KEY INSIGHTS
- Cleaning up the supply chain for coloured stones is particularly challenging; while a handful of players control most of the world’s diamond output, gems largely come from myriad small artisanal mines.
- Industry watchdogs say efforts to improve oversight are falling short.
- High-tech innovations like blockchain have gained buzz, but in practice the options are limited, the technology nascent and implementation needs to start at the mine.
Last month, the world’s finest jewellers sought to dazzle their wealthiest clients with glittering new high jewellery collections, launched alongside this season’s haute couture in Paris.
Brands vied to outdo one another with one-of-a-kind pieces dripping with diamonds, rubies, emeralds and sapphires. Among the most decadent items on display was a 6,225-carat raw emerald, cloistered in a black room in Chopard’s Paris boutique designed to bring out the stones intense green colour.
The so-called Insofu emerald is one of the largest and highest-quality gems of its kind ever discovered, but equally exceptional is the fact that once the stone is cut and polished it will still be possible to trace its history back to the mine in Zambia where the stone was discovered.
It’s the highest-profile example yet of new DNA-tracing technology developed by Swiss jewellery house and gem authenticator Gübelin’s transparency tech subsidiary, established to tackle the fact that lurking behind the gem sector’s glitz is a murky industry facing mounting pressure to clean up its act.
While much attention on jewellery’s negative impact has focused on diamonds and gold, sparkly gems can also hide nasty truths. Sales of stones, including emeralds, jade, sapphires, lapis lazuli and rubies have been linked to funding armed conflict, terrorists and military dictatorships. Mining can be a dirty and dangerous business, and corruption and human rights abuses can extend through the supply chain. Stones typically go through the many hands of…
