b'Production took a dive before the 2008 economic crisis, and it suffered another setback with the onset of COVID-19. Now, the industry is grappling with the Russia question, setting the stage for an interesting decade for natural diamond supply. L ike coal, oil and gas, diamonds are a non-renewable resource. Molded by a combination of intense heat and pressure over billions of years, they are neither easily formed nor easily replaced.For every diamond you take out of the ground, theres one fewer to be found, Gemological Institute of America research scientist Evan Smith says. Still, the industry has not reached a point where the Earth has no more diamonds to give. There are large pock-ets of land all around the globe that could be diamond tar-gets, Smith says, and exploration is ongoing in remote places like the Melville Peninsula and Baffin Island in the far northern reaches of his home country, Canada.There are more diamonds believed to be buried deep in another bitterly cold climate, Siberia, and beneath the ocean floor.South of the Equator, one African nation is poised to become the only country in the world where the three largest diamond minersAlrosa, De Beers Group and Rio Tintoall have a presence: Angola. DIAMOND S U P P L The question facing the industry is how51economically, and in some cases politically, viable is it to get to the ones that are left? YWHERE DOES THE INDUSTRY GO FROM HERE?BY MICHELLE GRAFFNATIONAL JEWELER'