Madison Dialogue Publishes Diamond Development Initiative Report

The Madison Dialogue has published its third White Paper, “Making Diamonds Work for Development.” The work chronicles the challenges faced by those working on diamond development projects that advance social and environmental objectives, as they try to make progress on these issues, especially following the publicity surrounding the issue of conflict diamonds.

The report, it says, is meant to serve “as a working document for the Madison Dialogue members and anyone else interested and committed to work on diamonds, development and ethical principles and standards.”

Beginning with an explanation of the origins of “a proliferation of initiatives by the diamond industry, governments, donors and/or civil society” as coming on the back of publicity about conflict diamonds, the paper describes and explains these various projects created to improve the lives of artisanal and small-scale diamond miners.

It then goes on to describe manufacturing companies working to improve the lives of small-scale diamond workers in the mining and cutting trades. The challenges faced by retailers who want to describe themselves as supportive of “ethical” or “fair trade” diamond initiatives are also listed, and an annex of such retailers is included in the report. 

The paper also examines various efforts by civil society, industry and governments to develop principles, standards and third-party assurance systems for “fair trade” diamond.

"It used to be that consumers just wanted a diamond to sparkle; increasingly they also want diamonds to spark sustainable development," says Stephen D'Esposito, President of Earthworks. "This snapshot of current projects and activity demonstrates a growing interest in a new diamond mining paradigm."

The paper was commissioned by the NGOs Earthworks and Fatal Transactions, to facilitate the work of the Madison Dialogue members, who are supporting these projects.

“We are hopeful that ‘Making Diamonds Work for Development’ will assist communities, NGOs, companies and governments, as they seek to produce and/or market so-called ‘ethical’ diamonds. There is value in learning from other initiatives,” says Fatal Transactions International Coordinator Anneke Galama.