Diamonds are rare inside Earth; there is a limited supply.

Contrary to common belief successfully achieved through the marketing by diamond miners, diamonds are not at all rare inside Earth.

There are vast resources of diamonds inside Earth; their availability is limited only by the rate at which they are mined. Scientists now estimate that a quadrillion tons of diamonds lie deep beneath the Earth's surface (CNN).

Diamond production has increased 100 fold annually from less than 2 million carats earlier last century to more than 180 million carats today. Throughout that period, clever marketers have kept telling the story about the world running out of diamonds.

Diamond mining now happens at an industrial scale unlike any other human activity. There is nothing romantic or natural about the industrial mining of diamonds.

A 2018 study estimated that there may be more than a quadrillion tons of diamond deep inside Earth, beyond the reach of mining.

"This shows that diamond is not perhaps this exotic mineral, but on the [geological] scale of things, it's relatively common," said Ulrich Faul, a research scientist in MIT's Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences.

Since the introduction of diamond marketing, brands have implemented strategies to portray diamonds as a scarce commodity to control the supply and demand and to sell them at higher price points. Every other year there is placed media coverage about the world running out of diamonds.

Mining production is also scaled much more easily than aboveground production.

Misleading Marketing by Diamond Miners

According to a U.S. ruling, the diamond mining cartel engaged in deceptive marketing regarding mined natural diamonds’ scarcity.

The National Advertising Division (NAD), the U.S. advertising industry’s independent self-regulatory body, asked the Natural Diamond Council (NDC), now renamed to “The Diamond Collective” to hide its advocacy of natural diamonds, to stop making certain claims regarding mined gems’ eco-impact and scarcity.

The National Advertising Division objected to claims in the Natural Diamond Council’s online advertising, which emphasizes the increasing scarcity of natural diamonds, arguing it did not have a “reasonable basis” for those claims.

These claims “create a sense of urgency about the supply of natural diamonds that is not supported by the evidence,” the National Advertising Division said.

The decision said that while most diamond forecasts have suggested mined diamond production will decline, the Natural Diamond Council’s communications convey an “unsupported message that the decline is irreversible and will absolutely and dramatically impact consumers who wish to purchase natural diamonds in the coming years,” and “that consumers might become ‘priced out’ of the diamond market and unable to purchase natural diamonds in the future, and that they must therefore act now.”

Among the claims the National Advertising Division advised be discontinued:

• “…full carat and larger natural diamonds are becoming rarer by the day as supply continues to decrease and no significant deposits have been found in decades.”
• “Natural diamonds are finite and rare. The number of recovered diamonds peaked in 2005 and will decrease significantly over the next decade. Diamonds are becoming rarer every day because no new discoveries have been made in about 30 years.”