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De Beers Group published its 2025 Sustainability Report, highlighting significant progress across its Building Forever sustainability framework, with advances in livelihoods, nature conservation, climate action and diamond provenance. Key achievements during 2025 include: Reducing Scope 1 and 2 carbon emissions by 14% since 2021, progressing towards De Beers Group’s science-based target to reduce its carbon footprint by one third by 2030. Supporting 2.6 jobs offsite for every one job created onsite, as the Group works towards its ambition to support four offsite jobs for every onsite role by 2030. Managing 375,000 acres of land for conservation across Southern Africa, alongside continued investment in nature-positive initiatives and biodiversity conservation. Supporting the designation of Angola’s first Ramsar Wetland, helping protect the source of 95% of the water flowing into the Okavango Delta through the Okavango Eternal partnership with National Geographic. Achieving the safest year in De Beers Group’s history, with a 19% reduction in Total Recordable Injury Frequency Rate compared with 2024 and zero work-related fatalities. Passing the milestone of five million rough diamonds individually scanned on Tracr, strengthening transparency and traceability across the natural diamond value chain. Training a further 500 women through EntreprenHER, delivered with UN Women and government partners, taking the total number of women trained through the programme to more than 3,900 since 2016. Committing to invest US$70 million to the Diamonds for Development Fund in Botswana, supporting the country’s ambition to accelerate long-term economic diversification. These achievements are detailed in the Group's 2025 Sustainability Report, published here. Al Cook, Chief Executive Officer of De Beers Group, said: “At De Beers, we believe natural diamonds can do more than sparkle. Through the natural diamond value chain, they can support jobs, skills development, nature conservation and climate action in diamond-producing countries. During 2025, De Beers Group sharpened its focus on a set of ambitious sustainability targets where the business can make the greatest difference, aligned with partner country priorities, global standards and UN Sustainable Development Goals. We are proud of the progress we are making to ensure every diamond we recover creates lasting impact for people, communities and the environment, but we also understand that this requires sharp focus, deliberate action and constant monitoring. As the pace of change around us increases, and as the risks and opportunities ahead of us become clearer, so must our commitment to progress grow.” Sandrine Conseiller, CEO, De Beers Brands, added, "We’re pleased to share our 2025 sustainability achievements, demonstrating that our ambitions can lead to real, impactful change. Consumers increasingly expect the brands they choose to consider their wider impact, not as something exceptional, but as a matter of course. This report is about showing what De Beers' sustainability commitments mean in practice, sharing openly the actions we are taking and the impact we are having, so customers can choose natural diamonds with confidence, knowing the value they create reaches far beyond the diamond itself." Other achievements in the Group’s Building Forever focus areas include: Nature De Beers has managed nature reserves in Southern Africa for more than 130 years, and our sites have biodiversity management programmes to avoid, reduce or restore our impact on nature. Today, De Beers’ conservation efforts are helping to protect vast swathes of land and keystone species across Southern Africa. Overall, De Beers Group manages 375,000 acres of land for conservation, and continues to explore scalable, nature-positive models across its conservation properties. The Okavango Eternal partnership with National Geographic reached a major milestone with the designation of Angola’s first Ramsar Wetland, helping protect the source of 95% of the water flowing into the Okavango Delta, the world’s largest inland delta and one of the most biodiverse areas in Africa. With Debswana, a joint enterprise between the Government of the Republic of Botswana and De Beers Group, De Beers celebrated the birth of the 70th rhino calf born safely on our nature reserves in Botswana since our rhino conservation efforts began in 2012, while the Group also successfully translocated 31 rhinos to support wider rewilding efforts in the region. Looking ahead, De Beers Group aims to secure three times more land for nature than we impact and fund partnerships that aim to safeguard a further 13 million acres by 2030, through our continued partnership and support with Debswana, National Geographic and local organisations delivering our nature conservation ambitions. Climate By aiming to reduce the climate impact of our operations and developing partnerships to accelerate the energy transition, De Beers is working towards a lower carbon future that benefits everyone. De Beers Group has reduced its Scope 1 and 2 carbon emissions by 14% since 2021, progressing towards the Group’s SBTi-approved targets to reduce its carbon footprint by a third by 2030. As part of its focus on reducing carbon emissions, De Beers Group is proud to support Envusa, which brings 520MW of renewable energy to southern Africa, from solar and wind. Envusa forms part of a broader portfolio of climate initiatives designed to reduce emissions across the natural diamond value chain in a transparent and responsible way. Other examples of this work include advancing trials to create ‘drop in’ biofuels, progressing pioneering tyre circularity initiatives with Anglo American and Sasol, and supporting Kelp Blue, an award-winning startup that grows Giant Kelp on a large-scale off the coast of Namibia, to help sequester carbon, support the re-wilding of oceans and create a range of jobs and products that support the local economy. Priorities for the next phase of progress include accelerating the reduction in Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions through further expanding renewable energy capacity, focusing on the electrification of mining equipment and enhancing supplier engagement to address Scope 3 emissions. Livelihoods Natural diamonds have an inherently human story to tell - through jobs they create, communities they build, and societies they support. For over a century, natural diamonds have acted as an engine for economic growth. Today, the diamond industry continues to play a role in supporting the economic diversification of the countries we operate in. The Stanford Seed programme, which focuses on providing leadership training, management coaching and networking tools to help SMEs in De Beers’ southern African diamond producing partner countries grow, has now supported 128 businesses since launch. The EntreprenHER programme, run in partnership with UN Women to support opportunities for female entrepreneurs in diamond producing partner countries, trained a further 500 women in 2025, taking the total number of women trained since 2016 to 3,900. Overall, for every job that we created onsite, De Beers supported 2.6 jobs offsite in 2025, continuing towards the Group’s commitment to support 4 jobs offsite for every 1 job onsite by 2030. The recent establishment of the Diamonds for Development Fund in Botswana in partnership with the Government of the Republic of Botswana carries the ambition to support the country’s emerging knowledge-based economy and accelerate its long-term economic diversification. De Beers Group has committed to make an initial investment to the value of BWP1 billion (approximately USD70 million) to deliver a transformative positive impact in the country. This priority is also reflected in De Beers’ ambition and ongoing support through programmes such as Stanford Seed, EntreprenHER and the Diamond Entrepreneurship Programme, an incubation initiative designed to help local small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) scale in cutting, polishing, jewellery design, and trading. Provenance Every natural diamond goes on a unique journey, from deep in the earth to its polished form, touching countless lives along the way. De Beers Group continued to strengthen industry standards and diamond traceability during 2025. The Group marked the 20th year of its Best Practice Principles programme, a rigorous set of standards, compliance with which is third-party audited. The programme covers around a quarter of a million people across more than 70 countries – including all De Beers Group operations globally, as well as all Sightholder customers and their diamond-related contractors. The Group also ensured 100% of its precious metal suppliers met rigorous sourcing standards to supply gold, platinum, and silver to its De Beers London and Forevermark retail brands. With regards to traceability, Tracr passed the milestone of five million rough diamonds being individually registered on the blockchain-backed diamond traceability platform Tracr also established a new partnership with Sarine to integrate rough diamond source registration with advanced scanning data, helping to create an end-to-end, cost-effective traceability solution to verify a diamond's journey. The Tracr platform also provided the traceability backbone for the De Beers London capsule collection using GemFair diamonds developed in 2025, demonstrating that artisanally mined diamonds can be purchased ethically and transparently by luxury brands. These developments help provide greater confidence to consumers, retailers and industry partners in a diamond's provenance and journey through the value chain. The expansion of the Tracr platform’s reach represents the key area of future focus for the work on provenance. While the platform has continued to scale, with the onboarding of suppliers such as the Okavango Diamond Company, there remains the potential for the platform to expand to other production sources and bring on more midstream participants.

Tag: African diamond producing

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