Observations from the ‘Peace Minerals’ panel session at the Jewellery Show, London
by Beth West
There was a considerable amount of echo in the venue. London’s Kensington Olympia is a large, open plan space – light, high ceilinged and busy with activity – so such an acoustic quality is inevitable. But an echo can be a good thing, if the originating sound is a positive one.
The Jewellery Show is the UK’s premier jewellery trade show, and I was attending the event as a representative of Diamonds for Peace to speak in a panel discussion alongside the inimitable Greg Valerio, founder of PeaceGold, on September 2nd 2024. The focus of the discussion was to be whether mineral resource can mitigate conflict, instead of provoking or contributing to it in producing countries historically associated with such issues.
Vivien Johnston, one of the events key organisers and a forceful voice in the world of ethical and responsible sourcing, wanted this discussion – as the last session of the two-day event – to be a message of hope. Can minerals facilitate peace? The answer can be ‘yes’, if efforts are made. We needed to be sure that the message resonated loudly. That our echo would reverberate long after the doors to the event closed.
Obviously, we could have done with a larger audience. To quote Greg, those who operate in the ethical jewellery space are ‘building a movement’, and it is only when an ‘ethical’ piece of jewellery is the only available option that the last brick will be in place. But that requires commitment from every player in the industry. So, even if the entirety of the delegation had attended, the audience would not have been big enough.
Regardless, we had a good turn-out, with the small open-plan studio space seating around twenty or so attendees – with passers-by stopping to listen in at points.
The stools on which we were seated seemed, on appearance, precariously high. Having sat down, however, they were incredibly stable, and (perhaps tenuously) I could not help drawing a parallel between them and the African artisanal mining communities about whom we would be focusing our discussion. Although they account for such a significant percentage of global mineral production, involvement with these communities is generally avoided within the industry, due to nervousness surrounding potential association with conflict, illegal trade or human rights abuses – but, with the right infrastructure and support, artisanal mining really does have the capacity to directly and significantly improve lives. And that sits behind the work of both Diamonds for Peace and PeaceGold.
The principal premise of the panel was to introduce the work of both initiatives to the audience and there is a good synergy between Greg’s work and what has been achieved by Chie and the team of Diamonds for Peace in Liberia. Both operations work with artisanal mining communities previously affected by civil war who are seeking – actively seeking – to protect and elevate their people out of poverty and see the minerals inherent in the earth beneath their feet as a means of doing this.
PeaceGold was established in 2013 as a peace building partnership between Centre for Resolution Conflits , Peace Direct and ethical pioneer jeweller Greg Valerio MBE, helping community miners’ use the export of gold as a means of establishing localised peace and prosperity in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Now working with ten legitimate and independently managed cooperatives, PeaceGold Congo and UK based PeaceGold CIC work as social enterprises having moved away from non profit operations, ensuring the mining communities see a cut of the downstream sales. With production comfortably at one hundred kilos of gold a month, and working directly with a list of dedicated refiners, PeaceGold is well on the way to achieving its mission.
To complement Greg’s introduction to the work of PeaceGold, I focused my answers towards expounding all that has been achieved by Diamonds for Peace since they began working with the Liberian artisanal diamond mining communities in 2019.
Through highlighting the teams’ ground up approach, from supporting the miners in creating responsible and functional cooperatives to improving the overall well-being in the communities through establishing beekeeping as an alternative means of income and improving hygiene, I demonstrated that a firm foundation had been set on which to build Diamond’s for Peace’s mine-to-market program. The program, which is approaching functionality, works in a similar way to PeaceGold, insisting on a circular economy whereby the miners have a stake in the end product – with a premium being extracted from the retail price to be invested directly back into the development of Diamond for Peace’s affiliated mining communities.
What I wanted most for the audience, however – on the back of hearing us both talk – was for the perception of both gemstones and gold to shift. It’s a luxury product – a nice to have – now it’s time to give it some level of utility. Every piece of jewellery should be considered as a potential catalyst for positive change. Remember, the driving force behind initiatives such as Diamonds for Peace and PeaceGold is to lift these communities out of poverty – through whatever medium. As it stands, minerals can be a very affective one. The quantity of gold being produced across PeaceGold’s communities attests to that. Diamonds for Peace is equally in a position to make diamonds as affective too. Yes, there are many, many hurdles. And I did not have the opportunity to address them directly. Life is hard for these miners. Something as simple as building a fence to protect the crops can be fraught with problems. A month’s supply of diamonds intended for the formal market may end up being sold quickly to the first buyer to reconstruct a house destroyed by a storm. Ants may infest a beehive in the absence of the beekeeper, due to ill health. But it is about persistence. Not just on the part of Diamonds for Peace, but on the part of the communities too. And Vivien did ask if there were any moments when Chie felt like giving up. Answering on her behalf, I said every day, but she remains motivated by the trust these communities place in Diamonds for Peace and by the miners who are actively making efforts to improve their lives. And that is what it is all about.
My only frustration was that I did not get to articulate one of Chie’s most profound insights on what she perceives to be true evidence of change. That change means choice. When the people in these communities are no longer tethered to a vocation because it is their only means of income, and they can choose how they earn their livelihoods. They can learn. Graduate. Decide. Miner, beekeeper, nurse, lawyer – president. Only when that has been realised can we say that positive change has been achieved.
But while reality does not as yet allow for that – while mining is the principle means to an end for these communities – let us help them through the industry, not for the industry. And at the next event, may it not be me – or even Chie – that is standing in front of that audience. Let it be the miners. Not because we have put them there, but because they have gained sufficient levels of strength and autonomy to be viable actors in the downstream space in their own right. If they chose to be there.
You can watch a short video below to see what it looks like on the ground.
Front photo: Greg Valerio and Beth West at the panel session. Photo courtesy by Stuart Pool.