![\"five](\"https:\/\/dialogue.earth\/content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/Mangalore-Ashwin-Karanth.jpg\")
Still, activists have continued to oppose illegal sand mining in India. The recent order by the Uttarakhand High Court declaring the Ganga and the Yamuna as living entities<\/a> was in response to a petition by an activist, seeking an end to illegal sand mining around Hardwar. As part of the same order, the court banned<\/a> all sand mining in the area for four months, and asked the government what it planned to do to stop illegal mining. There is no response from the authorities yet.<\/p>\n There was a recent raid on illegal miners in the suburbs of India\u2019s capital New Delhi after a rash of media reports. Within hours, some morning walkers at the Okhla Bird Sanctuary along the Yamuna river were beaten up, reportedly by miners who suspected that walkers and joggers had informed the authorities about the illegal extraction.<\/p>\n In India, perhaps the most blatant case of illegal sand mining takes place in the lowest reaches of the Ganga, between the Farakka barrage and the confluence of the river with the Bay of Bengal. Pontoons are anchored in the middle of the river, large pumps are set up on them, and the sand is pumped up and sent to the riverbank through a pipe.<\/p>\n Asked about this, officials in the West Bengal state government said that the riverbed is under the jurisdiction of either local municipalities or the National Waterways Authority of India (NWAI). The mayor of Chandannagar \u2013 one of the largest municipalities along this stretch of the river \u2013 said it was the responsibility of his counterpart on the other bank. There was no official response from NWAI. Unofficially, its officials say they cannot do anything because local politicians are involved in illegal sand mining. One of them also said, \u201cWe keep quiet because extracting the sand and the silt keeps the navigation channel dredged and open.\u201d<\/p>\n The effects are there for all to see. Riverbank erosion has increased, to the point that one of the bridges over the Ganga has become unusable \u2013 a girder collapsed because so much sand and silt were removed around its foundations. Residents now have to take a slow ferry or a 50 kilometre detour to cross the river.<\/p>\n For over 12 years Nadeem Mirbahar, an ecologist and expert at the IUCN Commission on Ecosystem Management, has been watching sand and gravel being dug illegally from the bed of the Malir river that flows through parts of Karachi and the Hub river in Pakistan’s southwestern province of Balochistan.<\/p>\n But the government remains indifferent. “It’s an issue about which most people are not aware, not even the communities living near the riverbed create a ruckus. Therefore there no state policy or\u00a0planning to\u00a0control the indiscriminate excavation of the riverbeds by identifying and designating areas from where the miners can quarry the building material. That is causing a colossal ecological problem,\u201d Mirbahar told thethirdpole.net<\/a>.<\/p>\n “The people along the Malir who rely on wells often complain not just of a drop in the water levels with many wells running dry, but of water quality degradation,” said Mirbahar. However,\u00a0the residents do not realise sand mining is one of the main reasons. The sand acts as a filter before the water percolates into the ground, and so without the sand, water will just rush down to become flash floods downstream.<\/p>\n See<\/strong> Riverbed mining destroys rivers in Jhelum basin<\/a><\/p>\n Zakaria thinks the impact of sand mining may be less downstream in the plains, as river ecology evolves with the change in slope. However, less sediment flowing down the rivers does result in erosion of the banks and loss of fertility in irrigated areas and delta regions. Trapping of sediment in the Mangla resevoir\u00a0on the Jhelum<\/a>, for example, has reduced\u00a0fish species downstream of the dam. Clearer waters mean the predators have a field day eating the young of other fish.<\/p>\n For over 12 years, Zakaria has been working in the Poonch river in the Mahaseer National Park. Its entire stretch from the Indian border to Mangla dam was declared a national park in 2010. The river has a high diversity of fish species, particularly the endangered Mahaseer (Tor putitora), which was on the IUCN Red List in 2013. Yet, says Zakaria, extensive sand and gravel mining and illegal fishing continues at several locations along the river, due to ineffective protection and management.<\/p>\n Sand mining and gravel extraction picks up every winter, when the water flow is low, and it is easier to mine the sand from the exposed riverbed. Nowadays, it is no longer a matter of using manual shovels and spades. Mechanised shovels and donkeys with tractors tear apart the riverbed.<\/p>\n In 1991, the government of Nepal banned riverbed sand mining citing the collapse of a bridge on the\u00a0Bagmati river<\/a> in Kathmandu. But illegal sand mining is still rampant in most rivers across the country. A case study<\/a> done by Tribhuvan University in 2007 said that about 40% of the total demand for sand in the Kathmandu valley was met through illegal riverbed mining. As the activities are illegal, it was hard to quantify the amount of sand being extracted, the authors of the study pointed out.<\/p>\n According to this and other studies, significant sand and gravel extraction from riverbeds started in the 1960s and has been increasing exponentially as the demand for construction materials rises due to rapid urbanisation.<\/p>\n \u201cMost of the riverbed extraction destroys the vegetative cover of the aquatic environment and reduce the nutrient inputs into the river so its severely affects aquatic life,\u201d said Subodh Sharma, professor at the department of environmental sciences and engineering in Kathmandu University.<\/p>\n Uncontrolled riverbed mining has also put bridges in danger, as riverbeds have been lowered significantly. A study done in western Nepal\u2019s Tinau river<\/a> revealed that the riverbed has been lowered by 2.5 metres in the last 15 years. \u201cWe haven\u2019t done enough studies of the impact yet,\u201d said Sharma. \u201cWhatever little we have done shows that the future of our rivers is very uncertain and they have been raped. It is not a term I want to use, but I cannot find another.\u201d<\/p>\n In Bangladesh, illegal sand mining from rivers and wetlands is carried out with support from elected public representatives, according to local residents. Construction companies install heavy machinery in the rivers and extract sand, damaging not just the riverbed but the farms on the banks. Illegal sand extraction hastens riverbank erosion across the Ganga-Brahmaputra-Meghna delta that makes up most of Bangladesh. The sand thus extracted is used not only for the construction industry, but also to fill in wetlands prior to laying claim over it.<\/p>\n Syed Rizwana Hasan, chief executive of Bangladesh Environmental Lawyers\u2019 Association<\/a> (BELA) told thethirdpole.net<\/a>, \u201cUse of heavy machinery leading to indiscriminate and unscientific mining has become a cause of concern as these are changing the riverbed characteristics and exacerbating riverbank erosion. In Bangladesh, most of the sand mining from rivers is being done with the support of elected public representatives as they are not aware of the damages.”<\/p>\n To add to this, the Bangladesh government has recently decided to start exporting sand<\/a> to Maldives and Singapore, after extracting it from the bed of the Jamuna river, as the Brahmaputra is called in Bangladesh.<\/p>\n In China, demand for sand is greater than anywhere else in the world due to rapid urbanisation. Demand for cement has increased 400% over the past two decades,\u00a0according<\/a>\u00a0to the United Nations Environment Programme.<\/p>\n In the past four years, China has used more cement than the US used in the entire 20th century.<\/p>\n Cement manufacturing needs sand, and all that sand has to come from somewhere. In the region around Shanghai, it came until recently from the bed of the Yangtze River. By the late 1990s miners had pulled out so much that bridges were destabilised, shipping was hampered, and swaths of riverbank collapsed.<\/p>\n In 2000, Chinese authorities\u00a0banned the activity<\/a>\u00a0along the lower and middle reaches of the river. \u00a0This simply drove many sand miners to Poyang Lake, China\u2019s largest freshwater body of water that flows into the Yangtze about 600 kilometres upstream of\u00a0Shanghai.<\/p>\n NASA’s Earth Observatory\u00a0released<\/a>\u00a0dramatic satellite images of Poyang Lake. Comparing images from 1995 and 2013, the agency showed how miners had dramatically transformed the lake.<\/p>\n The Mekong river is another major source of sand for China\u2019s construction industry. On the Yunnan stretch of the river, sand dredging is generally allowed with permission from county or provincial authorities, who have banned sand dredging in certain places, usually in ecological hotspots.<\/p>\n But there hasn\u2019t yet been a clear assessment of how exactly sand dredging operations in Yunnan have affected the biodiversity and fish populations of the Mekong. However, the overall loss of sediment, from dredging and also held back by large dams, has visibly transformed river landscapes in countries like Vietnam, where the rich Mekong delta constitutes the region\u2019s rice bowl.<\/p>\n Dredging has taken place for years along the Mekong, but the industrial scale is relatively new<\/a>.\u00a0On the Lower Mekong between Laos and Vietnam, 50 million tonnes of sand were extracted in 2011 alone, WWF estimates – much more than the river produces in a year.<\/p>\nIllegal sand mining from the mountains to the sea in Pakistan<\/strong><\/h2>\n
![\"Mining](\"https:\/\/dialogue.earth\/content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/Mining-in-Poonch-River-Using-Heavy-Machinery-Destroying-River-Habitats.jpg\")
Rampant illegal riverbed mining in Nepal <\/strong><\/h2>\n
Sand mafia too strong for Bangladesh officials<\/strong><\/h2>\n
![\"sand](\"https:\/\/dialogue.earth\/content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/Dharla-Kurigram-2.jpg\")
Exporting sand<\/strong><\/h2>\n
![\"Labourers,](\"https:\/\/dialogue.earth\/content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/Jamuneswari-Nilphamari.jpg\")
China, the biggest sand market<\/strong><\/h2>\n
![\"Poyang](\"https:\/\/dialogue.earth\/content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/poyang_tm5_1995341_lrg.jpg\")
\n![\"Poyang](\"https:\/\/dialogue.earth\/content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/poyang_oli_2013358_lrg.jpg\")
Mekong sand<\/strong><\/h2>\n