Natural Diamond Council Hosts Panel on Diamond Industry Challenges
PARIS — The diamond industry is on a good trajectory but the road’s still long.
That was the key takeaway from the “Diamond Transformation, Environmental & Social Impact Across the Diamond Industry” twofold panel organized by the Natural Diamond Council in Paris on Monday.
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The event featured diamond and sustainability executives; Watch and Jewelry Initiative 2030 executive director Iris Van der Veken; Kering’s chief sustainability and institutional affairs officer Marie-Claire Daveu; Andre Messika Ltd. diamonds trading company’s chairman André Messika as well as Kesego Kereemang, safety, health and corporate responsibility manager at diamond mining company Lucara Botswana and actress Lily James, who is the NDC’s global ambassador.
The two talks were moderated by global sustainability consultancy Eco Age cofounder and creative director Livia Firth, who began the hour-long session with a sober note that the killing in Nanterre, north of Paris, of 17-year-old motorist Nahel M. by a police officer, leading to nightly rioting, was an “incident [that] speaks of the transformation we need in our society.”
She went on to draw a parallel between the trajectory of the diamond industry, that arguably “has done more work than any other industry in social and corporate responsibility” in the past decade, and the fashion industry, where the emergence of ultra-fast fashion has only compounded existing issues.
“What I see now today is that the key topics that are super key for the [diamond] industry are transparency and disclosure, traceability and still, human rights due diligence,” said Van der Veken.
Although there are milestones such as the implementation of the Kimberley Process, the establishment of the Responsible Jewelry Council and the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals, which she applauded, “it’s not enough and we need to scale up and we need to really focus much more on metrical impact,” she continued.
In particular, what she felt needed to be urgently tackled is “the middle of the supply chain,” with small businesses without the capacity to improve operating practices on their own.
For Kering’s Daveu, whether fashion or the watch and jewelry industry, “it’s always about transparency and traceability.”
The two biggest hurdles there are to implement change at scale and at speed, particularly with the effects of climate change increasingly visible. Reminding of the interconnectedness of climate change and loss in biodiversity, she said that companies had a responsibility to look beyond their own organizations as 80 percent is outside of their legal purview.
“We know that if we are only taking care about what is happening in our legal boundary, we are not doing our work to reduce environmental footprint,” she said.
“If we have to transform, we have to be honest,” reminded Firth, as Messika introduced the CarbonVero disclosure tool meant to calculate the carbon footprint of individual natural diamonds, with a blockchain-based certificate attached to each polished diamond.
Other topics touched upon were the acceleration brought on by Russia’s attack and ongoing war on Ukraine as well as a growing demand from end-consumers, to whom “beautiful processes and beautiful impacts on people” are a non-negotiable part of the jewelry industry, according to Van der Veken.
In the second discussion with Kereemang and James, Firth went on to discuss the positive impact witnessed by the actress during her visit to Botswana in her role as NDC ambassador.
After highlighting the success of the “social license,” which makes demonstrating the responsibility and sustainability of a diamond mining operation to the communities of Botswana a requirement, Kereemang expressed her “immense contentment” at the prosperity, development and resilience of projects that have contributed to significant improvements, such as lower malnutrition rates.
James said witnessing the collaboration between the Botswanan government and the diamond industry, the reinvestment in the country and “so many little moments,” including a meeting with children and their teacher, was “honestly life-changing.”
“It’s really inspired me to keep learning and investing my time into these aspects that are so important,” she continued. “I feel a social responsibility. I have a platform and I just have access to people that will listen, young people particularly. As I’m on that journey, I want to share it with anyone that wants to listen.”
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