"Sand mining 'mafias' destroying environment, livelihoods: U.N.", 7 May 2019

Sand mining is eroding the world’s river deltas and coastlines, damaging the environment and hurting livelihoods from Cambodia to Colombia, as government regulation fails to keep pace with rising demand, the United Nations warned....

...UN Environment Programme (UNEP)...said...“For one of the most traded commodities on the planet, it is one of the least regulated activities, and there is very low general awareness about extraction impacts.”

...Current legal frameworks are not sufficient, and “sand mafias” comprising builders, businessmen and dealers in countries such as Cambodia, Vietnam, India, Kenya and Sierra Leone regularly flout existing laws, said the UNEP.

...In India...workers were drowning while illegally mining sand in some parts of the country.

...Sumaira Abdulali of environmental advocacy group Awaaz Foundation...“Communities are losing their land and their homes because of sand mining, but they are split over the issue because some people make a living from it, while others say it is ruining their lives,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

“Sand is too plain, too ubiquitous to get the sort of attention that illegally mined diamonds have. But it deserves just as much attention, because its impact is so tremendous.”