床，然后離開村子去工作，一天奔波忙碌12小時。

盡管有越來越多企業支持項目鼓勵孩子們放棄挖礦，但對童工來說，每天挖鈷礦繁重是繁重，賺的錢相對還是多一些。如果運氣好，路卡薩一天能賺9美元，遠遠高于接受蘋果資助當實習汽車修理工的薪水，蕾切爾也得做一星期的縫紉工才能賺到。蕾切爾說，希望幾年后能當女裁縫。“我要自己開店，”她說。

如果蕾切爾能實現夢想，對整日拼命挖鈷礦的剛果童工來說將是極其難得的榜樣。科技和汽車公司都希望，其他成千上萬的孩子們擺脫礦井找到出路。如此一來，即便科技公司繼續利用剛果土地下豐富的礦藏制造電池，消費者也不會再出離憤怒。（財富中文網）

本文首發于2018年9月1日的《財富》雜志。

譯者:Pessy

審校：夏林

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As a crowd gathers around us while we talk, I ask which children are still digging for cobalt. Several hands shoot up—including that of 15-year-old Lukasa, the boy whose 12-hour day begins at 5 a.m. in this village.

For these child miners, the daily task of digging for cobalt still seems worth the backbreaking work—despite the growing number of business-backed programs urging them to quit. Lukasa’s earnings—$9 on good days—are far higher than Thomas’s pay from his Apple-funded job as a trainee auto mechanic, and match what Rachel makes for an entire week of sewing. Rachel says she expects to earn a solid living as a seamstress after a few years. “I will have my own shop,” she says.

If Rachel succeeds in her plans, it will be a rare chance indeed for one of Congo’s child miners to rise above the bare-bones survival gleaned from cobalt. Tech and auto companies are hoping thousands of other children find their way out of the mines too—allowing the technology industry to ward off consumer anger even as it continues tapping Congo’s giant wealth to give us the batteries we demand.

This article originally appeared in the September 1, 2018 issue of Fortune.