Jewellery is an exceptionally ancient art form, and throughout time and across cultures, precious metals and gems have been used as the central materials. I respect this tradition, and I too am fascinated with the ways the Earth has created these incredible crystallizations and veins of gold and silver. They are beautiful materials with so much geologic story, and are rightly given much value in jewellery. 

However, we have reached a point in industrial society where desirable materials are extracted in an unbalanced and harmful way, to fuel corporate profits, rather than for the intrinsic beauty or spiritual value of the material. Many morbid symptoms are arising with deep impacts on community and land. Although this is not the case with all gemstone and metal mining, it's important to investigate the industrialised side of this system which is generating a huge volume of the global supply. Are materials extracted in this abusive way the ones we want to be using in our craft? 

In industrialised mining practice, the land must first be deforested and local populations relocated. In biodiversity hotspots such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, this means a large swathe of irreplaceable forest is clearcut or burned, and local indigenous people displaced from their land. In the Guiana Shield of the wider Amazon region for example, gold mining has increased exponentially in recent years, where it is responsible for nearly 90% of total deforestation [1]. The Guiana Shield is one of the regions of highest biodiversity in the world and a carbon sink of roughly 20 billion tonnes of above-ground carbon. Miners chasing the fluctuations in global gold price have left in their wake deforested land, and rivers polluted with sediment and mercury.

A typical gold mining site in Guyana. Image © kakteen, Shutterstock 

In an open-cut diamond mine such as the Argyle Diamond Mine in Western Australia, the Earth is blasted with toxic explosives, the broken ore then transported to processing facilities.  Undergoing an energy- and water-intensive process, the ore is washed and sieved in multiple stages, with the desired material extracted. The process requires approximately 480 litres of water per carat [2], much of which will leave the processing facility as a contaminated slurry. In a figure from the International Gem Society, for every carat of a mined diamond, 160kg of CO2 is released [3]. 

The natural resources required to extract a carat of diamond from the Earth are themselves incredibly precious, and increasingly tarnished. Approximately 250 tonnes of ore must be dug from the ground to produce a one carat polished diamond of gem quality [4]. This resulting 'waste', i.e. what was once pristine living earth, will end up back in the pits, with the fine tailings ending up in colossal ponds that leach toxic elements into the surrounding land. These tailing dams have been known to collapse, and continuously impact communities and the environment, usually in the global south. The Jagersfontein Mine tailings dam in South Africa collapsed in 2022, resulting in a toxic mudslide killing and injuring locals, and polluting nearby farms. As one reporter on the aftereffects of the disaster wrote, "cyanide, mercury and arsenic are frequently found in mine tailings, causing fears of poisoning in the community." [5]

Artist Dillon Marsh visualized the 14.5 million carats of diamonds extracted from the Kimberley Mine in South Africa, within the centre of the mine pit. See more of his project For What Its Worth

In the global south, in countries such as Papua New Guinea where labour is cheaper and people have less protections, the process is more dependent on human hands rather than mega machinery. Humans rights abuses are rampant and mining corporations often face little to no repercussions for their exploitation. Rio Tinto's abandoned Panguna mine on Bougainville Island has been the focus of a large-scale study which has "found a plethora of actual and potential human rights violations, including risks to life." [6] Rio Tinto abandoned the massive gold and copper mine during the beginning of the civil war, leaving masses of mine waste and decaying infrastructure which continues to pollute the region and pose safety risks to the local community, three decades after it ceased operations.  

According to the Human Rights Watch report Sparkling Jewels, Opaque Supply Chains, "Most jewelry companies are still not able to trace their gold and diamonds to the mines of origin...This is a serious gap, given the legacy of human rights abuses in gold and diamond mining" [7]. Enslavement, sexual violence, unsafe working conditions and child labour are all documented in diamond mines within Zimbabwe, DRC, Central African Republic and many other countries. An estimated 1 million children work in mining worldwide [8], enforced either directly under the threat of violence, or indirectly by economic pressures. Although the Kimberley Process was created to certify diamond provenance and prevent conflict diamonds from entering the global market, there are numerous holes in this process, leading to a very opaque supply chain. [9] 

A child labourer pauses in one of DRC's open pit diamond mines. Image © Swedwatch

Some of the jewellery industry's main certification groups, such as the Responsible Jewellery Council and the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme, "do not require full traceability, transparency, or robust on-the-ground human rights assessments from their members. Third-party audits of jewelry supply chains are often conducted remotely, and auditors sometimes lack human rights expertise." [10] Furthermore, 30% of RJC's members are included by reputation only, having bypassed the certification process due to their size and influence as corporations. 

Where to from here?

Although there have been efforts made to improve transparency and sustainability within the precious metal and gemstone mining industries, the implementation of these strategies has fallen short of whats needed. The corporations that dominate this trade are fundamentally reliant on cheap labour, externalised environmental costs and the ability to obscure the origin of their precious materials through global logistics. Virgin materials extracted at this scale will never be sustainable. 

Given the enormous volume of minerals, stones, ore and other materials that we already have above ground, it makes sense to reorient our material sourcing towards the technomatter - that which has already been extracted or modified by humans. How can we mine the waste of our societies to use in our designs, and avoid relying on virgin materials? How can we become the fungi of the material world, digesting the discards and turning them into something beautiful and useful? There are already many designers poking at this process, especially within the furniture and object design worlds. The jewellery world however, seems to be a little antiquated in its concept of 'what is valuable?', relying too heavily on gold and diamonds to give value to our creations. Perhaps only once we fully understand how the gold and diamond came to sit on our finger, will we realise what injustices are embodied in the material and look towards something new. 

[1]: Galbraith, D., & Kalamandeen, M. (2020, July 1). _Gold mining leaves deforested Amazon land barren for years, find scientists_. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/gold-mining-leaves-deforested-amazon-land-barren-for-years-find-scientists-141639

[2]: Hobbs, A. (2024, February 21). _The comparative impact of diamonds_. Ethica Diamonds. https://ethica.diamonds/blogs/news/impact-of-diamonds-p2#:~:text=Water%20use,grown%20diamonds%20use%2070%20litres

[3]: Butcher, A. (2023). _Is Growing Diamonds a Sustainable Alternative to Diamond Mining? - IGS_. International Gem Society. https://www.gemsociety.org/article/sustainable-alternative-to-diamond-mining/

[4]: Australia, G. (2018, May 17). _Diamond_. Geoscience Australia. https://www.ga.gov.au/education/minerals-energy/australian-mineral-facts/diamond

[5]: _Cleaning up tailings dams, and the Jagersfontein collapse - Mine | Issue 135 | December 2023_. (2024, February 17). Nridigital.com. https://mine.nridigital.com/mine_dec23/jagersfontein-tailings-dam-south-africa

[6]: Faa, M. (2024, October 12). Landmark report uncovers human rights abuses at Rio Tinto gold mine in Bougainville, 35 years after closure - ABC News. _ABC News_. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-10-13/human-rights-abuses-found-at-rio-tinto/104463224

[7]: Human Rights Watch. (2020, November 24). _Sparkling Jewels, Opaque Supply Chains_. Human Rights Watch. https://www.hrw.org/report/2020/11/24/sparkling-jewels-opaque-supply-chains/jewelry-companies-changing-sourcing

[8]: International Labour Organisation (ILO), Mining and Quarrying. Available from: http://www.ilo.org/ipec/areas/Miningandquarrying/lang--en/index.htm. Accessed on 8 March 2025

[9]: Baker, A. (2019). _Blood Diamonds_. TIME.com; TIME. https://time.com/blood-diamonds/

[10]:  Human Rights Watch. (2020, November 24). _Sparkling Jewels, Opaque Supply Chains_. Human Rights Watch. https://www.hrw.org/report/2020/11/24/sparkling-jewels-opaque-supply-chains/jewelry-companies-changing-sourcing