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.

Sand mining has been a longstanding problem for the residents of Riau Province and the Riau islands. In 2007, the Indonesian government reported that 26 islands, most of them in Riau, had disappeared due to huge sand mining operations and abrasion. The government said the mining boom started in 1979, and since then, more islands have been exploited and have disappeared off the map.

Sixteen years after the report,sand mining in the region continues, slowly causing other islands in Riau to shrink, and destroy the local fishing industry in its wake. 

The first evidence of sand mining activities in Eryanto’s neighborhood emerged in 2021 when Indonesia was dealing with the second wave of the Covid pandemic: a fisher saw a dredger operating 1,7 miles from Babi island. The villagers found out that the dredger was owned by PT Logo Mas (LMU), which indicated to them that the activity would be located 20 miles from Babi. 

Due to the damage, today the fishers only manage to bring home a kilogram of fish every day. Before, they used to catch 10 kilograms of fish daily. 

In December 2021, Eryanto and other fishers started protesting. They visited the dredger, demanded the company leave the site, and reported it to the Ministry of Fisheries. As a result, the ministry instructed the company to halt  operations, and sealed the ship. 

In a press release, the ministry confirmed that the sand mining had damaged the coast. Questions sent to PT Logo Mas (LMU) for comment were unanswered at the time of publication.

The ministry’s claim is supported by an analysis of satellite imagery conducted in 2021-2022 by Widodo Pranowo, a National Research and Innovation Agency researcher. The satellite shows that the beautiful stretch of beach sand has disappeared. “The flagpole has fallen, lying on the eroded beach, and the roots of the trees are no longer in the ground, but are wet by the waves on the beach,” he said.

A photo from the Indonesian National Police archives shows a morning rally and clean-up event carried out by its personnel, along with the fishing community, on 29 November, 2018. But now, the beach is nowhere to be seen.

ERC's year-long investigation reveals that a similar pattern of sand mining activities has destroyed fishing grounds and threatened local industries in other countries such as Taiwan, China and the Philippines.

In Taiwan, Chinese dredging vessels have been blamed for a decrease in the area of the Taiwan Shoal (also known as Formosa Bank), a fishing ground on Penghu Island, as witnessed by Wang Chun-yung (王淳永), a seafarer for 47 years whose family has relied on fishing in the shoal for generations. 

According to Wang, yields from the southern shoal have been decreasing yearly. Apart from having to contend with Chinese fishers crossing the median line, several hundred (or sometimes, over a thousand) big dredgers come to harvest sand from the fishing grounds.

“The scope [of dredging operations] is enormous; they stretch out over several nautical miles, several kilometers, as if they own the sea,” Wang said. The Chinese dredgers turn off their GPS systems to outmaneuver the Taiwanese fishing boats.

This is not the first time Taiwan has dealt with illegal dredging. In 2005, the Taiwan Coast Guard performed its first seizure of a Chinese dredging vessel off Kinmen, a collection of islands administered by Taiwan, near the coast of the Chinese city of Xiamen. The illegal activity only abated after media reports of unlawful Chinese dredging near Kinmen caught the attention of the government, leading to a crackdown by the coast guard and increased penalties from the legislature. But around 2018, the dredgers came back, this time crossing the median line of the Taiwan Strait between China and Taiwan to harvest sand around the Taiwan Shoal.

According to statistics compiled by the Taiwan Coast Guard, the number of Chinese dredgers driven away from the Taiwan Shoal peaked in 2020, at 3,400. Though the numbers fell in 2021 and 2022, Secretary of the Penghu County Agricultural and Fishery Bureau, Chang Hung-an (張宏安) notes that Chinese pandemic-related restrictions may have prevented dredgers from leaving port during this time.

As a result, fishers found it difficult to catch more fish. In the past, Wang’s biggest catch was 900 mackerel in one journey; now, it’s considered a big haul if the fishers catch more than 100. Statistics from the Penghu County Agricultural and Fishery Bureau show that in 2018 — the year before Chinese dredgers began to appear in the Taiwan Shoal — the annual catch for mackerel was 346 metric tons, which fell to 160 in 2021. Similarly, the annual catch for squid fell from 312 to 79 in the same period.

Jeng Ming-shiou (鄭明修), the 65-year-old Acting Executive Officer at the Biodiversity Research Center at Academia Sinica, was born and raised in Penghu. An enthusiastic diver, he was one of the few researchers who dived in the Taiwan Shoal during an ecological survey of the nearby waters in 2020.

Jeng explained that the water around the Taiwan Shoal arrives through the Kuroshio Current from the South China Sea. When water 200 meters deep runs into the shoal, it upwells to the surface, bringing nutrients and minerals from the depths. The shallow water in the shoals is then warmed by sunlight to a temperature suitable for a variety of marine life, such as plankton, shrimp and fish.

These nutrients can feed plankton, which is foraged by small fish and shrimps, attracting economically valuable marine species such as mackerel, squid, whitlings and belt fish to lay their eggs. For generation after generation, this process made the Taiwan Shoal a fertile traditional fishing ground for Penghu fishers. Jeng believes that the dredging has already broken this marine food chain, which takes years to develop.

To better understand the severity of the damage that dredging inflicts on the food chain, the Penghu County Public Works Department handed sea sand confiscated from illegal Chinese dredgers over to the Penghu Marine Biology Research Center (PMBRC) for analysis in 2020. The National Academy of Marine Research also sent researchers to the Taiwan Shoal to conduct on-site surveys in 2022.

The two inspections discovered that in areas where Chinese dredgers harvested sand, the seabed consisted mainly of terrestrial sand. In contrast, in unharvested areas, the sand was mostly biogenic —composed of remnants of marine skeletons — as is typical in marine environments.

“One look at that sand and you know it doesn't come from the bones of sea creatures, such as foraminifera, coral sand and the like,” said PMBRC Director Hsieh Hern-yi (謝恆毅). “Typically, biogenic sand is irregular and opaque, unlike the sand you find on beaches in Taiwan.” He surmised that the likely cause is the long-term harvesting of biogenic surface sand by Chinese dredgers, which leaves only the terrestrial sand deposited 18,000 years ago. 

The Shoal ecosystem might recover if the government takes immediate action and if Taiwanese law enforcement cooperates with Chinese law enforcement to end illegal dredging. But the road to recovery is a race against time. “Once the last coral dies, even if you end all harmful human activity, it’s already too late,” Hsieh said.

Back in China, dredger activities have long contributed to damage in the fishing grounds of Poyang Lake, the country’s largest freshwater lake.

Academic research published in 2014 showed mining activities have caused a dramatic decline in water volume at  Poyang Lake. Titled Sand mining and increasing Poyang Lake’s discharge ability: A reassessment of causes for lake decline in China, the study points out that's river channels feeding the lake have become “wider and deeper”, allowing the lake to drain quickly and reach a lower water level than would otherwise have occurred. According to the researchers, this implies drought risk. During dry seasons, which increasingly come earlier and last longer due to the decline of the lake and abnormal weather, the lake has almost turned into a no-water body. 

The fishing population has also continuously decreased, according to several scientific surveys. Compared to 30 years ago, the dining tables of Poyang Lake residents look very different today. Traditional dishes made with puffer, shad, eel and other fish have disappeared from the menu. 

Despite all the setbacks, the Chinese government didn’t stop the sand mining, and chose only to regulate it. In 2009 authorities appointed the state-owned Jiujiang Ganpo Sand Industry Group to oversee the mining volume and sales of Poyang sand. It launched a five-year plan that decided on mining quotas and issued permits.

Zhu Jingyuan, 45, a former fisher in Zhu village, Lianhu township, on the southwest shore of the lake, said fishing had brought profits to his family and turned the region into a thriving transit area known locally as “little Hong Kong”. But that is not the case anymore. He shared that the lake that provided livelihoods for his family has been badly damaged, and the fishing boat is replaced by dredger ships.  

According to a study from Jiangxi Normal University, the number of sand-quarrying boats identified by satellite remote sensing on the lake has been increasing. In 2000, the satellite recorded 36 boats; in 2014, it had surged to more than 850 – much more than the publicized official upper limit. 

In July and August every year, sand and gravel shippers from all over the country arrive to pick up their goods. The water is filled with cargo ships, creating a makeshift “town” with convenience stores, food courts and public transportation (boats). “It’s like Venice,” one local described it. 

Under the shadow of extensive sand mining, the fishery sector, which supported local livelihoods, has become the victim. In 2017, more than 100 residents of Zhu village filed a class lawsuit against a sand mining company. The court papers showed that the company was “legally mining the sand”, but fishers argued that it was mining much more than it was allowed. The fishers eventually lost the lawsuit. 

As the Poyang Lake’s seasonal droughts worsen, more public attention has focused on the lake. The government was quick to react, outlawing private mining in 2019, targeting local sand mining businessmen suspected of wrongdoing. Many environmentalists are skeptical that these efforts will remedy the situation, because the mining never stopped. It also remains difficult to track any progress due to limited data transparency.

In the eyes of a local environmentalist surnamed Sang, the reality is clear: the government is merely trying to move the “profiteering” sector to government-affiliated companies. “Poyang Lake is the big stage where sand gangsters, fishers, environmentalists take turns to perform. Now, it is turn for Qin Shi Huang [emperor of ancient China],” he said.

In the Philippines, the massive environmental impact of the illegal mining of black sand has been documented in various coastal towns across the northern part of the country. But none of the protests and advocacy by civil society and various organizations has fully succeeded in halting these illegal operations. 

For example, in Ilocos Sur, along the beach bordering Santa Catalina and San Vicente towns, kilometer-long erosion scars the coastline, measuring as high as 15 feet and exposing the soil beneath the sand. 

Mining for black sand or magnetite in Ilocos Sur was first noticed in 2008 when the villagers of San Sebastian in San Vicente saw ships hauling sand from the sea and creating stockpiles on the shore. The operators were not identified until government raids in 2013 revealed three Chinese-run companies mining the area without the required permits. 

Disturbance in the sea from illegal mining activities in the region gradually decimated the catch of local fisherfolk. This forced them to go further out to sea, which was more dangerous and more costly, said fisher Manong Karding (not his real name), who requested anonymity for safety reasons.

Fishers would be lucky to snag half a banyera (tub) of fish for a good day's work when the ships started to frequent the coastal area, far less than the usual full tub, he said. 

Many fisherfolk like him are still afraid of complaining for fear of retaliation from the foreign miners and local politicians. “Others were simply forced to look for different jobs and relocate since we do not know how long the mining will last and how it will affect us,” he said.

Previously a major livelihood, fishing has become a “sideline” to agriculture and other labor jobs for Manong Karding, 40, since the fish population remains depleted. 

According to marine geologist and professor Fernando Siringan of the University of the Philippines Marine Science Institute, offshore mining may be the main factor behind the diminishing catch because it disturbs the habitat of marine organisms.

The scientist explained that changes in the benthic (sea floor) habitat will occur not only in the area where sand is extracted but will also spread to adjacent areas,. Such changes affect the fishery population. Disturbance in the seabed can cause the surfacing and release of Pyrodinium bahamense, the primary cause of paralytic shellfish poisoning or red tide.

In July 2009, to protect their coast and the local fishing industry, residents filed a resolution to the regional office of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) with a request to stop the black sand mining in the area. However, the DENR responded by denying the existence of offshore mining in the area. 

“Protests [called on] the government to act and stop the black sand mining spread in the Ilocos region and nearby, but no actions were taken and protesters were even red-tagged as insurgents,” said Sherwin de Vera, who worked as the Research and Education officer at Defend Ilocos, an environmental advocacy organization. 

Nonetheless, the residents continued the protest. Together with advocacy groups and clergy members, they took it upon themselves to document the hauling of sand from the sea to processing plants on the shores. They also kept track of the environmental impacts.

They documented barges unloading mounds of black sand deposits on the beach, which were then processed in fenced and guarded compounds in the adjacent towns of Sta. Catalina and Caoayan. Their findings prompted government raids that led to the dismantling of illegal processing plants in 2013.

Although there have been attempts to prohibit black sand mining, no law has been passed.

In 2019, then-senator Leila de Lima filed Senate Bill No. 1075, which sought to prohibit black sand mining operations in the country as it continues “to wreak environmental havoc while placing people’s health and livelihood at great peril”. The bill was not passed during De Lima’s term as senator. 

Manong Karding still dreams of the day that the nets of local fisherfolk will flourish again with the bounties of the Ilocos sea. Perhaps not soon, but in the near future.

“We cannot leave the coast as this is our home. Besides, the sunset in Sta. Catalina remains the most magnificent day ender,” he said.

The fishing industry is not the only sector that has been destroyed by sand mining expansion. In Homa Bay County in Kenya, farmlands have been turned into sand mining sites that threaten food security. Lack of alternative livelihoods and the allure of quick money have become the main reason that many of the residents rely on sand mining.

Homa Bay County, located in the western part of Kenya, borders on Lake Victoria, Africa’s largest freshwater lake and the world’s second biggest with a surface area of 68,000km². The region’s dominant economic activities are fishing and fish trade, followed by agriculture, with cotton and sugarcane being the region’s main industrial crops.

According to the county’s strategic plan, the county has more than 150,000 farming families with an average of 2.2 acres per family. However, the mining of sand and other minerals is gaining momentum, and has become a source of quick money for the residents of Homa Bay County, a region with a poverty rate of 22.7%.

Rough and dilapidated roads and pathways have become a common sight in the county’s sand mining villages, including Kobala, Rakwaro and Kobuya. Huge gullies remain abandoned in these villages with little to no form of rehabilitation taking place.

According to Mikal Achola, a sand harvesting site owner and resident of Kobala village, her family resorted to sand mining after failing to secure enough money to bring their oldest son’s dead body home from Nairobi. “Without that pressing need, turning your farm into a sand harvesting site wouldn’t be an option,” she said. 

For Lorna and Julius Ambaa from Kobuya village, farming was no longer a profitable venture and sand harvesting became the best available option about three years ago. The couple, which has four kids with the eldest being 17 years, used to grow cassava and bananas on their farmland. However, crop productivity has been decreasing every year due to changing weather patterns. They said that from harvesting eight to 10 bags of cassava, the number reduced to about four bags. 

“Sand harvesting is more profitable compared to when we used to farm bananas and cassava,” Ambaa said. From the sale of her cassava, she would earn shs. 2,000-3,200 (about USD 15-24) per bag. But with sand harvesting, the couple is receiving shs. 7,000-10,000 (about USD 54-77) a day.

Like Ambaa and Achola, a number of residents in these villages have given over their farms either fully or partially to sand harvesting, leaving only a small portion for cultivation.

“Food security has gone down because people are harvesting sand from their parcels of land where they were growing crops,” said Damianus Osano, Kobuya area chief. 

According to Cosmos Odipo, Chief of Wang’ Chieng location which includes Kobala, Kamwala, Rakwaro and other villages, there are at least 30 sand mining sites ranging from half an acre to 10 acres each, depending on the portion of land owned by one individual.

Odipo observed that the area used to be very productive and most people would grow crops such as maize, cassava, sorghum and groundnuts, among others. Over the years. the productivity has declined due to sand harvesting activities which people see as a quick way to get money, he said.

Even the staple food crops in the area, such as sorghum and cassava — which used to come in handy during periods of drought — can no longer be found, and as a result, community members are usually forced to buy maize from neighboring villages.

“Most of the farms have been harvested to the extent [that] they have become very unproductive and even if one plants anything on them, the crops don’t grow,” he said.

Fishing, which is one of the main economic activities in the region, has been dwindling due to climate change and illegal fishing, Odipo added, noting that this has forced some of the fishers to turn to sand harvesting to supplement their income.

The Homa Bay County National Environment Management Authority (NEMA) director, Josiah Nyandoro, said that sand harvesting in the county is illegal. In 2019, NEMA Director General Mamo B. Mamo imposed a ban on any sand harvesting that is not subjected to environmental impact assessment (EIA) approval or that has not been licensed before it commences. Currently there is only one company, Mango Tree, which has been approved to conduct sand harvesting in the county after approval of its EIA.

“We are not saying no to sand harvesting. But what we require is regulated sand harvesting where the project is subjected to an environmental impact assessment and all the negative impacts associated with that project have their mitigation measures cited so that we have sustainable development,” Nyandoro said.

Sand Harvesting Guidelines developed in 2007 stipulate that lakeshore, seashore and riverbed sand harvesting should not exceed six feet in depth, while on-farm sand harvesting should be carried out at designated sites with a buffer zone of at least 50 meters from river banks or dykes. 

But the guidelines are often ignored. John Otieno Odede, 40, is a resident of Kobala village. He has two wives and nine children, and inherited land that used to be a sand harvesting site from his father. A few months ago, heavy rains resulted in flooding of the river next to his land. The water crossed over and flowed through gullies left from the sand harvesting activities, destroying two of his houses. He has been forced to build a temporary shelter made of iron sheets for his family. 

He said it has been difficult to feed the family since the disaster. He has nowhere to live and nowhere to farm. “We don’t have anything,” he shared.

In India, sand mining has alienated people from their farmland. It’s particularly complicated when the landholders are Dalit — from historically marginalized and oppressed castes — and a mining mafia from a more privileged caste occupies their farmland. 

Rural Dalits are largely landless. Among agricultural households in India, Dalits own a much smaller share of land relative to their share of the population. The state of Bihar witnesses the most severe landlessness of Dalits in India.

The Bihar government has attempted to provide Dalits access to land. Ram Ekbal Ram is one of the Dalits who received a land settlement document from the chief minister of Bihar in November 1975. It granted him the right to cultivate a piece of land as long as he paid taxes. Since the land was in the floodplain wetlands of the Sone river, it was cultivable during the summer months when the Sone retreats.

Ram says ownership of land empowered Dalits like him. “This document had my name on it. It gave me an identity, and a right that I thought nobody could take away,” he shared.

Until the sand mafia stepped in. 

A few feet below the fertile topsoil — which made the land the lifeline for Dalit families — lies construction-grade coarse sand. Since the sand mining business is dominated by castes that are socially, economically and politically powerful, they use their power to victimize the oppressed castes. 

The mafia hires armed gangs to guard illegal mines created on farmland. They use violence to scare away landholders. The farmers also come in the line of fire when gangs eyeing the same mine engage in gunfights. Most Dalit families are unable to claim their land. A few persist and cultivate the land, but they often lose the crop as the mafia destroys it. 

When opposed, the mafia turns murderous. 

In August 2021 a Dalit man, Mahaveer Ram, was hit by a bullet when he stood up to protect his land from sand miners. Ram, 35, is stressed about raising his four daughters. “What can I do?” he asked. “The mafia will displace me and I will have to migrate to a city. At least, I’ll be able to raise my family peacefully there.” 

Some Dalits have started reacting to dispossession by the sand mafia. Having suffered for decades, they no longer want to be victims. This, however, has landed them in a Catch-22 situation. 

“The government acknowledges that we’re vulnerable but hasn’t stepped in to support us,” said Ram. 

Dalits are only left with few options. 

The first is to take the mafia’s armed gangs head on and prevent them from mining on their land. A few Dalits like Ram have stood up to these gangs to protect their livelihoods. But most eschew this option. 

“Since Dalits have neither firearms and ammunition, nor the money to buy them to stand up to the gangs run by the upper caste, many opt for the compromise route by allying with one of the gangs,” said Vishal Kumar, a member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist) Liberation from Koilwar. This option doesn’t stop mining but brings in a share of profit to the Dalit landholder. 

“The Dalits initially attempt to keep mining activities under [their] control. But I’ve never seen this working out for them. Once the gang establishes itself, it stops paying rent. Now the Dalit has lost his land and any income from it,” said Kumar. 

The only remaining options are to approach a rival gang, or to forget about the land. “The Dalit loses no matter what choice he makes,” said Kumar.

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According to the Mekong River Commission’s 2018 report, sand mining is one of the major culprits contributing to sediment loss in the downstream river, along with hydropower dams. 

Nearly 50 million tons of sand are mined in the lower Mekong Basin each year, according to a comprehensive 2011 study by WWF. Thailand alone extracted around 5.8 million tons, Laos 1.4 million tons, Vietnam 12.4 million tons, and Cambodia 30 million tons. The sector is believed to be worth US$175 million annually.

Nguyen Thi Cam, 72, is among the residents who lost houses and farmland in Vietnam’s Dong Thap province. “My house was over there before,” she said, pointing to a raft floating about 50 meters from the riverbank. In over a decade, sand mining has eaten away at the foundations of Cam’s old houses. A 25ha islet, which was called Long Phu Thuan, where she used to source corn and vegetables, has disintegrated too.

Le Van Phi, 70, who sold farmland to buy dune lands, recalled that around 1976 he cleared 4,000 square meters of Long Phu Thuan dune land. Every year, in the dry season, he grew corn, soybeans and chili peppers with very high yields. In the flood season, he grew rice. The land was lush; thus, the price of 1 “cong” (1,000m²) of dune land was 10 times higher than the farmland on the shore. 

“I sold about 70 cong of fields to buy another 10 cong of dune land. Who would have thought, later on, they allowed too much sand to be exploited, and the whole dune [would be] gradually eroded,” Le Van Phi said.

By 2014, Long Phu Thuan was gone. What remains is the daily sound of growling engines as sand dredgers continue to scoop sand out of the river bed, serving as a reminder of the locals’ traumatic loss. 

“People in this region used to pull together to catch illegal sand miners and fight until blood was spilled. Then those smugglers and some district leaders protecting them went to prison.”

In a 2014 court case, 11 people, including three district officials, were sentenced to prison for violations in sand mining that cost the government 12 billion dong (US$510,500). Soon after, the government stopped illegal mining in the village andt started issuing mining licenses instead. 

In Cambodia, residents across the Mekong River in Trang Leu village, Ta Ek commune, Khsach Kandal district, Kandal province, fear a possible collapse that can destroy their homes at any time. 

Sor Sok Lang, 43, her husband and three daughters are among them. The family of five was forced to relocate after the river bank collapsed and flooded their house. The new house they are living in now is located just next to the old house, overlooking the Mekong River. 

Sor Sok Lang said she can hear the noise from the sand-extracting boats all the time, even at night. She could not tell how many boats carry out the activities in a day, but she never sees the boats resting.

“We don’t know what the future will hold for our family. But for now, we only want the safety of all our family members,” said Sor Sok Lang. 

Some of the sand exploited in Cambodia is sent to Vietnam. For over a decade, Cambodia banned sand mining exports. However, as demand for sand for highway construction is booming in Vietnam, Cambodia quietly lifted the ban.

"Ung Dipola, director-general of Cambodia’s General Department of Mines, told Mekong Eye that Cambodia has regulated sand mining strictly, which can minimize the environmental impact even the sand export to Vietnam."

As the riverbank kept collapsing over the past decade, affecting the local people’s houses, many people have relocated their homes while some left the area to find a new life in Phnom Penh city and other places. 

Some have no choice but to survive. Sitting in silence, watching the murky water from the upstream Mekong, Nguyen Thi Cam said a few years ago, the state gave her 10 million dong (US$425) for relocation and 20 million dong (US$850) in deferred payment to buy a housing substruction in the resettlement area. After that, Cam’s husband died in a traffic accident. With no money to spare and a chronic illness, she was forced to sell her resettlement plot.

After paying the debt, the 72-year-old woman returned to her old plot of land by the river and built a corrugated iron house to replace the old destroyed hut. Her life goes on amidst the sound of sand-mining dredgers growling daily, and the constant fear of her home collapsing again.