Conflict Diamonds: Shiny with a hint of Blood and Hard Labor

In class this past week, we discussed the nature of Obama’s pastor’s sermon that included a reference to the U.S. involvement and eventual boycott of African diamond mining. On the Grist.org home page, one of the frequent ads promotes “conflict free diamonds”. I thought it would be pertinent to take this opportunity to explore further the diamond industry’s impact upon the environment as well as the individuals involved in it. Before further discussion I feel that I must, as usual with Grist.org, give somewhat of a disclaimer. The source I used to gather information about the diamonds is a legitimate one, but is also attempting to sell their own product; the “conflict free diamond”, and because of this it can be assumed the article will have some slight exaggeration or rhetoric that sheds a particularly negative light upon the diamond trade. The trade however is none the less terrible and for my purpose I will accept the source and its interpretations.
Approximately 20-25 percent of all non-fuel minerals worldwide, 2 billion dollars in gold and other gems, and 15 percent of the planet’s diamonds valued at 1.2 billion dollars come from Artisanal and small-scale miners, known as ASM. The extreme profits that come from a disproportionately small part of the globe are not passed on to those that perform the manual labor necessary to extract the riches. The organization that initially focused the world’s attention on conflict diamonds (and in part sparked the production of the film Blood Diamond which further opened the eyes of Americans) was Global Witness who estimates that there are one million Africans currently working for less than one U.S. dollar per day. This amount, well below the poverty line, has resulted in an increased morality rate as well as a significant decrease in literacy, water purification, and sanitation.
Due to the hidden practices of ASMs, the workers are not given the training to perform their task safely, and the practices that are used to extract the diamonds have little regard for the impact that they have upon the earth. This disregard creates useless areas where the earth is not suitable for later generations of agricultural societies. Because children are born into and spend much of their lives in the mines, they do not consider their impact upon the land, and if the mining were to stop, they would be left not only without work (the little they are paid for) but also with no way of creating a self reliant sustenance plan.
In Angola, ninety years of mining without regard for the environment has left the land “scarred with thousands of abandoned mining pits filled with mosquito infested water”. The mines not only destroy the land that they open and dig up, but also wipe out fertile land that is in the path of mine run off. Many indigenous tribes have been forced to move because of the mud and chemical stream coming from mines. Kono, located at the center of one mining region has been rendered completely useless due to mining debris. The natives are prevented from growing anything above ground, and underneath it, the water they would rely upon to nourish their crops and themselves becomes poisoned from the mining deposits.
The mining business can not be justified in their actions especially considering the successful mining of other areas with minimal environmental impact. The U.S. knew that if it terminated relations with Africa, the price of the diamond in the States would increase dramatically. Alternatives however, like those in Canada enabled the U.S. to gain some leverage over African companies. The Canadian Arctic contains diamond deposits, but the mining is strictly regulated in order to prevent severe environmental impact. The problem in Africa and other tropical regions comes from the unregulated mining of areas where ecosystems rely on shallow topsoil that is easily eroded and washed away by careless mining.
Another issue prevalent in Africa is the method of using open pit mines which are less expensive, but can also result in up to ten times the waste rubble as underground mines. In open pit mining, the rock must be completely removed where as the shaft mine requires less removal of rock and less surface impact. Open pit mining would be akin to cutting off an arm in order to get blood when a simple and much less intrusive needle would do the trick. Two thirds of new gold comes from these open pit mines despite their impact both above and below ground.
Once the material is extracted from the earth, the gold must be extracted from the “waste”. “Every ounce of gold produced results in 30 tons of mine waste”. The process of separating out the gold is known as heap leaching and involves spraying cyanide over heaps of extracted material. The gold and cyanide bond and drain to the bottom of the heap which is drained for months and continually added to. After the cyanide has bonded and leaked to the bottom of the heap, the material is pumped out and separated into gold and cyanide. The cyanide is then stored in artificial waterways. This extensive process that takes months to complete can be contaminating to the surrounding environment even when strict measures are followed. Especially in the backwater mines of Africa, the cyanide easily escapes the process and ends up in underground water systems or the surrounding soil. The left over heaps that have been laced with cyanide during the process are built up into structurally unsound dams. In 2000, one of these dams broke, spilling 100,000 gallons of cyanide contaminated mine waste into the Tisza River. Over a thousand tons of fish were killed and the water supply for two and a half million people was rendered undrinkable.
The conflict diamonds coming out of Africa and their ramifications were overlooked until recently, when the U.S. took part in going against the companies that unfairly employed Africans with unlivable wages. The environmental effects of the mining, especially the extraction of gold, have devastated the fertile land in many African nations, and if the U.S. is going to continue its longing for small shiny objects, it would behoove the consumers to promote healthy extraction methods. Of course one could always opt for a ring made from Lignum Vitae. Losing the ring wouldn’t be anything to fret about, and it could probably be used to start a fire in an emergency. See… that’s much more useful than a gold circle with a shiny rock in it. How’s gold going to help you in life? Are you supposed to suck on it for nourishment? Just a side note, Grist.org recently added another advertisement promoting a positive environmental policy by way of the election. Grist is endorsing a Climate Action PAC that is promoting essentially this slogan: The climate is changing. Is the political culture keeping up? Help elect a pro-environmental candidate.