Outsiders question a mining company’s genuine goodwill toward conservation; the nature of its business, after all, involves extracting wealth from the earth. But De Beers dedicates six acres of land to conservation for every acre it mines, and the Oppenheimers have implemented progressive, far-reaching conservation initiatives that include the reintroduction of endangered species, scientific and biodiversity research and ecotourism. The De Beers Fund, the company’s social investment agency, spends an average of 23 million rand ($4 million at current exchange rates) annually on South African projects. It also has invested more than 135 million rand ($23.4 million) in more than 2,500 projects in South Africa in the past few years.De Beers is also working with government agencies to pursue large-scale programs such as the Transfrontier Conservation Area, a revolutionary concept that would promote the management of wildlife and cultural resources across borders with South Africa, Zimbabwe and Botswana. While the first portion of the South African park opened in September, it may take years for the trinational park to become a reality.  | SIR ERNEST and Lady Oppenheimer. |
The company’s 198,000-acre Venetia Limpopo Nature Reserve (VLNR), adjacent to its Venetia mine, is being integrated into the proposed conservation area. De Beers has committed more than $10 million to the project. At VLNR, De Beers has successfully funded a program—in cooperation with Endangered Wildlife Trust, Oxford University’s Wildlife Conservation Research Unit and Land Rover South Africa—to reintroduce the threatened South African wild dog to its homeland. “In addition to wild dogs, we reintroduced dozens of elephants into this reserve that have been absent from the area for more than 50 years,” says Warwick Mostert, manager of the reserve and a 10-year veteran of the company’s 65-person ecology division.
The family is using its private 470,000-acre game reserve in the Kalahari Desert, known as Tswalu, to create an economically sustainable environmental model for future reserves. The current force behind many of the conservation efforts is Jonathan Oppenheimer, who joined the family business only four years ago, after traveling and working in the banking industry in London. Because he was not employed by De Beers at the time, he also managed to spend six months traveling in the United States, where he met his wife, Jennifer, an American. The couple has three children. Jonathan, boyishly clean-shaven and jovial in a more formal manner than his father, is now managing director of De Beers Consolidated Mines, the company that runs the seven De Beers mines in South Africa.
When conversation turns to the game reserves and other good deeds, Jonathan speaks candidly, to the point of contrition. “We always had the intention of wanting to do good work in the community,” he says, “but from time to time, because we thought we knew the answer better than others, we have been more prescriptive than working in partnerships. Since the end of apartheid, we have been moving away from that style, and we’re more inclusive.”
When asked what he means by “prescriptive,” he admits that “in the old days” De Beers might have parachuted into an impoverished community and established a school. Today, De Beers engages the local community, and they jointly decide that a school is needed, making locals part of the process and giving them an interest in seeing it succeed. He adds, “The real lesson we learned in the last 10 years is that we have to partner with people.”
Jill Newman has written about jewelry, gemstones and watches for Worth, Robb Report, New York Magazine and W. Additional reporting by Daniel DelRe.
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