Key publications and presentations in this emerging area:
Rivers, sand extractivism, and disrupted hydrosocial relations
V. Lamb, M. Käkönen, K. Barney. EXALT Dialogue Keynote 2024
Trading sand, undermining lives: Omitted livelihoods in the global trade in sand [preprint]
V. Lamb, M. Marschke, and J. Rigg. Annals of the American Association of Geographers. Online 2019.
V. Lamb and Z. Fung. Environmental Policy and Governance (Open Access). https://doi.org/10.1002/eet.1972
LSE Southeast Asian Waters Series: Expanding transboundary water governance: A mobile political ecology of sand and shifting resource-based livelihoods in Southeast Asia
V. Lamb, chaired by Professor John Sidel.
Radford, S. and V. Lamb. Asia Pacific Viewpoint. doi:10.1111/apv.12256. 2020.
Following a disappearing resource: Research methods for study of the global trade in sand
V. Lamb, Presentation to the Institute of Australian Geographers, Hobart, 2019
Sand, Gravel, and Sediments on the Lower Salween and in a global context
V. Lamb, Presentation to the Salween Studies Research Workshop, University of Yangon, 2018
Media:
"Dr Lamb .. believes there is “serious unfairness” in the increasingly contentious fight for sand."
"Approaching global crisis people don't know about" Yahoo News, 23 November 2019
"As Myanmar farmers lose their land, sand mining for Singapore is blamed"
Reuters by Sam Aung Moon, John Geddie, Poppy McPherson, 4 March 2020
"Where does that sand go? Who takes it? Who benefits?"
"The demand for sand, and its impact in Asia" on Ear to Asia and Jakarta Post podcast interview with Peter Clarke and Melissa Marschke, 27 March 2020
About this emerging research:
Sand mining is a global US$70-billion industry. It is “the global environmental crisis you’ve probably never heard of” (Beiser 2017) but has elicited considerable media attention over the past year as an emerging ecological crisis. Worldwide, large volumes of sand are extracted to produce concrete and fill; increasing demand for sand has driven regional and cross-border commodity flows (UNEP 2014) and corresponding attention to the ecological dimensions of its extraction. The majority of sand is extracted from rivers and coasts, and damage from this is visible to local people and in local and regional ecologies. Where I work in Asia, sand mining and public concern have risen to sudden prominence, with particular attention paid to exports feeding the expansion of Singapore ‘out and up’. Those cross-border flows, and their local impacts on livelihoods, are understudied.
Student work:
University of Melbourne Honours student Stella Radford's work in the Irrawaddy Delta, "When Development Threatens Livelihoods: Development in the Delta City of Pathein." Read a summary of her findings here.
Other Key works on this emerging topic:
Beiser, V. 2017, Feb 27. Sand mining: the global environmental crisis you’ve probably never heard of. Guardian
Beiser, V. 2018. The World in a Grain: The Story of Sand and How It Transformed Civilization. Penguin.
Comaroff, J. 2014. Built on Sand: Singapore and the New State of Risk. Harvard Design Magazine No 39.
Torres, A., J. Brandt, K. Lear and J. Liu. 2017. A looming tragedy of the sand commons. Science 357 (6355), 970-971.
UNEP. 2014. Sand – Rarer than one thinks. UNEP.