「经济学人」Jaded nation

Local indigenous groups are happy that jade mines will no longer scar their lands

IN 2008 JADE WEST, a small Canadian mining company, was selling nephrite jade for $20 per kilo. Then the Chinese market woke up. The Chinese government ran a campaign to promote nephrite jade during the Beijing Olympics, sparking interest in the gemstone from Chinese consumers. The price surged to between $200 and $2,000 a kilo, depending on quality.

Now jade prices have crashed back down to earth. In May the government of British Columbia ordered all jade mining in the north-west part of the province to cease within five years. The Tahltan Nation, an indigenous group whose territory covers rich seams of mineral deposits in British Columbia, had long lobbied for this due to environmental concerns. Softening demand and meagre tax revenues made the decision an easy one. Miners are upset. “My legacy has certainly been tarnished at this moment by this decision,” says Jade West’s founder, Kirk Makepeace.

Beauty not beheld

For the Tahltan Nation, harms associated with jade mining always outweighed its benefits. “The extraction of jade is quasi-unregulated and performed only on a seasonal basis with minimal seasonal workers,” says Gordon Infanti of the Tahltan Central Government. “It extracts millions of dollars of resources from Tahltan territory…and ships this jade direct to Asia with zero benefits going to the Tahltan Nation and negative benefits to the province.”

The environmental impact of jade mining came to attention through a reality show, “Jade Fever”. Featuring the jade-mining Bunce family, who had been in the business for generations, the show started in 2015 when demand and prices were still high. But while it brought in some tourists and jade-hunters, it also put the jade miners on the Tahltan Nation’s radar. The group filed for an eviction notice to shut down the filming of the show in 2019.

Claudia Bunce, the family matriarch, blames infighting between jade-mining companies for their failure to work together to come up with a plan to continue operations. But the real cause of Ms Bunce’s misfortune, and her earlier luck, was the behaviour of 900m Chinese consumers, some 9,000km to the west.

This article appeared in the The Americas section of the print edition under the headline “Jaded”(May 30th 2024)

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