Diamond miner De Beers Group’s 2025 Sustainability Report has outlined progress in its ‘Building Forever’ sustainability framework, with advances in livelihoods, nature conservation, climate action and diamond provenance.

Key achievements highlighted include reducing Scope 1 and 2 carbon emissions by 14% since 2021, progressing towards its Science Based Targets initiative-approved targets to reduce its carbon footprint by a third by 2030.

The miner has also supported energy trader Envusa Energy, which brings renewable energy to Southern Africa.

Envusa forms part of a broader portfolio of climate initiatives designed to reduce emissions across De Beers’ natural diamond value chain.

In South Africa, through the Envusa partnership, 48 MW of contracted renewable-energy capacity was built and energised last year, supporting the planned transition of the group’s Venetia mine towards renewable electricity supply from this year.

Moreover, Venetia mine signed a memorandum of agreement with Roads Agency Limpopo and the Limpopo Department of Public Works, Roads and Infrastructure to support road upgrades in the Musina and Blouberg areas.

Also in the country, De Beers Sightholder Sales South Africa launched the third intake of the Enterprise Development Project for Diamond Beneficiators, delivered in partnership with Raizcorp, supporting entrepreneurship and participation in South Africa’s diamond value chain.

Meanwhile, De Beers has also advanced trials to create ‘drop in’ biofuels, progressing pioneering tyre circularity initiatives with Anglo American and Sasol, and supporting Kelp Blue, a startup that grows Giant Kelp on a large scale off the coast of Namibia, to help sequester carbon, support the rewilding 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.

The miner says it has also supported 2.6 jobs offsite for every one job created onsite, as the group works toward its ambition to support four offsite jobs for every onsite role by 2030.

The report shows that De Beers manages 375 000 acres of land for conservation across Southern Africa, alongside continued investment in nature-positive initiatives and biodiversity conservation.

It has also supported 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.

Looking ahead, De Beers Group aims to secure three times more land for nature than it impacts and to fund partnerships that aim to safeguard a further 13-million acres by 2030, through its continued support of and partnership with Debswana, National Geographic and local organisations.

The report highlights that 2025 was 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.

Meanwhile, 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.

The expansion of the Tracr platform’s reach represents the key area of future focus for the work on provenance, the group points out.

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, it avers.

Further, 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.

De Beers has also committed to invest $70-million with the Diamonds for Development Fund in Botswana, supporting the country’s ambition to accelerate long-term economic diversification.

CEO Al Cook says the group sharpened its focus on a set of “ambitious” sustainability targets where the business believed it could make the greatest difference during 2025. These targets 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,” he avers.