This photo taken on May 17, 2019 shows rough rubies displayed at the gems market in Mogok town, north of Mandalay. Burrowing deep underground, thousands of informal miners risk their lives to find gleaming red gems as a law change spurs opportunity in Myanmar's “land of rubies”. (Photo by Ye Aung Thu/AFP Photo)

A miner sits front of the statue of St. Barbara, saint of the miners, during last working day at Hungary's last hard coal deep-cast mine at Markushegy December 23, 2014.The underground mine, west of the capital city Budapest, has to stop producing coal at the end of this year in line with a European Union effort to shut down uncompetitive hard coal mines. (Photo by Laszlo Balogh/Reuters)

An employee walks near a rotary dredge which works on the coal face of the Borodinsky opencast colliery, near the Siberian town of Borodino, east of Krasnoyarsk, December 9, 2014. The Borodinsky colliery, 9 km (5.6 miles) long and more than 100 meters (328 feet) deep, annually produces more than 20 million tons of coal and is considered to be the biggest opencast coal mine in Russia, according to official representatives. (Photo by Ilya Naymushin/Reuters)

Marcelo Gutierrez of Colombia in action during the Valparaiso mountain bike downhill race in Valparaiso, Chile on February 11, 2018. Runners from around the world participated in the mountain bike race on the streets of the port. (Photo by Rodrigo Garrido/Reuters)

City buildings stand beyond the giant excavated hole left by the Mir mine, a former open pit diamond mine, in Mirny, Russia, on Tuesday, November 12, 2013. OAO Alrosa, the world's largest diamond producer, raised about $1.3 billion in an oversubscribed share sale from investors including Oppenheimer Funds Inc. and Lazard Ltd.'s asset-management unit, First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov said. (Photo by Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg)

A resident looks at a wildfire in Vina del Mar, Chile, March 12, 2017. Forest fires are a regular feature of Chile's hot, arid summers, but a nearly decade-long drought combined with historically high temperatures have created tinder-like conditions in the nation's central regions. (Photo by Rodrigo Garrido/Reuters)

Demonstrators wear skull masks during an anti government protest, as Chile's President Michelle Bachelet delivers a speech inside the National Congress, in Valparaiso city, Chile May 21, 2016. (Photo by Ivan Alvarado/Reuters)

These sand-swept images show the ghostly remains of what was once a mineral-rich mining community. In its heyday, the town of Kolmanskop, Namibia, was home to about 700 families. Now all that remains are empty homes filled with sand, while cast-off items such as bathtubs are scattered about the surrounding area. Over time, the sand of the stunning dunes that encircle the town of Kolmanskop has been blown towards the abandoned residences, coating everything from streets to the interiors of houses and workshops. Here: Kolmankop, an abandoned mining town in Namibia. (Photo by David Ogden/Caters News)