page_title: Sand smuggling in Southeast Asia
section_title: Environmental
hierarchical_section_title: Sand smuggling in Southeast Asia / Consequences of sand smuggling / Environmental
caption_attribution_description: English: Beach erosion at the mouth of Noosa River, Noosa North Shore beach, Queensland, Australia
context_page_description: Sand smuggling is a cross-border environmental crime which describes the illegal transportation of often illegally extracted natural sand and gravel. While sand smuggling and illegal mining are global concerns, they are especially acute in Asia, where continuing urbanization and the region’s large construction boom are driving the increasing demand for sand. The negative consequences of excessive sand mining and smuggling, which are strongly connected, reach from environmental degradation to geopolitical tension.
  Illegal sand smuggling and extraction, despite the enormous importance of the resource, remain under-researched, and for the most part hidden threats because they are often happening in isolated places. The issue is rarely addressed in scientific research and policy forums and instead it is the media and non-governmental organizations that are at the forefront of exposing environmental crimes and actions of corruption in the sand industry.
context_section_description: Desert sand is not suitable for construction or land reclamation because it is too smooth to provide the necessary stability. Therefore, sand has to be mined from land quarries and riverbeds, but because of the decline of inland sources mining is shifting to seabeds and coasts where the extraction causes serious environmental damages. The consequences include: Loss of biodiversity, loss of land and changes of landscapes due to erosion, changes to the hydrological function of rivers and ocean currents, polluting and shortening of water supply, and damages to infrastructure.
  Research from Sri Lanka has shown that illegal sand mining in the local river systems contributes to a lack of irrigation water. This in turn can lead to loss of productive farmland. Furthermore, the quality of drinking water from rivers can be severely decreased because illegal and excessive mining for smuggling can cause salinization which pollutes drinking water reserves.
  Indiscriminate sand mining causes the lowering of riverbeds which in turn, imposes severe damages to the physical and biological environments of these river systems. Likewise, sand dredging in oceans and rivers for smuggling can lead to increased risks of floods, loss of entire beaches and shorelines, destruction of property and damages to coral reefs.
  Certain species of turtles are becoming endangered because they are losing their sandy breeding sides. The same applies for other reptiles such as seldom crocodiles. Sand mining is at least in part responsible for observed decreased fisheries production. In the Cambodian Koh Kong province where dredging and smuggling activities are prevalent, fish catches have decreased by 50 percent. In this region fishing is sometimes the only economic activity and people depend on the catches for subsistence living.
  Furthermore, sand mining has even been associated with the spread of malaria by creating standing pools of water at extraction sites that serve as ideal breeding grounds for disease-carrying mosquitos.
caption: Beach erosion
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