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Article

15 Nov 2016

Author:
Brooks Boliek, Radio Free Asia

Cambodia: Following reports of corruption, nearly 50 civil society organizations call on govt. to ban or severely restrict sand exports for environmental reasons

"Sand Storm: $750 Million Worth of The Material is Unaccounted For in Cambodia", 2 Nov 2016

Nearly 50 civil society organizations called on the Cambodian government to join some other Southeast Asian nations and ban or severely restrict exports of sand to Singapore after it was revealed that nearly $750 million worth of the building material has disappeared from the country.

U.N. data shows that Cambodia exported $752 million in sand to Singapore over the past eight years, but Phnom Penh only reported that about $5 million worth of sand was exported to the island nation that is the world’s top destination for the material…

The Cambodian environmental organization Mother Nature Cambodia has accused the government of using “the power of the state…to provide a veneer of legality to the mining.”

…[According to Mother Nature Cambodia…] “Fish stocks have been depleted across the estuaries where the mining is taking place, pollution from the mining barges is close to unbearable to those living nearby, riverbank collapse is endemic, and the only ones that benefit from the alleged benefits of deepening of the estuaries are the large barges that travel upstream to pick up the sand and transport it onto Singapore.”…