Sugar-based biofuel built on labor abuse in Brazil

Pedro was just seven when he started work on a sugarcane farm with his father after refusing to go to school - little knowing what this small act of rebellion would cost him.

For nearly four decades, Pedro has cut sugarcane under the hot sun in Brazil, one of the world's top producers of ethanol - a key material in the biofuel that powers vehicles worldwide and is seen as a key part of the global switch to cleaner energy.

It is backbreaking work

Pedro's base pay is less than $7 a day - a monthly wage that falls way below Brazil's statutory minimum of about R$1,045 ($192) - and he said he has seen co-workers collapse and die in the fields from heat and exhaustion.

Every day before going to work, he prays that he will be spared.

"It's not a good profession," said Pedro, who asked that his real name be withheld for fear of reprisals for speaking out.

"I want to stop, but I don't know how to read. I'm old - I am 46, I'll be 47 in April. I don't have much hope, but if one day something better comes up, it would be very good," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation at his home in northeast Brazil.

Brazil is the world's second biggest producer of ethanol, a biofuel made from sugarcane, corn and other crops that can be mixed with gasoline to reduce carbon emissions from vehicles powered by fossil fuels.

Much of the gasoline in the United States now contains ethanol, which is one of the most common biofuels, and some climate experts see the industry as a key element of the world's transition from a carbon-based economy to a greener one.   

Yet ethanol has a human cost

Nearly 8,000 people have been found working in slave-like conditions on sugar plantations in Brazil, which produces most of its ethanol from sugarcane, since the government began conducting rescue operations in 1995.

An investigation by the Thomson Reuters Foundation found the very workers who are contributing to the fight against climate change by harvesting sugarcane are also becoming its victims, as rising temperatures make the work increasingly hazardous.

Most workers the Thomson Reuters Foundation interviewed said they knew of colleagues who had died while working. One expert who studies the issue said the combination of overwork and heat can cause heart attacks in those with predisposition to heart disease.

Many are falling ill from a condition caused by severe dehydration that is known locally as "kangaroo" because it causes sufferers' hands to cramp, clenching into fists that resemble the animal's front paws.

Yet exclusively obtained documents show companies producing ethanol in Brazil remained on lists of suppliers cleared to export to Europe and the United States long after Brazilian authorities had named them in labor abuse cases.

One company implicated in a slavery and human trafficking case uncovered by Brazilian authorities earlier this year had received funding from the International Finance Corporation (IFC) for environmental and social projects in 2015, the IFC's website shows.