Ngapali Beach sand mining, 2015, Myanmar. Photo courtesy of:© Oliver E Soe Thet
Excerpts;
Around every corner waits a new truck. Workers dig their shovels into the powdery white sand of Myanmar’s Ngapali beach, the country’s top seaside destination, and lift it onto the truck beds. Vast craters dot the coastline. Many are bigger than the swimming pools of the nearby luxury hotels…
Read Full Article, Earth Island Journal
Paradise Lost? Beach sand mining, Ngapali beach, Myanmar, A dossier and photo reportage by Oliver Soe Thet (12-13-2015)
Twenty years ago Ngapali Beach, on the Bay of Bengal, was an unspoilt gem in the crown of Myanmar’s natural treasures. Times have changed. Beach sand mining at Ngapali, has disturbed the natural balance…
Sand Wars, An Investigation Documentary, By Multi-Award-Winning Filmmaker Denis Delestrac (©2013)
Sand is the second most consumed natural resource, after water. The construction-building industry is by far the largest consumer of this finite resource. The traditional building of one average-sized house requires 200 tons of sand; a hospital requires 3,000 tons of sand; each kilometer of highway built requires 30,000 tons of sand… A nuclear plant, a staggering 12 million tons of sand…
Sand Thieves Are Eroding World’s Beaches For Castles Of Cash, by Martine Valo, Le Monde (09-2013)
The pillaging of sand is a growing practice in the world. This is because it represents 80% of the composition of concrete that it is the object of such greed…
Such Quantities of Sand, The Economist (07-27-2015)
Asia’s mania for reclaiming land from the sea spawns mounting problems…
Built on Sand: Singapore and the New State of Risk, Harvard Design Magazine (09-07-2015)
The island’s expansion has been a colossal undertaking. It is not merely a matter of coastal reclamation: Singapore is growing vertically as well as horizontally. This means that the nation’s market needs fine river sand—used for beaches and concrete—as well as coarse sea sand to create new ground…
A UN Report On Sand Mining: “Sand, Rarer Than One Thinks;” UNEP, GEA-March-2014
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PETITION: Save Myanmar’s beautiful beaches from Greed & Destruction, By The Beachfront Club
