Excerpt:
Over 20 years ago, then Indonesian president Megawati Soekarnoputri banned the export of sea sand from her archipelago nation….
The ban was in response to the widespread environmental and economic damage it was causing. Unchecked sea sand exports destroyed 26 sand islands in Riau Province in Sumatra. In western Java’s Banten Province, sand mining eroded the shoreline and destroyed coral reefs. Even after the ban, illegal sand mining continued but at a lesser rate.
Where did the sand go? By and large, Singapore. As Indonesian islands shrank, its tiny but rich neighbour grew. Sea sand from Indonesia and other nations has been used to expand Singapore’s land area by 24%.
Before the trade was banned in 2002, more than 50 million tonnes of sand a year were shipped to Singapore. With Indonesian sand restricted, Singapore imported sand from Malaysia instead, until that nation, too, banned it in 2019.
But now sea sand mining is set to return to Indonesia. In 2023, then-president Joko Widodo lifted the ban. Last year, the government listed seven areas around Indonesia where sand mining could resume. Up to 17 billion cubic metres of sand would be legally permitted to be extracted.
This is bad news for the environment – and for fishers who will see their catches fall. The good news is there are emerging alternatives, such as sand from a clean by-product or co-product of metal-ore mining…
