In Vietnam, the mighty Mekong’s banks are crumbling as illegal sand miners run riot – South China Morning Post
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…”
A Plan to Avert a Vast Oil Spill Off Yemen Finally Moves Ahead – the New York Times
A decaying tanker holds about four times the amount of oil leaked in the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster. Experts have warned that it is an ecological time bomb that could explode or disintegrate at any moment.
A crew that plans to inspect the rusting tanker set sail on Monday from Djibouti in East Africa to the port of Hudaydah on Yemen’s west coast, arriving on Tuesday. The tanker is moored north of the port city and was once the site of fierce battles in the country’s eight-year-old war, which created one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises…
Fossil-Fuel Interests Try to Weaken Global Plastics Treaty – Scientific American
Good news: the world is discussing a treaty to stem plastic pollution. Bad news: fossil-fuel interests are trying to weaken it.
An international effort to rein in plastic pollution is running into resistance from China, Saudi Arabia and other nations that see a future in plastics amid declining demand for oil, gas and coal.
That debate is playing out over the terms of a prospective global treaty that could set limits on plastic production and consumption. Environmentalists last year scored a landmark victory when 175 countries agreed to write a treaty designed to address the problems with plastic, which kills wildlife and contributes to climate change.
But the terms of that treaty are still very much a work in progress. International negotiators are meeting this week in Paris for the second of five U.N.-led deliberations scheduled over the next year and a half, and so far the discussion hasn’t yielded much headway.
One obstacle is chemistry. Another is diplomacy…
S A N D : Essential . . . Unregulated . . . and Dwindling
“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…” – The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) February 2023 Older […]
Global sand trade figures don’t add up – Beneath the Sands ERC
Huge global demand is fuelling illegal trade in high-grade sand, one reason for a gap in export and import data.
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
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 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 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
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…