Paper short abstract:

People engage in sand mining as a consequence of low education, unemployment and disruption of existing livelihoods, which leads to job creation, construction of critical buildings, income and taxes. But, sand mining also destructs the environment and existing infrastructure and causes pollution.

Paper long abstract:

Construction-sand is the most used solid material and is central in developing societies and economies. Recent years’ increasing focus on global scarcity of sand has focused on global issues arising from it and on environmental consequences of the extraction. However, comprehensive research describing the complexity of sand mining in low-income nations is lacking. Here we review literature from Sub-Saharan African to outline the drivers and effects of construction-sand mining in 13 Sub-Saharan countries. We show that at regional and national level, population growth and rapid urbanisation are the main drivers for the growing sand mining activities observed in all of the investigated countries. Environmental consequences are solely negative and often observed at or in the vicinity of the mining sites and can be immediate or occur with a time lag. For humans and the built-environment, the positive effects are seen at a variety of levels spanning national and regional through the creation of necessary buildings and income, taxes and revenues. At an individual level, little or low education, unemployment and disruption of traditional livelihoods are main drivers for people engaging in sand mining. The extraction of the material has negative consequences in the form of pollution and destruction of infrastructure and impact not only people involved in the mining industry but also nearby communities. We propose that repeated sand mining monitoring at a country-scale using satellite images has the ability to become a standard monitoring approach to tackle the growing use and help ensure a sustainable future for the resource.

Paper short abstract:

Kenya’s rapid urbanization has created a soaring appetite for sand. Across the country, expanding and poorly regulated mining troubles ecosystems and communities alike. This paper explores how the devolution of resource governance in Kenya generates new conflict dynamics around sand-mining.

Paper long abstract:

The astounding urbanization as well as the massive extension of transport infrastructures during the last two decade across Kenya have created a soaring appetite for sand. In general, sand as a mundane resource often remains absent in discussions on extractivism and, more specifically, is under-regulated in national resource governance, where sand features as a ‘construction mineral’ that is not subject to strict mining restrictions. On the one hand, sand-mining turned into a valuable source of income and empowerment for hundreds of thousands of people across the country. On the other hand, mining sites along rivers and in open pits have mushroomed yielding harmful cascading effects on the environment and the social fabric and making sand-based livelihoods unsustainable. What is more, the large-scale unregulated mining of what is often considered a ‘development resource’ has been recognized as a business opportunity based on structural violence seen in displacements of locals from ‘profitable’ sites, corrupt practices and public health disasters.

The devolution of power to the newly established counties has to some extent changed the dynamics of sand harvesting with varying efforts of regulation generating ongoing push-and-pull dynamics. Based on pilot studies in 5 counties and a particular focus on dynamics in Kedong Valley, Narok County, this paper examines the informal rules and norms that govern large-scale sand-mining in Kenya. It provides valuable insights into the political economies of sand extraction.

Paper short abstract:

As demand for sand increases due to rapid population growth and infrastructure development, Kenya’s laissez-faire attitude to sand mining has resulted in environmental degradation and socio-economic issues. Here, the response of a regional government to these demands is assessed and critiqued.

Paper long abstract:

Artisanal river sand mining has been the main source of construction aggregates in Kenya. Makueni county comprises a series of intermittent, ephemeral streams that remained one of the major sources of construction sand for Nairobi and its sprawling peri-urban area. With no regulation, decades of river sand mining have led to unprecedented social issues evidenced by conflicts over access and control of sand resources, enrichment of a few and lack of equitable benefit sharing of proceeds from natural resources, proliferation of drug abuse, school dropout and destruction and disruption of the environment and environmental systems.

At the advent of County governments in 2013, Makueni pioneered in legislating on sand mining. Regulation began in 2015 under the auspices of the Makueni County Sand Conservation and Utilization Act, 2015. Since regulation, the county has witnessed fewer violent conflicts over sand resources and a fall in school dropout rate. The environment has benefitted through increased thickness of sand deposits resulting in greater rates of alluvial water recharge, increased riparian vegetation and increasingly healthier rivers. The increase in water availability has facilitated reuptake of small-scale agribusiness, changing fortunes of the local farmers.

In the midst of an Anthropocene and a growing debate on the need to rethink sand as a strategic resource, reviewing Makueni’s journey highlights the complexities of the intercession of the past sand resources governance regimes, perceptions and practices and allows insight into how to manage present and future pressures whilst regulating sand mining. The absence of a coordinated approach to regulate sand mining more broadly across Kenya underpins these complexities and is a reflection of the sociopolitical contestations and its unique governance challenges.

Paper short abstract:

Aiming to bring the agenda of sand mining and trade to the spotlight of the debate on the extractive resources that have sidelined sand mining and its trade, this paper explores the governance of sand mining in Ethiopia

Paper long abstract:

Aiming to bring the agenda of sand mining to the spotlight of the debate on the extractive

resources that have sidelined sand mining, this paper explores the governance of sand mining

in Ethiopia. Sand, a commodity largely extracted from the riverine, its mining didn’t have a

regulatory framework until 2019. The mining of sand was characterized by informality that

translate into unruliness and at times dominated by the network of violent actors prior to 2019.

Based on interviews and observation, the paper argues that continuities of informality and

networks of violent actors still present in sand mining activities despite an attempt to formalize

sand mining activities recently. Although the local authorities are responsible to carry out the

monitoring activities, they often face challenges from the informality of sand mining and at times

from violent sand miners that have networks both inside and outside the government structure.

Moreover, there is also a lack of uniformity in governing sand mining from region to region and

the extraction process also has negative social-ecological implications. The paper concludes

that sand mining activities are still dominated by informality, lack uniformity from region to region,

and has negative social-ecological implications. Thus, uniformity in sand mining governance,

proper monitoring mechanism of sand extraction, and adequate concern for the environment

will not only avoid governance challenges in sand mining but also ensure sustainability.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores projects of coastal protection in Durban, South Africa, through the vantage of sand. It sheds light on human-sand relations and their role in (un)making coastal life, while also showing how they are tied into larger infrastructures of resource extraction and urban governance.

Paper long abstract:

There are very few stories about sand as something else then a construction material, used for stabilizing infrastructures. This calls for new ways of reckoning with marginality, informality and supposedly infinite yet marginal resources such as sand. This paper seeks to rethink the trajectory of urban development and coastal protection and gain awareness of the need to focus on local initiatives in resource use and local meanings of sand.

On the basis of theoretically informed accounts and as preparation for in-depth ethnographic research with coastal dwellers in Durban this paper is concerned with the multiple ways in which sand, mostly invisible in its everydayness and proximity, accretes and erodes in the port city of Durban, having following underlying questions in mind:

- How does sand organize and govern coastal protection in Durban? Who controls and claims sand for what purposes, on what scale and temporality? How, in turn, does sand control various actors differently?

- Who formulates and dominates discourses and narratives around sand and coastal protection and how do they get appropriated and hybridized? What are the consequent tensions between extractive practices and innovative possibilities?

- How might thinking with sand inform our theories of urban nature?