Building Boom Causes Asian Sand Smugglers to Expand
Singapore’s decades-long effort to reclaim land from the ocean has expanded the nation’s coastline and fueled its building boom. But it has also depleted its supply of sand. In recent years, the massive sand shortage has been worsened by export bans by neighboring countries, driving up the price and encouraging the smuggling of useable land-fill. It used to be that sand dredgers had only to travel to nearby Indonesia to get sand for use in Singapore construction projects. But the Indonesian government banned exports after activists and locals complained about disappearing islands and ruined riverbeds. Vietnam and Malaysia have enacted similar curbs on the practice. In Cambodia, officials have curtailed dredging and suspended sales as they assess the environmental damage caused by sand mining. Environmentalists say this is forcing miners to search elsewhere in the region and driving the practice of sand smuggling in the Philippines, Bangladesh, and Burma. George Boden is a campaigner for the London-based environmental group Global Witness, which reported on sand mining in Cambodia earlier this year. “In fact some of the sand trade has also moved on from Cambodia, and Burma has now become a major source. And it’s our understanding – and for sand it’s quite possible – that Singapore is also looking beyond Cambodia for other countries in the region to fulfill its needs,” he said. Singapore has expanded its physical borders by 22 percent over the past half century by filling in the surrounding sea with sand. Analysts say new reclamation projects will require enormous quantities of sea-sand. The tiny island-state also needs salt-free river sand for construction…
