Beaches around the world are disappearing. Riverbanks are getting wider and deeper, as large sections of riverbanks collapse. Most people would not know about this because sand mining is an invisible problem until it’s too late. Sand is used mainly to make cement for construction projects. Yet after decades of continuous hauling and dredging, the negative impacts have become too egregious to completely reverse. Sand mining is known to occur in 73 countries, on 5 continents. Because of the difficulty in regulating sand mining operations, the tragedies of the commons results from operators that massively extract the sand without considering long-term consequences, leading to over-exploitation and eventually degradation of the environment. Even with regulated sand mining, the industry is still subject to rampant illegal extraction and trade, which would not have been almost an impossible mission to curtail if not for the collusion of powerful entities with the sand mine companies. Although much of the mining industry is legal, sand mining has become so lucrative that illegal activities are widespread and brazen. Numerous reports carry news of murders and crimes carried out by “sand mafias” during the course of illegal sand mining crackdowns around the world. At the root lies the law of supply and demand. The supply of sand is finite and in some places diminishing, while the demand for sand is ever increasing, and thus the price of sand consequently increases, making illegal sand mining even more alluring. This is the reason behind rampant illegal sand mining.

Based on a cursory look at Coastal Care’s sand mining database which identifies a country’s number of areas with sand mines, the countries likely to be affected the most by global sand mining and sand theft include India (12); Australia (6); Cambodia (5); Mexico (5); Philippines (5); Senegal (5); France (4); Morocco (4), Nigeria (4), Singapore (4), South Africa (4); and 6 out of 26 Caribbean Islands. There are also countries like Cape Verde (2) with fewer sand mines but are just as highly affected. It seems that the “sand mafia” operates both globally and locally in countries highly dependent on beach tourism.

Based on the latest (2014) data from the Observatory of Economic Complexity (OEC) Database, the world’s top 10 sand-exporter countries are: USA, Germany, Netherlands, China, Belgium-Luxembourg, Australia, Vietnam, Cambodia, France, and Malaysia. The world’s top 10 sand-importer countries are: Singapore, Canada, Belgium-Luxembourg, Netherlands, Japan, Mexico, Germany, Hongkong, China, and Italy.

In the U.S.A., the Cemex Mine in Marina City is the only remaining coastal sand mine in operation in the entire U.S.A. At a time when other countries are taking efforts to dump sand on their beaches to combat sea level rise, Cemex continues to erode the 30-mile long Monterrey coastline, averaging 4 ft annually. Should the mine shut down, the coastline would rather be growing by 3 ft annually. The conclusion had been reached in a recent paper by Prof. Edward Thornton of the Naval Postgraduate School, and one of the world’s leading experts in coastal erosion. “They’re taking property from the whole coast, which I calculate to be more than 8 acres a year,” Thornton said. Cemex was established years before the 1977 Coastal Act was established that banned sand mining. Thus, Cemex falls outside the jurisdiction of the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, State Lands Commission, and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, that had shut down all the other sand mines in 1990. After Thornton wrote a letter to the California Coastal Commission in 2009 about his findings, Cemex was investigated in 2010. Then in July 2017, in what was viewed as a momentous agreement reached between Cemex, California Coastal Commission, State Lands Commission, and Marina City — the cease and desist order to Cemex mining in 3 years (2020), and shut down of Cemex business in 6 years (2023) was approved. During this time, Cemex is to restore and rehabilitate the coastline. This outcome closes the final chapter on coastal sand mining in the U.S.A.

In Morocco, at the edge of the Atlantic Ocean, the beaches have disappeared. Along the shoreline, beach mining operators that also involve the “sand mafia” hire hundreds of poor boys to do the sand pillaging. The boys walk knee-high into ocean waters to scoop up and bag the sand, to be carried up the cliffs by donkeys. Coastal sand mining operations across Morocco are the world’s largest. Thus, the environmental impacts are enormous. In the rivers near Lake Victoria, Kenya, there are 180 trucks daily that leave with a truckload of sand, which is the biggest source of income for the residents. The villages along the riverbank are on the brink of collapse as the water has eaten up most sections of the riverbank. In Namibia, sand mining companies can operate with an environmental clearance certificate, but due to high growth in construction, many people extract sand illegally.

In the Caribbean, beaches are disappearing at alarming rates as sand thieves feed a local construction boom. Among the hardest hit is Grenada, where a $1.2 million seawall is being built to protect the 131-square-mile island. “Large sand thefts have exposed the north coast towns to rough seas,” said Joseph Gilbert, Minister of Works and Environment. One of the region’s largest sand thefts targeted Jamaica, where nearly 100 truckloads of sand were swiped from private property. Two-thirds of Tortola’s and Nevis’ sand dunes were decimated. On Grenada’s 13 sq. mile Carriacou Island, “the beach is shrinking by 3 linear feet every year due to illegal sand mining. If we continue to mine the beaches the way we’ve been doing, we will have no sand to boast about. Just sea and sun,” Gilbert added. In Barbuda, the Department of Environment found that after they announced suspension of sand mining by December 2017, reports of an increase in beach sand removal surfaced in Antigua, where it is absolutely illegal to dig or haul sand. In Mexico, sand is mined mostly from riverbeds in Baja California, then filtered and washed into high-quality sand for construction. The sand travels by barge from Ensenada or by train from Tecate, over the border to San Diego, California, to be blended with other minerals to make concrete for its increasing infrastructure construction needs. “The increased mining south of the U.S. border is depleting the supply in Baja California,” said Jorge Escobar Martinez, Mexico’s Director of Ecology.

In India, the “sand mafia” had for years been robbing the Raipur Khadar village of sand. People are getting killed over sand. Thousands of truckloads are mined every day in Tamil Nadu, which has India’s second-longest coastline. Sand is key to the construction industry, which provides about 35 million jobs. Mined sand is worth 450 billion rupees ($6.6 billion) annually, but much of this is illegal and brings serious impacts. India is now taking steps to get sand mining under control. Almost every day, local or state officials declare their determination to combat sand mining. In some places, villagers block roads to stop sand trucks. Despite laws regulating sand mining in most states, the rivers and beaches are dredged beyond safe levels. Bribing local officials and the police to turn a blind eye is commonplace. Corruption, violence, and death stupefy many of even the best-intentioned attempts to crack down on illegal sand mining.

In Indonesia, sand miners have completely eradicated 24 islands since 2005. The sand from those islands ended up in Singapore, which needs colossal amounts to continue its construction of territorial expansion. Singapore has created an extra 20 square miles in the past 40 years and still adding more, making Singapore the world’s largest sand-importer by far. In comparison, China is only the 9th largest sand-importer. But to put this into perspective, between 2011 and 2013, China used more concrete than the United States did during the entire 20th century. The demand for sand has denuded beaches and riverbeds in neighboring countries that Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam have restricted or banned export of sand to Singapore. In Cambodia, “A lack of proper scientific methodology for river sand mining has led to indiscriminate sand mining, while weak governance and corruption have led to widespread illegal mining,” the United Nations Report noted. In Vietnam, sand miners have torn up hundreds of acres of forest and farmers’ fields to get at underground sand deposits. In the Philippines, the Coastal Care database identifies sand mining operations in Cagayan-Gonzaga, Aparri-Cagayan, Ilocos Sur, Lingayen, and Sorsogon City. “Many riverbanks were mined massively that are evident on a drive leading to Baguio. One is the Agno River in Pangasinan; another is the Bued River” Vadm Emilio C. Marayag stated. Bued became the drainage of mine tailings from copper and gold mines in Benguet. Both legal and illegal mining operations persisted in these sand mining areas.

IMPACTS. The disappearance of a riverbank or a beach will certainly have impacts on humans, marine animals, and the ecosystems. Sand exploitation also has a negative effect on the climate change phenomenon. Direct impact is related to the extraction process and transport; and indirect impact to the cement production. Carbon dioxide emissions from cement production could account for about 5% of global CO2 emissions from all industrial process and fossil fuel combustion.

In Southern Monterey Bay, Marina, USA sand mining was ironically taking place along the shoreline of one of the largest protected National Marine Sanctuaries. Marina City now has the highest coastal erosion rate in the State of California. For over 20 years, scientists had been speculating the sand mine’s contribution to beach erosion, until a 2008 study concluded sand mining was the primary cause. The Surfrider Foundation paints a grim picture of what could happen to the beach if sand mining isn’t stopped. It stated that coastal erosion could one day even affect Highway 1. In addition to the impact on marine animals along the shoreline, erosion impacts on government infrastructure right along the much-eroded beachfront areas.

In Morocco, sand mining operators hire hundreds of boys as child laborers to do 8-hour workdays, providing them quick earnings to help lift their family out of poverty but are robbing the boys the long-term benefits of being in school instead. In Kenya, government officials stated that illegal sand mining along the banks of River Nzoia stands to displace 7,000 river people from their homes due to flooding; and some of the negative environmental impacts include the drying of aquifers; riverbank and riverbed erosion; water and air pollution; and the loss of valuable crops, trees, and animal species. In Namibia, the uncontrolled quarrying of sand for road construction and brick-making has left the environment scarred with large open pits that pose a danger to people and animals. These pits are visible all over Namibia, and have become garbage dumpsites, causing further environmental damage.

In Jamaica, excessive sand mining exposed protected mangroves and a limestone forest to wind and waves, and the Islands of Tortola, Anguilla and St. Vincent are now vulnerable to flooding, said Gillian Cambers of the University of Puerto Rico.

In India, removing large amounts of sand has eroded river beds and beaches, enlarged river mouths, destroyed bio-diversity, and exacerbated groundwater shortages and flooding, leading to the loss of livelihoods of coastal communities. Sand mining has depleted fish stocks, and made water unfit for agriculture. It has also led to landslides, which further eroded coastlines and hurt communities that depended on the water for their livelihood. In Cambodia, illegal sand mining has caused the disappearance of beaches and the collapse of mangroves. The coastal dredging has destroyed sea grass beds, and threatened endangered species like Irrawaddy and spinner dolphins from the coastal waters, as well as the royal turtles from their natural habitat. In Vietnam, the latest report of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development showed that the whole Mekong River Delta had suffered 406 landslides with a total length of 891 kms, including 393 riverbank erosions with a total length of 583 kms, and 13 coastal erosions with a total length of over 300 kms.

In Indonesia, there are early negative impacts of the sand extractions. The local people and activists believe the flood soaking their homes in Selok Awar-Awar Village happened because of the destruction of coastal ecosystems along the southern coast of Lumajang. International activists together with local people have clamored for the stoppage of quarrying. On 23-September-2015, the group staged a protest against sand mining in Watu Pecak Beach. The protest halted the quarrying and blocked dozens of trucks transporting the sand. The protesters claimed that the sand mining operations damaged the environment, leaving holes 5 meters in diameter and 1 meter deep, on the beach. Three days after the protests, an environmental activist, Salim Kancil, was killed by a group of more than 30 men. He was dragged from his house to Selok Awar-Awar Village, where he was beaten up, and mortally struck with a hoe on his head. An environmental activist named Tosan was assaulted in his home, beaten with wood, stones, and farm implements, and run over by a motorcycle. He was in critical condition upon arrival at the Hospital. In Makassar, the injustice fishermen face is being banned from using blast-fishing and threatened with jail time, while reclamation is allowed wherein ocean sand is dredged out, and the damage to the ecosystem is far worse than blast-fishing. The fishermen are worried that over-exploited sand mining would drastically reduce the fish stocks in their seas. About 97% of the townsfolk are fishermen whose livelihoods are fully dependent on fishing. The lower fish catch, as a result of dredging, would be felt by 20,000 fishermen in the area. A fisherman said that when the seabed gets deeper, the waves get bigger, which makes it more difficult to catch fish.

In black sand beaches in the Philippines, a type of valuable iron ore called magnetite abounds. However, black sand mining often takes place illegally, which increases the risks and magnitude of threats, such as gradual or sudden land subsidence which as a result of erosion, exposes the coastal communities to rising sea levels and typhoons. Destruction of sand dunes and coastal sediment from illegal magnetite mining resulted in erosion of the coastlines of Gonzaga, Aparri. Buguey, Ilocos Sur, Lingayen, and Sorsogon. The widened riverbanks as a result of exploitive sand mining have affected the groundwater. The once flowing rivers are almost dried-up due to heavy silts and exposure to solar radiation as the riverbeds were stripped of sand and stones for gravel. Subsidence will proceed even centuries after stoppage of sand mining in these coastlines and riverbanks. But “sand mining is acceptable (and a necessity) in case of volcanic areas where excessive sand over-silts the riverbed that causes yearly flooding and prevents use of the river for navigation, as had happened in a few rivers in Zambales and Bataan after the Pinatubo eruption, isolating Bataan and Zambales from the rest of Luzon during the rainy season,” Commo. Carlos L. Agustin stated.

Globally, some of the sand comes directly from the beach, which can do damage to habitats for sea turtles and birds, but much of the sand is dredged up from the seafloor by riverboats and large ocean ships. Le Guern Lytle said sand mining “destroys critical breeding habitats for fish and other marine life. Extracting sand from the river or sea bottom dissolves ecosystems.”

MITIGATION STRATEGIES. In many of these countries, environmental laws are interfered by the political leaders themselves and hamper enforcement for their own political and financial gains. Sand mines operate with relative impunity as they continue to mine the waves for decades. The central government must build capacity and visibly support its enforcement arm to dissuade illegal sand mining. Local government must stop issuing new permits or deny renewal of permits to operators that do not meet environmental requirements in mining rivers and harbors. Operators that excavate beyond an agreed load with the city government should face financial penalties greater than the profit from sand trade. Dragline operators should obtain a permit. Local mining sector provincial government representatives should take a stand against illegal sand mining through enforcement of the law, to prevent adverse environmental consequences of sand mining.

In Grenada, legislators expect to triple penalties and extend prison terms from 3 months to 2 years. Jamaica plans to approve new maximum fines of $11,000 and allow police to seize sand-mining equipment. Mexico’s National Water Commission is doing its best to limit the number of mining permits, and the State has plans to study the environmental damage, and the effects of sand mining. The Mexico is also considering placing stricter limits on the weight of vehicles allowed in the streambeds, and requiring sand miners to leave an undisturbed layer in streambeds to protect aquifers.

In Namibia, dealing with SMEs poses a big problem. When the local official tells them to stop operations, the local authorities have to give them another area to excavate sand. Construction companies ignore local and regional councils, as the land where they mine is under the jurisdiction of traditional authorities. In Morocco, the penalty fines are cheaper than the fees to obtain a permit to mine sand. Oceanographer Abdou Khouakhi, believes there is a need to “adopt conservation and preservation methods, rather than defense approaches, that take the wider ecosystem into consideration.” He prescribes an all-encompassing program emphasizing stabilization, vegetation, beach rehabilitation and avoiding future sand mining operations. In Kenya, the Machakos County Sand Harvesting Act of 2014 regulates sand mining. It states: “On-farm sand harvesting shall only be undertaken by open-cast harvesting method and no underground tunneling or extraction of sand shall be undertaken.” The law restricts sand mining during 6 a.m.-6 p.m. but farmers say illegal miners avoid arrest by mining at night.

In India, the National Green Tribunal, an environmental federal court, allows any citizen to file a complaint on illegal sand mining. Local and state officials have impounded sand trucks, levied fines, and arrested people involved in illegal sand mining. The punishment for illegal sand mining is jail up to 2 years or fines of up to 25,000 rupees ($370), or both. The Supreme Court in February 2012 had ruled environmental permission was required for all sand mining as a result of indiscriminate sand theft affecting India’s ecological balance. The government drew up a draft notification for a new sustainable sand and minor mineral mining policy. It specifies areas where mining is allowed or prohibited, based on sustainability guidelines and monitoring of resources using scientific tools. In Dakshina Kannada’s construction sector, the sand mining ban was relaxed for a few months to allow “minimum mining.” The license holders were allowed to mine 10 loads of sand per month from an acre of riverbed, compared to 100 loads of sand per month prior to the ban. “From 01-January-2016, the new law and guidelines on sustainable sand and minor mineral mining would be applicable. The new policy would check illegal mining and allow serious, legitimate players to remain in business,” said Parakash Javadekar, Minister of State for Environment, Forest & Climate Change. The policy allows: District level environment clearances up to 5 hectares of mine lease area; State level clearances up to 50 hectares; and Center level clearances for over 50 hectares.

In Indonesia, an environmentalist activist was killed for joining a mass protest against sand mining in East Java. This is the first case of an activist murdered in East Java. JATAM Mining Advocacy Network clamored the central and local authorities to ask police to investigate the case, and find the mastermind behind the murder. In southern Sulawesi, Makassar fishermen protested intensely against a land reclamation company for starting operations before being granted a permit by the fishing ministry, and for operating without meeting environmental regulations. Almost all sand mining in Indonesia is illegal. In Cambodia, all sand export operations have been banned since July 2017 because of the industry’s environmental impacts. In Vietnam, Tuan, from Can Tho University, says “to reduce the occurrence of landslides, sand mining should be restricted or even suspended, and trees should be planted in high-risk areas.”

In the Philippines, Kalikasan Campaign Coordinator Leon Dulce said immediate intervention in needed to save coastal areas of Gonzaga and other sand mined areas from sinking. Municipal Planning and Development Coordinator Emy Bukaneg responded that local government plans to build a riverbank protection and a sea wall. Dulce added, “If magnetite is extracted from the area, there should be a process of rehabilitation. The area should be brought back closer to its original state. The government’s planned infrastructure mitigation should be mixed with green belting. There should be a study on how to restore the ecosystem. If there is no appropriate rehabilitation measure, the areas will be left vulnerable to erosion.” The Mining Act of 1995 states that mining companies are responsible for ensuring the rehabilitation of the mining areas. The mining law’s Section 71, Chapter 11 states that “contractors and permittees shall technically and biologically rehabilitate the excavated, mined-out, tailings covered and distributed areas to the condition of the environmental safety.” In 1989, DENR put a total ban on mining and quarrying in certain areas of the heavily silted Bued River.

CONCLUSION. The negative consequences of massive sand mining are most felt in poorer regions. Massive sand extraction physically alters rivers and coastal ecosystems, and causes erosion. The theft of river and beach sand is a direct cause of erosion of riverbanks and shorelines. It is very damaging to the river and beach fauna and flora, and causes environmental damage to ecosystems such as mangroves, dunes, wetlands, and corral reefs. Denuded beaches, due to exploitive sand mining, suffers from a loss of protection from storm surges such as tropical cyclones. It all boils down to one truth – less sand means more flooding – putting riverbank villages, impoverished coastal communities, and marine environments at increasingly higher risk when misconduct of sand mining operators continue, amidst irregular monitoring by national and local authorities.

RECOMMENDATIONS. Sand mining involves a high degree of environmental degradation. Thus, early on, specific measures must be adopted to mitigate environmental impacts. Sand mining companies need to know and respect environmental regulations, invest in clean technologies, and preserve the environment from potential negative impacts of sand mining. The sand mining companies must be conscious about the environmental impacts in order to start thinking about the environmental costs, and then include it as a part of production cost. Sand mining companies must focus on reducing negative impacts, and finding solutions to the threats.

Public authorities in the mining sector and environment must: (1) set up and enforce environmental laws, regulations, and standards related to processes; (2) permit licensed sand mining; (3) monitor and inspect operations to ensure all mining standards, regulations, laws are fulfilled; and (4) provide support to mining companies for access to clean technologies.

In extreme cases, where environmental damage is visibly on the brink of catastrophe, the central and local government must shut down even legal operations, quickly or on a phased-out basis. In dealing with exploitive illegal sand miners, the operators should be fined the maximum penalty per meter of sand falling below the original level before the illegal sand mining began such that the fine outweighs their profit, and must serve the maximum jail time. Prof. Podila Sankara Pitchaiah, Department of Geology, Nagarjuna University, said “If sand minerals are mined within 30m deep or less than 3km from shore, the beaches and dunes suffer.” This could be used as a benchmark to measure damage.

Because sand mining is a very lucrative business that brings bad elements into society, the central and local governments, with NGOs, environmental entities, Coast Guard, and Maritime Police, in turn, must together make illegal sand mining business difficult and unworthy to pursue. So long as national and environmental regulations are lightly enforced on both legal and illegal sand mining, the negative impacts will continue. Given the extent of environmental problems linked with sand mining, it is crucial for central and local authorities to impose regulatory strategies for environmental protection. Frequent monitoring is required to ensure that sand mining operations meet regulatory standards. The time has come to treat sand like a major resource –on par with clean air and clean water– that nations seek to be sustainable for future generations. Once sand is removed, it cannot be replaced in the next generation. It will take centuries.