How many miners would you kill to slip that diamond ring onto a finger?

(The Business Day) - As the diamond sector’s Kimberley Process goes into the final leg of its three-year review process, African diamond-producing states have everything to gain from expanding the mechanism’s scope. What role will SA play? Often uncompelled by the mere moral imperatives behind human rights or environmental concerns in mining, African governments tend to defer more readily to appeals to the “bottom line” in taking bold policy steps to address such issues. However, in the mining sector, and for diamonds specifically, serious environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues and the “bottom line” have again converged. Here, in dismissing civil society and recent industry calls to address them, African governments would be — to use a mining metaphor — ignoring the sector’s canary.