Sand Mining Threatens South Africa’s Coast

The time has come for the government to consider a total ban on any sand mining in South African rivers to curb serious environmental damage and the growing risk of severe erosion damage to coastal cities like Durban.

Sand Dredging Threatening Tourism at Top-Rated Kenya Beach

Unless measures are taken to halt dredging along the south coast beaches once and for all, one of Kenya’s greatest tourism resources could be damaged beyond repair and turn from a crowd puller and award winner in the space of a few months into a marine desert landscape.

Kenya: Leave the sand on Diani Beach

Tourism stakeholders in Kenya and local residents of Diani Beach south of Mombasa are up in arms over plans to extract some 5 million tons of sand from award-winning Diani tourist beach.

Illegal Sand Mining in South Africa, a Report

Natural sand from estuary and coastal land is one of South Africa’s most valuable resources. However, there has recently been a drastic increase in uncontrolled and unauthorised sand mining activities in rivers, valleys and estuaries throughout the country.

Protect the World’s Deltas

Nile Delta Desert Islands, batik on silk by © Mary Edna Fraser 52” x 36”, 1999

The rich delta ecosystem and the services it provides, storm protection, nutrient and pollution removal and carbon storage, are being destroyed. Worldwide deltas are on course to drown, starved of sediment by dams and dikes, and fragmented by economic development. Rising seas compound the sediment crisis.

Why Sand Is Disappearing ; By John R. Gillis

To those of us who visit beaches only in summer, they seem as permanent a part of our natural heritage as the Rocky Mountains and the Great Lakes. But shore dwellers know differently. Beaches are the most transitory of landscapes, and sand beaches the most vulnerable of all.