Picture a diamond in a jewellery shop window. The velvet setting, the careful lighting, the quiet reverence of the whole display. It is a carefully constructed image of beauty and permanence.
The reality of where most mined diamonds come from looks nothing like that. This blog is about what that reality actually involves - and why it matters when you are choosing a ring.
Where Mined Diamonds Actually Come From
Mined diamonds come from three principal sources, each with its own set of problems.
Industrial Mines
The largest scale of diamond extraction involves enormous machinery, vast processing plants, and industrial quantities of waste. Industrial mines operate across South Africa, Russia, South America, and the Arctic tundra of Canada. None of them are environmentally clean. Most of them are approaching the end of their productive lives as their deposits run out.
The Canadian mines are frequently cited as the most responsible operations in the industry. They are, in relative terms, better regulated than most. But as we explore in our dedicated blog on Canadian diamonds - and as the closure of the Diavik mine in March 2026 after 23 years of operation illustrates - even the best-run industrial mines leave behind landscapes that take decades to recover, if they recover at all.
Marine Mining
A growing and deeply concerning area of the industry involves underwater mining operations - most notably those operated by De Beers off the coast of Namibia. Enormous sea-floor crawlers hoover up sediment, rocks, marine life, and everything else in their path. The diamonds are extracted on processing ships and the sediment is discharged back into the ocean.
The long-term environmental damage of marine diamond mining is still being measured - the industry is relatively new - but the immediate impact on marine ecosystems is significant. We cover this in more detail in our blog on marine diamond mining.
Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining
This is the category with the longest and most troubling story. In many of the areas where diamond deposits exist, small-scale surface mining operations are run with shovels and sieves, frequently overseen by local power brokers whose relationship with the formal economy and the rule of law is, at best, inconsistent.
The scope for abuse in these operations is substantial. Working conditions are rarely regulated. Pay is frequently minimal or non-existent. Safety is an afterthought. And the question of who ultimately benefits from the sale of the diamonds is often very difficult to answer.
What Are Blood Diamonds?
The term blood diamond - also known as conflict diamond - has a specific technical definition: rough diamonds used by rebel movements or their allies to finance armed conflicts aimed at undermining legitimate governments.
During the worst period of conflict diamond activity in the 1980s and 1990s, it is estimated that approximately 20% of total global diamond production was being sold for illegal or unethical purposes, with the majority meeting the definition of conflict diamonds.
The Sierra Leone civil war, which ran from 1991 to 2000 and cost an estimated 50,000 lives, was partly funded by diamond revenues. The Revolutionary United Front mined diamonds worth approximately 125 million US dollars per year to finance their campaign. Diamonds from Liberia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Angola during their respective civil wars of that era carry the same designation.
The 2006 film Blood Diamond - starring Leonardo DiCaprio and set in Sierra Leone in 1999 - brought significant public attention to this issue. Two decades later, the conversation has moved on considerably. But the underlying problems have not gone away entirely.
Blood diamonds are not purely a historical problem. The conditions that allowed them to exist - weak governance, inadequate regulation, opaque supply chains - still exist in parts of the world where diamonds are mined today.
The Kimberley Process - What It Does and Does Not Do
The Kimberley Process Certification Scheme was established in 2002 as an international attempt to regulate trade in rough diamonds and prevent conflict stones from entering legitimate supply chains. Participating countries - currently numbering around 85 - agree to certify that their diamond exports are conflict-free.
In principle this is a meaningful initiative. In practice, its limitations are significant and well-documented.
The definition problem
The Kimberley Process defines a conflict diamond specifically as one used to finance rebel movements against a recognised government. This definition excludes diamonds mined under conditions of human rights abuse by a government itself. It excludes diamonds used to prop up corrupt regimes. It excludes diamonds mined using forced or child labour where no rebel group is involved.
Zimbabwe's Marange diamond fields, where documented killings, torture, and forced labour have been reported, remain within the Kimberley Process because the abuses are carried out under government sanction rather than by a rebel group. This is not a loophole. It is a fundamental limitation of the scheme's architecture.
The enforcement problem
The Kimberley Process relies on national governments to certify their own exports. It covers rough diamonds sold in parcels rather than individual stones, which makes tracking through the cutting and polishing process considerably less reliable. Diamonds can be smuggled from non-compliant regions and certified in compliant ones. Officials can be bribed. Paperwork can be falsified.
Global Witness - one of the founding members of the Kimberley Process - withdrew from it in 2011, stating that the scheme was fundamentally failing in its core purpose. That assessment has not significantly changed in the years since.
What the Kimberley Process does not cover
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Diamonds mined under human rights abuses by recognised governments
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Environmental destruction caused by mining operations
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Labour rights violations where no armed conflict is involved
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Tax fraud and money laundering associated with diamond revenues
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Individual cut and polished stones once they leave the rough diamond parcel
A Kimberley Process certificate tells you that a diamond was not used to finance a rebel movement. It does not tell you where the stone was mined, under what conditions, by whom, or at what human or environmental cost.
Why Traceability Is Not Enough
In recent years the industry has attempted to address the limitations of the Kimberley Process through technology - most notably through De Beers' Tracr blockchain platform, which we cover in detail in a dedicated blog.
Tracr can tell you where a diamond was registered in the supply chain. What it cannot tell you is what happened to the people and the landscape at the point of extraction. Traceability and ethics are not the same thing. Knowing where something came from does not guarantee it was obtained responsibly.
The GIA's acquisition of a 30% stake in Tracr in May 2026 represents a meaningful step towards independent oversight of the platform. Whether it results in a system that genuinely holds the industry to account remains to be seen.
The Honest Alternative
At Ethica Diamonds we do not sell mined diamonds. We sell lab grown diamonds and responsibly grown gemstones, grown in controlled facilities by verified producers using renewable energy or certified carbon offsetting.
A lab grown diamond has no mine. No alluvial deposit. No sea floor crawler. No question about which government, rebel group, or local power broker benefited from its extraction. It was grown in a laboratory, certified by an independent gemological body, and its supply chain is short enough to actually understand.
We are not naive about the lab grown diamond industry - it is not without any environmental impact, and the energy source used in production matters enormously. But the comparison with mined diamonds across every meaningful ethical and environmental measure is not close.
The question of where a diamond comes from should matter to anyone buying one. We think the answer lab grown provides is considerably more comfortable than the alternative.
Read More in This Series
The History of Diamonds and Diamond Mining ->
Diamonds as Business: The Story of De Beers ->
Are Canadian Diamonds Actually Ethical? The Honest Answer ->
De Beers, Blood Diamonds and Blockchain: Does Tracr Actually Solve the Problem? ->
Lab Grown vs Mined Diamonds: The Honest Environmental Comparison ->
The True Cost of Mined Diamonds: The Complete Series ->
Browse our full collection at ethicadiamonds.com or book a free consultation with our team in Newquay - in person or virtually from anywhere in the UK.
