One of the gem and jewellery industry’s most well-known and respected personalities, Dr. Gaetano Cavalieri, has been the president of the World Jewellery Confederation (CIBJO), for the past 23 years. CIBJO is the oldest international organisation in the jewellery sector, having originally been established in 1926.
CIBJO, The World Jewellery Confederation represents the interests of all individuals, organisations and companies earning their livelihoods from jewellery, gemstones and precious metals, covering the entire industry from mine to marketplace in the various production, manufacturing, trading and retail centres.
Dr. Gaetano Cavalieri has served as President of CIBJO since 2001. In July 2006, at his initiative, CIBJO was granted “Special Consultative Status” with the United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs (ECOSOC). Together with the UN, he also established the World Jewellery Confederation Education Foundation (WJCEF), which is responsible for creating social responsibility awareness in the international luxury industries. CIBJO is also involved in the work of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to promote policies that will improve economic and social well-being for people worldwide.
Dr. Cavalieri, could you please explain to our readers about the activities of CIBJO? What is its role and what benefits does it provide to its members?
CIBJO effectively functions as the formal representative of the international jewellery sector, covering the industry geographically, with members and observers from all the key mining, trading and manufacturing nations, and vertically, covering the full distribution chain from the mine to the retail jeweller, in all the various jewellery categories. Among our members are many of the industry’s most prominent brands and companies, as well as international bodies in the various product categories, but our ability to speak on behalf of the grass roots of the industry is vested in the national associations that make up a large share of the membership. Their members comprise the grass roots of our business, and literally millions of professionals and stakeholders.
You can liken CIBJO to a parliament, where the various delegates are able to represent their own constituents and then to debate issues, and formulate policies and rules that are implemented across the industry. If your voice is not heard – meaning if you not part of the discussion – it is difficult to influence it.
The fruits of those discussion, which take place in our various commissions, committees and working groups, are the standards, operating principles and harmonised nomenclature that appears in our Blue Books and industry guides. Some of these have been transformed into ISO standards, while others form the basis of national laws and regulations.
Our status as the industry representative is recognized formally, and more specifically in the United Nations, where we are the industry’ s sole representative in the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), as well as in other bodies, like OECD, the Global Compact and the European Union, where we were consulted before the passing of precious metals legislation.
How and in what ways does CIBJO affect the global diamond jewellery industry's operations?
As I said, the structured nature of devising standards and nomenclatures by our commissions, in which the membership of each is made up of experts in the specific area it concentrates, like diamonds, coloured gemstones, pearls, precious metals, coral, etc., and the due process that is required in deciding any issue, is the reason that the Blue Books have been adopted by countries when formulating their own laws. They also are used by the courts in various countries when settling disputes.
But I would point to another aspect. Twenty years ago, the industry concept of corporate social responsibility was ensuring that we do not have negative impacts on society or the environment. CIBJO was the first organization to broaden that understanding. Through our early association with the United Nations and what then were the Millennium Development Goals (in 2015 they were reconstituted as the Sustainable Development Goals), we advocated for an approach by which the jewellery industry should be seen as having the ability to proactively provide sustainable opportunities in the countries and regions in which it operates. Today that philosophy has become dominant.
A key component of our activities is educational. It’s not enough to devise ideas and approaches. For them to take root, it’s important to communicate, persuade and teach.
What would you say are the most important developments influencing the world of jewellery today?
We do seem to be facing a crisis of confidence, not necessarily in jewellery itself, which continues to be exceedingly popular, but more so in way that goods are marketed, described and promoted. This is reflected in depressed sales data, and most apparently so in the diamond industry, which traditionally has accounted for about half of all jewellery sales by value.
The challenge posed to the diamond market by the introduction of laboratory-grown goods had not yet been resolved, and not because there anything wrong with either natural diamonds or laboratory-grown diamonds, but because of a polarising marketing approach that was adopted. The early decision to benchmark laboratory-grown diamond prices against the price of natural diamonds, while serving a short-term interest of producers, proved to be critical error over the longer term.
It should aways have been apparent that the economic principles governing a natural product, with a finite production ceiling, was different to that of a manufactured product, which would inevitably see a sharp reduction in production overheads as economies of scale were reached. So, the decision to conflate the two, and worse, to differentiate the products by making negative claims about the other, ultimately undermined consumer confidence in both. We are seeing the results today.
Both the natural diamond sector and the laboratory diamond sector need to disengage and go back to their drawing boards. Each needs to clearly brand its product in a realistic and positive way so that consumer confidence will be restored, and a situation created in which both can live comfortably alongside each other, growing the market, rather than cannibalising one another and seeing the market shrink.
What are CIBJO’s top priorities in the near future?
We have a range of projects underway, and I’ll point to one. A massive volume of work is done within CIBJO on a yearly basis, and it has long been felt that it is not fully appreciated or understood industry wide.
One of our ways to remedy this is the CIBJO Academy. It was established in 2023 to prepare and deliver of educational programmes and materials, suitable for jewellery professionals and the consuming public, about standards, operating principles and terminology developed within CIBJO’s various commissions and expert committees. Its Founding Dean is Kenneth Scarratt, a vice president of CIBJO and President of Sector A, which covers all gem materials.
The essential course materials for the CIBJO Academy are the various CIBJO Blue Books and guides, relating to the entire spectrum of the gemstone and jewellery industries, covering natural diamonds, laboratory-grown diamonds, coloured gemstones, pearls, coral, precious metals, principles of responsible sourcing, the operation of gem laboratories, marketing, ethics and legal issues, and more.
Over the course of the past year, educational materials for the new academy have been under preparation, and this past August a first set of courses was announced in conjunction with Gem and Jewelry Institute of Thailand (GIT). Courses are also currently being prepared with the Bahrain Institute for Pearls & Gemstones (DANAT).
How does CIBJO ensure compliance with its Blue Books / terminology guidelines at the retail store level?
While CIBJO members commit to their implementation, the CIBJO Blue Book rules are recommendations inasmuch as we do not have the capacity to enforce them at the grass roots level. That is the role of the national associations. What we have done is provide the roadmap, according to which they can structure their rules at the local level, and enforce them if they see so fit.
That said, there have been occasions in which we have been approached by members of the public to assist in cases where there clearly was a gross violation of Blue Book rules. In those case I have taken action, and generally have managed to rectify the situation. To the greatest degree possible, this is done in tandem with the national association in any given country.
CIBJO was one of the industry’s first bodies to stress the importance of responsible environmental, social and governance (ESG) principles. Can you tell us about the issues being debated by the Sustainable Development Commission?
Our ESG effort actually began in our Laboratory-Grown Diamond Committee in 2023, where we worked with a team of consultants to developed what has become called the ESG wheel model, which was presented last year the 2023 CIBJO Congress in Jaipur in India.
The primary goal then became to develop practical recommendations for implementing ESG practices in the industry, along with measurable goals to monitor progress. The Sustainable Development Commission was then brough in, so that methods created for the laboratory-grown diamond can be adapted and presented to other industry sectors.
On January of this year, we released the guidance document outlining environmental, social and governance (ESG) principles for companies primarily involved in the laboratory-grown diamond sector. It is available for downloading at no charge on the CIBJO website at: https://cibjo.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/CIBJO-ESG-Principles-CIBJO-Congress-2023.pdf
Entitled “Environmental, Social and Governance Principles for Laboratory-Grown Diamonds,” the new guidance document it is designed to assist companies to devise sustainable strategies that contribute to long-term business value creation, and to satisfy consumer expectations around environmental and social responsibility. It also aims to support companies facing the likelihood of greater ESG regulatory requirements imposed by governments, both national and regional, in the not-too-distant future. While relevant to businesses of every size, the document was formulated with the specific needs of small and medium-sized enterprises in mind.
The document presents 14 specific principles, five of which relate to environmental policy, four to socially responsible policies, and five to governance. Each principle includes a set of recommended actions, and an indication of its relevance to specific United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
At the recent 2024 CIBJO Congress in Shanghai, John Mulligan, the President of the Sustainable Development Commission presented a roadmap being drawn up to adopt formal ESG principles across the various sectors of the jewellery industry. The document also can be downloaded at: https://cibjo.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/CIBJO-Jewellery-ESG-Roadmap_Draft_JM_v4.5.pdf
Abraham Dayan for Rough&Polished from Tel Aviv