A Diamond is Not Forever

New York has taken on a familiar sticky feel, the gulf coast is once again worried about hurricanes, and the west is already battling wildfires. This means only one thing.

It's wedding season.

This summer, many of the roughly 2.2 million people who get married each year in the United States, will be lining up across the nation to say their wedding vows. Most couples will be swapping, if they have not already done so in the form of an engagement ring, diamond studded rings.

Those rings will likely be tainted with blood.

As a June 19th Wall Street Journal article achingly details, the Kimberly Process, a process established in 2003 to prevent diamond sales from financing rebellious movements such those occurring at the time in war-torn in Sierra Leone and Angola, has one incredible gaping hole. It only applies to diamonds mined in areas controlled by rebel forces fighting legitimate governments. Diamonds mined in government-owned mines, even when used to extend wars in regions such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Angola face no such scrutiny.

The Kimberley Process isn't mandated to consider human-rights abuses in its evaluation of diamond mining in member countries - which is why until diamonds from Zimbabwe's Marange diamond field which under government approved military control allowed soldiers to beat, sexually assault, and kill miners were until recently Kimberly Process certified. Though the Kimberly Process banned sales in November of 2009, anyone who purchased diamonds from that region can't be assured their purchase wasn't the fruits of abuse. Similarly, a September 2009 investigation of Angola - a country which had escaped scrutiny since 2009 - also unearthed similar stories of smuggling, abuse, and, yes, sexual assault.

How can anyone consider a product which may literally have taken a human life, a necessary symbol of their love?

It didn't used to be this way.

Until World War II diamonds were not the go to wedding rings in the United States. A concerted "re-education" campaign aimed at men and women alike by the wedding conglomerate DeBeers changed all of that. They used a concerted advertising and marketing campaign to connected the idea of a diamond ring with the then sacred tradition of a religious wedding, arranged for movie stars to appear at social events and in films wearing diamonds, and coined the now legendary phrase "a diamond is forever.' A few decades later, they underwent a similarly successful marketing technique in Japan, and increasingly across the world diamonds are becoming the standard wedding ring as the wedding industrial complex becomes ever more pervasive.

This makes absolutely no sense.

We have a corporate manufactured wedding tradition that is socially, ecologically, and morally corrupt. The transparency process that is supposed to bolster this questionable industry has proven itself to be less transparent and more opaque, and yet instead of arguing that we change this destructive behavior we push more 'sustainable' solutions, such as the aforementioned questionable Kimberly process, or lab manufactured diamonds.

Lab manufactured diamonds, though ethically and environmentally superior, are still problematic.

Why?

They reinforce the idea of the diamond engagement ring. Most people with whom we interact will see the diamond ring and not necessarily interact with the wearer to know that the ring was sustainably sourced. The individual purchase does much to assuage the guilt of the individual but does little to affect the social conditioning which says that to prove one's love, one must spend large sums of money on a specific type of ring, regardless environmental, social and ethical consequences

Some would argue that this focus on diamonds, particularly on engagement rings, is a proxy by which to vilify women. It is, after all, women who generally receive diamond wedding rings and in the compendium of consumer purchases it is but one, relatively woman focused purchase.

The reality is more nuanced. Yes, there is immense pressure for women to receive a diamond ring - a standard question uttered upon finding out that a woman is engaged is to ask to see the ring. There is also, however, a social pressure on men to get a 'good enough ring'. The truth is we need to focus on getting people to stop buying diamond rings, because well, unlike other consumptive purchases this one is first, completely discretionary and secondly the link is incredibly clear.

Diamonds kill people.

There is no hemming and hawing involved. It's not like oil in which eschewing oil involves either an entire social shift or a complete lifestyle shift that would make it difficult to exist at all in modern society.

Diamond consumption really is one arena in which one choice can make a difference.

So how are you going to choose?