Taking Responsibility Minnesota

One didn't hear much about conflict back in 2000. Or about corporate responsibility, for that matter.

How surprised I was, then, at an upscale Philadelphia-area jeweler, peering into the glass case at a letter from Hearts On Fire's Glenn Rothman on the threat of blood diamonds tainting the supply chain. Why? I wondered throughout the two minutes of reading it. Why bring up a negative in the final 18 inches of that chain?

Then I realized: I'd spent two minutes reading the letter and gazing into that case. An eternity in a jewelry store with multiple brands. As a shopper, I'd have learned a little about the diamond supply chain; that diamonds are not all cut the same way (of course the letter touched on the company's strength); and that diamonds empower three of the wealthiest nations in Africa. And I looked at the goods in the case, 90 percent loose back in those distant days. No longer just pretty stones, those diamonds embodied a complex, global story, one that I had become a part of, just by looking at them.

I've thought of that letter, and of those diamonds, at Kimberley Process meetings I've covered; at parties, when someone asks me about conflict; and on highways, when I see Leonardo DiCaprio on a "Blood Diamond" billboard. A straightforward, proactive embrace of one's product—about which, yes, and welcome to reality, there are issues.

When asked at a recent media event, "How much diamond revenue is really funneling back to nations like Botswana?" hip-hop and jewelry entrepreneur Russell Simmons, recently back from an African fact-finding mission, responded: "Eighty-five percent. And let me ask you: How much do you get from the oil that comes out of the ground in Alaska?"

Think of the diamonds in your inventory as you read the interviews that follow. The words of these global players carry a new way of looking at these tiny treasures. Call it the big picture, for it's as big as it gets. I've seen it over four continents. Driving past unspeakable poverty from Mumbai out to the cutting facilities in SEEPZ, where half of an estimated one million people in the Indian diamond industry earn a wage that puts them anywhere from middle class (by local standards) to wealthy. In orphanages in Botswana, where children who have lost parents to a 38 percent HIV/AIDS rate are not only cared for but genuinely happy. In primary schools in China—far superior to any private school in America—where 99 percent literacy has come to diamond cutting areas.

At $33 billion in U.S. diamond jewelry sales—half of worldwide consumption—the American retailer is the biggest part of the big picture. That's a huge number, but its net result is personal. "And job number one for all of us," says Peggy Jo Donahue, Jewelers of America's director of public affairs, "is for the political to become personal. Whether it's pride in the response our industry has taken to conflict, or abhorrence and sorrow for the fraction that remains."

The Kimberley Process has largely curtailed the flow of conflict diamonds "in the broad strokes," says even Global Witness' Alex Yearsley, the industry's most eloquent critic, "but the problem has not been solved." Reduced in three short years to less than one percent of the trade, conflict diamonds still add up to a terrible number.

"The World Diamond Council system of warranties gives retailers the responsibility to require the official WDC warranty from every one of their diamond and diamond jewelry suppliers," says Michael Rae, CEO of the Council for Responsible Jewelry Practices. "This is the single most important action that American retailers can take to support the Kimberley Process."

The industry can also look with pride at the proactive measures taken to ease the plight of some one million alluvial diamond miners, toiling miles below the poverty line—from the Diamond Development Initiative to Martin Rapaport's pioneering work in fair trade practices in Sierra Leone to De Beers' proactive empowering initiatives from Tanzania to South Africa.

It might seem an awfully large weight to be putting on a tiny stone, on the sale of that stone, and on the small family-owned business in which that sale is made. In fact, the reverse is true. It makes that diamond huge: A crystallization not only of carbon lattice but of a global story, of a supply chain that takes responsibility to heart, and of an industry, supporting 10 million families worldwide, that has learned to take it all very personally.