After two decades of illegal beach sand mining happening under officials’ noses in India, the Central Bureau of Investigation booked 21 people, six mining companies, and public servants on mining minerals charges in several districts.
According to The Times of India, the mining took place from 1995 to 2015 and involved Transworld Garnet India, Indian Ocean Garnet Sands Co., Industrial Minerals India, Beach Minerals Co., VV Minerals, and another firm. The mining license holders, directors, and employees were also arrested.
The Madras High Court ordered the CBI to investigate illegal agreements among government servants to mine minerals without consent.
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The CBI reported that S. Vaikundarajan, the managing director of VV Minerals, had 34 mining licenses in the districts of Tirunelveli, Kanyakumari, and Thoothukudi and caused the state government to lose 3,581.1 crore ($421.2 million). Other firms also caused millions of dollars in losses because of their illegal activities.
Beach sand mining is often restricted or prohibited because of its negative impacts on coastal ecosystems and communities. It leads to beach erosion, habitat destruction, and reduced water quality, creating unsafe conditions for animals and people that depend on the water for their livelihoods.
Plus, it can harm the tourism industry, as people come from all over the world to visit beaches for vacation and recreation.
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According to the Yale School of the Environment, India is the world’s second-largest sand mining country. Unfortunately, operations are often “run by highly organized and often violent sand mafias,” hydrologist Lois Koehnken said.
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Beach mining has largely been banned in developed countries, but it’s a major problem in developing nations. Yale reported that stricter regulations are crucial to protect workers from exploitation and dangerous conditions as well as fragile coastal ecosystems.
Authorities are cracking down on sand mining, with Indian officials recently arresting a man for illegal mining in a major river. In Suriname, endangered sea turtles are being threatened by sand mining, but conservationists are working to save them. By protecting our shared home and its inhabitants, we can enjoy a cleaner, safer future.
“The simple fact is that the way we are dealing with natural resources is totally unsustainable,” Pascal Peduzzi, the director of the Global Resource Information Database Geneva at the U.N. Environment Programme, told Mongabay. “And this story about sand is the same about overfishing, the same about deforestation, the same about the problem we have for climate biodiversity of pollution. We just have to think differently.”
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