As sand miners prosper in Uganda, a vital lake basin suffers – AP News

Sand Mining (by Sumaira Abdulali, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia).

The excavator grunts in the heart of the wetland, baring its teeth. There are trucks waiting to be loaded with sand, and more almost certainly on the way.
This is how it is here daily in Lwera — a central Ugandan region on the fringes of Lake Victoria: a near-constant demand for sand that’s exerting pressure on a wetland that’s home to locals and animals and feeds into Africa’s largest freshwater lake…

In Vietnam, the mighty Mekong’s banks are crumbling as illegal sand miners run riot – South China Morning Post

Unauthorized sand mining at the Tatai River in the Koh Kong Conservation Corridor, Cambodia 2012 (by Wikirictor, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia).

When the retaining wall of Vietnamese fish farmer Ho Thi Bich Tuyen’s catfish pond collapsed into the Hau River several years ago, she knew who was to blame: illegal sand miners.
“They took the sand, and the riverbed just kept going lower and lower,” she said. “There were so many of them. The sand miners came close to the riverbank. So I told the local ward officials to shoo them away, but at night they came back again…”

S A N D : Essential . . . Unregulated . . . and Dwindling

Sand Mining in Quarry Lake, Tahirpur, Bangladesh (by Hasin Hayder on unsplash).

“Sand is the foundation of human construction and a fundamental ingredient in concrete, asphalt, glass and other building materials. But sand, like other natural resources, is limited and its ungoverned extraction is driving erosion, flooding, the salination of aquifers and the collapse of coastal defences…”

Global sand trade figures don’t add up – Beneath the Sands ERC

Comparing Global Exports and Imports of Natural Sands, 2020 (Treemap visualization created with Harvard University's Atlas of Economic Complexity application online, May 30, 2023).

On March 17, more than 120 tons of sand packed into drums was loaded onto the Basle Express, a container freight ship more than three soccer fields long. The ship was docked in one of America’s major ports, Savannah, Georgia, in the Southeast region of the country.

The shipment itself was not remarkable — except for how it is emblematic of the international sand trade, highlighting the type of sand that attracts foreign buyers, the countries that are buying and those that are selling…

We can’t run away – Beneath the Sands ERC

Sand collecting in Mekong (by Yosomono CC BY 2.0 via Flickr).

The rise in sand demand endangers the lives of children, laborers, journalists and environmental defenders.

Greed over grains of sand has a fatal human cost: As cities rise and countries urbanize, sand-related murders and other associated crimes have taken a toll on poverty-stricken communities.

In parts of the globe, where sand is extracted, criminal gangs and sand mafias control the multi-billion dollar trade, spawning violence in land-rich, developing nations. On their trail are hundreds of people — miners, journalists and environmental defenders — reported to have been killed, imprisoned or threatened…

Women against the grain – Beneath the Sands ERC

Women in a community meeting, Mumbai, India (by Simone D. McCourtie, World Bank Photo Collection CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 via Flickr).

Women in Cambodia, India, Kenya and Indonesia share how they are on the frontlines in the resistance against powerful sand mining operations in their communities.

In a trade that is dominated and driven by men, women often bear the burden of the negative social and environmental impacts from sand mining activities across the world. This is evident in much of our reporting on the global industry. As is common with many environmental issues we face today, we feel that the disproportionate burden to women is a heavily underreported issue…

Beneath the Sands Series – the Environmental Reporting Collective

The dredger ship "Hansitha" on the Mundakkal coast near Kollam, India (by Arunvrparavur CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia).

The greed for grains of sand comes at an ecological disaster and fatal human cost; murders and other associated crimes which have taken a toll on poverty-stricken communities, particularly women.

The ERC investigation, Beneath the Sands, exposes how greed for grains of sand comes at a fatal human cost: As cities rise in number and countries urbanize rapidly, sand mining-related murders and other associated crimes have taken a toll on poverty-stricken communities…

Nowhere to fish, nowhere to farm – Beneath the Sands ERC

Collecting sand, Laos, 2018 (by Mary Newcombe CC BY-NC 2.0 via Flickr).

Across Asia and Africa, countries are dealing with massive sand mining that destroys fishing grounds, farmlands, and homes.

Beting Aceh, an island in Riau Province, Indonesia, has been Eryanto’s home for 40 years. The island is known for its white sandy beaches and clean ocean water; more than half its residents are fishers.

But the island has drastically changed over the past two years. The ocean water is getting murky, the beach is shrinking, and it has suffered from massive erosion, indicated by the uprooted trees strewn along the coast. Many villagers say the damage is linked to a sand mining operation happening between Beting Aceh and the neighboring Babi Island…

Reclamation: A flawed solution – Beneath the Sands ERC

Centara Three Island Reclamation Project(by Maldives Transport & Contracting Company CC BY-SA 1.0 via Wikimedia).

A deep dive into the rationale behind some of Asia’s reclamation projects, the toll they take on our environment and communities, and the search for more sustainable alternatives.

Reclamation is seen as a solution for countries to deal with increasing land demands, by expanding their territory and rehabilitating previously uninhabitable lands or seas. Yet, the process guzzles an alarming amount of sand, causing massive environmental damage as well as a rise of transnational criminal syndicates trading in illegal sand..