Fighting Together To End Forced Labor and Modern Slavery

Abrams wasn’t the only one with initial doubts. The 17 Rooms secretariat had paired her as a Room co-lead with Carsten Stendevad, Co-CIO for Sustainability at Bridgewater Associates. With a long history of managing investment portfolios and a respected name in the world of sustainable investment, Stendevad admitted he was curious but intimidated to enter the Room dedicated to advancing Sustainable Development Goal 17 for partnership.

Nonetheless, with government regulations growing on the topic and global investors requiring increased risk evaluations, Stendevad knew it was an important opportunity to make progress.

What is unique about 17 Rooms is its focus on driving concrete actions forward across all 17 the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Each year, each Room is tasked with mapping out next steps to move its issue forward. They don’t need to be perfect steps. The outline needs to encapsulate an idea big enough to matter but sized right to get done for each SDG.

Some issue experts shared frustration over all the work that went into producing materials that were underused, over the lack of reliable data in this still-young field, and the lack of resources available to do more in-depth, on-the-ground analysis.

Meanwhile, investors needed to be able to identify, with a click of a button within their spreadsheets, where potential red flags in their portfolios were and then make an informed next step: Report, contact agencies on the ground to investigate, or stop business.

Investors whose portfolios included thousands of investments and companies noted the impossibility of doing deep in-person analysis into every group. Many weren’t working with enormous, unlimited resources as some might assume, but in smaller teams still managing billions of dollars. They didn’t have time to read every report either – which is how many NGOs had been sharing this information over the years.

In late 2021, Abrams, Stendevad, and Room 17 members James Cockayne (The Anti-Slavery Commissioner for New South Wales in Australia) and Daniel Hochman (Head of Sustainability Research, Bridgewater Associates) submitted and were awarded a $100k Uncommon Collaboration Grant and in-kind support from The Rockefeller Foundation, in partnership with Dalberg Catalyst, to begin building their tool, now titled the Forced Labor Open Risk Estimation Tool (FLORET).

“Exposure to forced labor arises in large, diversified investment portfolios because complex world global value-chains utilize labor across regions with varying governance capabilities and varying profiles for their labor forces,” write Abrams, Stendevad, Cockayne, and Hochman. “Right now, most institutional investors have only a basic understanding of these issues. Yet, investors are coming under growing pressure from governments to actively identify, account for, and manage these risks. We hope that the FLORET tool will help close that gap.”

Just over six months into the grant, the team is currently focused on mapping data availability and closing data gaps to build the algorithm for their risk assessment tool. The goal is to begin testing a prototype of the tool in 2023.

What allowed this collaboration and tool to flourish was the unique atmosphere of 17 Rooms.

The rooms are thoughtfully curated to break silos and connect individuals from a diversity of relevant constituencies – in this case the private sector, academia, diplomacy, civil society, and more. This year, the 17 Rooms flagship process has been convening virtually since May, with around 200 experts collaborating on 17 respective ideas and action issues to help advance the SDGs. Many members of the community will also gather informally to convene both virtually and in New York City on September 18, 2022.

“We’ve all been part of well-organized processes built on polite conversation and resulting in shiny reports. And then nothing happens,” shares Zia Khan, Senior Vice President of Innovation at The Rockefeller Foundation and Co-Chair of 17 Rooms. “We are obsessed with helping visionary leaders gather a diverse group to convert promising ideas into collective action. Very busy people get energized when they realize they’re not just floating ideas for someone to take on, but rather they’re discovering ways to collaborate and make change happen. That’s what we saw with Room 17 last year.”