I saw this short video from The Atlantic on sand mining in Cambodia.

There was sand mining when I first arrived in Prey Veng province in 2006 but I remember things dramatically increasing in scale from land based pumping or the occasional barge to fleets of barges equipped with cranes. The photos below were taken by me in 2009.

While I was in Cambodia there was a temporary moratorium on sand mining after a village on a riverbank collapsed into the Mekong but it didn’t seem like that lasted very long. Then, in 2017, Cambodia passed a law permanently banning the export of sand for construction…but, as with similar laws in Indonesia and Malaysia, enforcement is sporadic. With the worldwide shortage of water sand (as opposed to wind sand) becoming more pronounced it’s likely that excessive mining will continue until the consequences are too severe to be overlooked.