Cambodia's Sand Dredging Scourge
As city footprints grow across Asia, Cambodian rivers pay the price
Sand-dredging from the Cambodian coast and the Mekong River and its tributaries to be used as land reclamation has long been an environmental scourge for the kingdom, particularly in Koh Kong province, with its myriad of rivers and sprawling mangrove forests at the foot of the Cardamom Mountains.
Indonesian and Malaysian rivers and bays have suffered as well as millions of tonnes of riverbed sand were sucked up with giant hoses and deposited onto ocean-going barges, which later chugged across the Gulf of Thailand to create land on what was once water, famously increasing the size of Singapore by a full 25 percent, from 578 sq km in 1819 when Sir Stamford Raffles claimed the island, to 719 sq km today although the practice has officially been stopped. In 2016. If it is continuing, it is illicit.
Investigative reports by environmental NGOs called attention to the problem and led to curbing of some of the abuses in the previous decade. But it hasn’t stopped. While the spotlight may have moved on, sand is still being dredged. Hong Kong in 2019, for instance, announced plans to reclaim 1,000 ha of land at a cost of nearly HK$80 billion to ease the territory’s housing shortage. A full quarter of Hong Kong is built on reclaimed land including its spectacular airport at Chek Lap Kok. Other cities across Asia are using millions of tonnes of sand for construction, including those in Cambodia itself…