Not All that Glitters is Gold: Digging for Ethically Sourced Jewelry

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Shamsa Dawani, from the Women's Miner's Cooperative of Tanzania, gets up from her chair to open a small paper wrapping to show me brilliant red garnets. They represent a profound evolution for those who wish to make it socially unacceptable for anyone to buy bling that is not fair trade mined and fabricated.

Ethical jewelry? Many people passionate about the environment and social responsibility would balk at such a concept within a sector known for the blood diamonds and dirty gold. Yet real change is on the horizon.

I met Dawali in late October in Washington D.C. at the World Bank during a cross-sector Ethical Jewelry Summit. Only a hundred people were invited to this meeting originally organized by Earthworks Action, a small environmental NGO that works on mining issues.

Debeers, Tiffany, Cartier, WWF, Oxfam International, the U.S. State Department, miners from across the world and small designer firms met to discuss bringing fair trade practices to diamonds and precious metal extraction.

As I examined Dawani's garnets, I thought about the pieces back at my shop, which were cut in India and mined who knows where. Dawani's garnets are mined and cut by women in Tanzania. They alleviate economic hardship and support the "sheer entrepreneurial drive" of the business women in her association.

They have a spiritual sparkle.

When Mining is Small

Huge open pits and earthmovers with 10-foot tires is the image that often comes to mind when people think about mining. Yet between 13 and 20 million men, women and children from more than 50 developing countries work in small scale mines, often in impoverished areas associated with corruption, war and terrible environmental conditions.

According to the World Bank, more than 100 million people depend on small scale mining for survival. These artisanal miners produce more raw materials and benefit more people than all the large scale multinational operations combined.

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