The True Values ​​of a Sapphire In today's globalized world, relationships between distant nations have grown significantly. Events that happen on one side of the world can also be known and influence a country on the opposite side. These relationships also allow industries to expand into different countries and acquire natural resources on a global scale. In the gemstone industry, Madagascar is widely prized for the abundant sapphires that can be found in Ankarana National Park (Walsh 2005:660). Although sapphires are prized throughout the world as gemstones, the values ​​of sapphires are different from those living in Madagascar. Sapphires mined in Ankarana National Park have gained economic and aesthetic value in the globalizing world from the Malagasy miners who extract them from the park, from foreign buyers who sell them to the rest of the world, and from consumers who purchase them. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essayThe values ​​of sapphires from Madagascar are obtained for the first time in Ankarana National Park. While ecotourists travel from afar to experience the caves, the 330 known species of plant life, and over 100 animal species that make their home in the park, thousands of Malagasy migrant miners use the park to illegally mine for sapphires (Walsh 2012: xviii -xix). Starting in 1996, when foreign buyers of gemstones arrived in Ambondromifehy, the local sapphire trade attracted many Malagasy migrants to the region (2004: 228). The sapphire boom provided the opportunity for many Malagasy prospectors to profit as these foreign buyers offered money for the sapphires (2012: 14). This flow of migrant workers is similar to that of men and women who lived and moved to the Mexican countryside in the 1950s and 1960s (Soto Lavega 2005: 749). There, Mexican migrants desperately searched for barbasco, a Mexican yam, which at the time was the best raw material for pharmaceutical technology and chemical advances in the world of medicines (2005: 744). Syntex, a Mexican company dedicated to the industrialization and production of progesterone, began paying Mexican villagers to enter the jungle to extract barbasco from the ground (2005: 749-750). In both cases, the inhabitants of each nation were paid to extract the desired object from the ground, attributing to those objects an economic value that they did not have before. Before the exchange value acquired by both sapphires and barbasco, Malagasy and Mexican villagers had no use for what they were mining. In Madagascar, the only people in the region who appreciated sapphires before the arrival of foreign buyers were children who used them as ammunition in slingshots (Walsh 2012: 23), while in Mexico barbasco was known as a fish poison and as a annoying weed. that was found in the cornfields until outsiders came to “teach” the local population the commercial value it had in the global economy (Soto Laveaga 2005: 753). Even though the economic value of sapphires drove so many people to join the Ankarana sapphire rush in the late 1990s, many people “took a risk” (Walsh 2012: 25). According to Andrew Walsh, taking a risk meant consciously investing time and effort into something that might not ultimately pay off. This was true for many Malagasy people, who moved to Ambondromifehy from other areas of Madagascar with almost nothing and noinformation or contact to carry out illegal mining activities within the Ankarana National Park (2012: 25). Once they began work, miners acted courageously and entered unstable shafts, jumped chasms in caves, defied police intentions to keep them out of the park, and transgressed local or inherited taboos with little regard for potential consequences, which included arrests. , serious injury, and death (2012: 26). These types of market externalities are common when extracting any natural resource. In Mexico, thorns and snakes in the jungle made searching for barbasco very difficult, and injuries were common (Soto Laveaga 2005: 751). Although the pursuit of natural resources such as sapphires and barbasco carried so many risks, the people of these nations continued to seek them for profit. The economic value that the Malagasy had placed on sapphires only came after foreign traders entered Madagascar in 1996 (Walsh 2004: 228). While both traders and miners profit from sapphires, foreign traders have a much higher income than those performing manual labor (Walsh 2012:37). Although they sold the same sapphires, the difference in profit stemmed from differences in knowledge between different cultures (2012: 46). The Malagasy did not believe that sapphires were only used for jewelry, even though they were told so (2012: 47). This “known ignorance” was one of the factors that prevented miners from earning more from sapphires (2012: 47). Even though Malagasy miners did not earn as much as foreign buyers, many local Malagasy still rushed into the Ankarana National Park illegally to mine, as they knew there was a possibility of profit. This is different from the ecotourism industry in Ankarana, where there are nowhere near as many local Malagasy workers as there are in the sapphire trade due to international companies wanting to make more profits (Gezon 2014: 826). Since 1989, when AGNAP took over management of the protected areas and became responsible for paying salaries and operating costs, ecotourism was supposed to benefit the local people of Ankarana, but failed to do so (2014: 824-826). Ecotourism projects tended to employ low-paid indigenous labour, provide limited training and offer inadequate compensation for the purchase of local food and crafts, and the highest-paid tour guides were not local and were employed by tour operators (2014: 826 ). Although there seems to be no connection between ecotourism and sapphires in Ankarana, there is a connection between the two industries, namely Ankarana National Park (Walsh 2012: 49). The irony between Malagasy miners and the ecotourism industry is that ecotourism, which was supposed to create jobs for Madagascar's local population, is based on excluding locals from the park who mine there, giving while providing easy access to tourists wealthy enough to travel there. and pay membership fees (Gezon 2014: 825). While many are involved in Ankarana sapphires for their economic value, sapphire consumers around the world place a different value on them. These global consumers value sapphires for their aesthetic value (Walsh 2012: 46). Around the world, sapphires are used in the production of luxury goods such as rings, earrings and necklaces (2012: 46). Despite the processing they undergo to look the way they do when purchased by consumers, these stones are seen as unique, authentic, and one-of-a-kind, similar to the experiences ecotourists hope to gain (2012: 90). With)