![]() She holds a document from the company that dredged in front of her house and that accepted responsibility if anything went wrong. ![]() When the back of her house started falling into the river, she says, "I tried to call on that number, but they never answered the phone or it was busy." So she gave up. ![]() "We have never received a complaint."Ī little way out of the city, on the Bassac River, a tributary of the Mekong, farmer Mon Mut slaps her leg and laughs when she hears that explanation. "We have our hotline for people to inform us of illegal sand dredging, and we would take immediate action," he says. "I don't think those allegations are true," says Mony Rath, the mineral resources director-general. In reality, critics say, the only rule is making money. In theory, the mining companies are required to file environmental impact statements and abide by the rules. The sand miners, he and other environmentalists say, work for companies linked to powerful tycoons with government connections. So no one really knows what's legal and what's not. He complains there's no government transparency when it comes to sand mining in Cambodia. "We are doing too much sand mining right now, and we do not control it," he says. And that worries environmentalists like Vannak. The uproar and bad press over Cambodia's dredging of its coastal wetlands led Cambodia to officially ban sand exports in 2017.īut there's plenty more for the miners to find and sell domestically. He spent five months in prison beginning in 2017 for protesting illegal sand mining when Cambodia was selling huge amounts of sand to Singapore, the tiny city-state that has been buying sand from Southeast Asian countries for years in an effort to increase its landmass. The business, the benefit, not about the environment or the people," says Hun Vannak, an activist with Mother Nature Cambodia, an environmental advocacy group. "Otherwise you'll see another report on TV about stupas falling into the river and us trying to save the coffins again."Īn attempt to interview workers on the dredger prompted them to raise anchor and motor away. "We're trying to shore up the riverbank to try to protect the stupas," he says. Parallels 'I Will Lose My Identity': Cambodian Villagers Face Displacement By Mekong Dam "So it pulls the banks of the river into the river, and this has resulted in roads collapsing into the river and lines of homes and towns falling into the river." ![]() "When you extract all the sediment from the beds of a river, the river looks for new sediment," says Brian Eyler, a Southeast Asia expert at the Stimson Center think tank and author of Last Days of the Mighty Mekong. What's more, taking too much sand from the Mekong is also causing problems for the people who live alongside it. Not only that, he says, but "Phnom Penh is lowland and we need to fill it in before we can begin construction and grow the national economy."Įnvironmentalists point out that the capital has filled in many of its lakes, including the Boeung Kak, to make way for condos and coffee shops, hampering Phnom Penh's handling of runoff from the annual monsoons and exacerbating flooding. And dredging the river helps make it wider and deeper for boat traffic." "The sand used in the construction industry helps create jobs and grows the economy. "The benefit from sand dredging is both direct and indirect," says Yos Mony Rath, head of the Cambodian government's Mineral Resources Department.
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