Men work at Makala gold mine camp near the town of Mongbwalu in Ituri province, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo on April 7, 2018. (Photo by Goran Tomasevic/Reuters)

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)

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)

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 illegal gold miner of Kamoro people, Tinus, pan for gold on February 4, 2017 in Timika, Papua Province, Indonesia. Indonesia produces over 70 billion dollars in gold a year and is home to the largest gold mine and the third largest copper mine in the world, the Grasberg mine, which is located at West Papua. (Photo by Ulet Ifansasti/Getty Images)

Boys play basketball in the facilities of Belarus' Republican Clinic of Speleotherapy within a salt mine, as part of their treatment, near the town of Soligorsk, south of Minsk, February 19, 2015. According to the state clinic, more than 7,000 children and adults seek medical treatment for respiratory illness each year in the subsurface chambers of its facilities, located 420 metres underground between layers of potassium and stone salts in an operational salt mine. (Photo by Vasily Fedosenko/Reuters)

The old church of Geamana village is seen partially submerged by polluted water tainted with cyanide and other chemicals near Rosia Montana, central Romania, March 24, 2014. (Photo by Bogdan Cristel/Reuters)

A woman reacts while walking among the ruins of damaged buildings following heavy fighting between government troops and Kurdish fighters, on March 2, 2016 in the southeastern Turkey Kurdish town of Cizre, near the border with Syria and Iraq. Thousands in Turkey's Kurdish-majority town of Cizre started returning to their homes today after authorities partially lifted a curfew in place since December for a controversial military operation to root out separatist rebels. (Photo by Yasin Akgül/AFP Photo)