Mining will bring disastrous impact if we are over-exploit. Over-exploiting is dueto the greediness of humans, as the benefits are large and money-making in economic.
Other than that, the raw materials also will be used as the element of developingacountry. There are various types of mining, such as coal mining, sand mining, shaftmining and etc. Commonly, we will focus on coal mining as the coal is the rawmaterial we normally used in our daily life. However, there is also one type of miningbring avery severe damage to our environment nowadays which is the sand mining.
Sand and gravel are naturally occurring composed of finely divided rock andmineral particles. They are the important component in the river and at the coastalarea which is highly affecting marine life and the groundwater. Sand becomes highdemand raw materials in construction field and manufacturing. Sand and aggregateare the elements of the reinforced concrete and the making of the optical and commonglasses. Sand in ocean and river providing aplace for the fishes landing and breeding.
Sand mining is an activity that extracting the sand from seashore, under the ocean,sand dunes and river. Due to the rapid growth of population and the sudden rise of theurbanization, the demand of the sand is getting higher in the construction field for thedevelopment of country. It can be said that is an illegal activity as it brings disastrousimpact to our environmental. However, in US, the sand mining is their billion dollar industry annually.
Even though there are rules and regulations of the sand mining according to thescale, location and permission, still broken in the whole world.
The increasing of landarea in developing and developed countries, they are having the land reclamationwhich are involving the sand mining and the land-filling. There are some countriesexporting sand both legally or illegally, such as Cambodia, Indonesia, Vietnam and Malaysia. The mostly supplier are the southeast Asian countries. Cambodia is themost supply of the sand to other countries.
Based on the UN-COMTRADE data reported by Singapore, this sandy businessis valued around US$752 million between Singapore and Cambodia. Cambodiaexport the big volume of sand which is an over-limit beyond the government spermitted limits. Singapore import the sand to work on the land-filling. (MaizuraIsmail, 2018) (1) However, the sandy business destroying Cambodia scoastlines andvillages as the regulations are unable to follow the pace of the rising demands of thesand. The destructive of village by the sand dredging of the mangrove forests. At first,the company took only the white sand on the surface layer but then they also took theblack sand which is at the bottom of the white sand. The villagers are depending onthe fishing but now the marine life is destroyed by the sand dredging. Mangrove areais an important coastlines and estuaries which can prevent the flooding. There is anunfair situation that whoever want to chase out the ships will be threatened by prison.
As the Singapore wants to have aman-made beautiful bay, the Cambodia svillagersare facing the disappear of the villages. There are billion tonnes of sand and gravelsare used in the construction of building daily. The marine life, rivers and oceanpollution and groundwater level have been damaged severely due to the globaldemand of the sand and gravels through the sand mining.
Singapore has become the world’s largest importer of sand which is over 80millions tons of sand so far. Sand mining is giving negative impacts to theenvironmental which damaging the seashore lines and the natural barrier againsterosion, tsunami, rising of sea levels and hurricanes. Malaysia, Vietnam andIndonesia have banned the sand mining except the approval from prime minister andstopping export to other countries because of the negative impacts. (Kathleen.F, 2019)(2) In China and India, they have increased demand of sand three-fold over the lasttwo decades. The sediment carried by river to coastal areas are reduced and faster thebeach erosion. The Asia are the most dis-benefit due to the supply of the sand to othercountries, as the sand mining, hydro-power dams and groundwater extraction causingthe areas of land to sink and shrink in the future.
There is acase about the Penang South Reclamation (PSR) project and the sandmining project in Perak. PSR is going to propose an artificial islands with atotal landarea of 4500 acres which will be sold to fund a RM49 billion. However, there areabout 350 people, including 200 fishermen from Penang and Perak states, hadaprotest against this mega project at the Malaysia’s Parliament in KL. The reasons thatthey opposed strongly because itaffects the life of the fishermen, depleting fish stocksand increase the prices of fish. Other than that, this project also will affect thefisheries. According to the EIA report, there is 4169.37tonnes of fish landing withRM42 million in 2015. AS the rich of prawns in that area, attracting the foreignfishing boats, been caught illegally in that area. Reclamation projects in Malaysia canbe found in the states of Kedah, Penang, Perak, Melaka, Pahang, Kelantan and Johor,where massive reclamation work is underway for the Forest City development. EIA isrequired for the sand mining as the large area of land reclamation and the size of theproject is huge. (Liyana Hasnan, 2019) (3)Malaysian Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad have banned the export of seasand last year in October but it was never made public. Our Water, Land and NaturalResources Minister Dr Xavier Jayakumar said that the ban of exporting the sand is tocut down the illegal sand mining activities and protecting the shorelines. Whoeverwant to export the sand to other countries need to get the approval from prime minister. (Liyana Hasnan, 2019) (4)
In the northern district of Kudat, Sabah, there is asilica sand mining proposal onPulau Balambangan (Tun Mustapha Park). However, the World Wildlife FundMalaysia concerns about the disturbance of the living of marine life. The park is thelargest marine park in Malaysia. It has about 50 islands inside the park. It also thesecond largest home to the concentration of coral reefs in Malaysia, which contributesmore than 12% of Sabah smarine fisheries and aquaculture production with the valueof RM184 million in 2017. (Roy Goh, 2019) (5)The mining activity will harm the coral reefs and bringing suffer to the fisheriesindustry, dive and tourism. WWF studies on the negative impacts of the sand miningto the coastal area, such as the land deterioration or sinking of island, damage ofbiodiversity, sedimentation and etc. As the corals and sea-grasses are depending onthe sunlight, the sand mining will increase turbidity. A 2011 Valuation study of theproposed park by the Coral Triangle Initiative estimated that the conservation andecotourism expansion have larger benefits (RM343 million) than the extractiveindustries of lime stone and silica sand mining (RM100 million).Therefore, we shouldprotect the coral reefs from the sand mining which brings larger beneficial economics to Sabarian.
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