The political economy of river sand mining in South Asia: A commodity chain approach

Sand is the world's second most consumed resource after water. It is increasingly becoming scarce. The world is running out of sand as building booms consume ever greater quantities of the resource. Long thought to be an almost inexhaustible resource, the international community is slowly realizing that sand governance should be a key priority of governments across the globe. This is even more pertinent as it has been found that sand extraction can have highly negative environmental impacts. This research project aimed to understand the current governance of sand in three countries (Bangladesh, India and Nepal) in the Ganga-Brahmaputra-Meghna (GBM) River Basin. This Basin has been particularly affected by sand extraction and it is already highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change. The project combined qualitative fieldwork and household surveys. It analyzed the relations between power, capital, labor and livelihoods and looked at both formal and informal forms of governance of sand extraction, transport and consumption. This research project aimed not only to increase our knowledge of current governance practices, but to provide the groundwork for devising both ecologically and socially sustainable sand policies. Core research partners were Institute of Population and Development Studies in Nepal and The East Asia Study Center at Dhaka University. An in-depth mapping of the literature confirmed an almost complete absence of studies focusing on the everyday governance of sand extraction. This project is part of an emerging conversation about not simply the ecological impacts, but also the socio-political contexts in which sand extraction is happening. While the (limited) literature has focused extensively on the role of criminal networks in illegal extraction, our fieldwork findings suggest that this picture has to be complicated. Legal regulations, like the 2010 sand law in Bangladesh, do exist and are also put into practice. Local bureaucracies in other cases lay out basic ground rules to govern extraction. However, in many cases, also in sand mining sites with an official permit, official regulation for extraction was not always used. Moreover, networks of political and economic elites are often capable of gaining access through these permits, enabling them to extract rents from sand extraction. While we encountered sand mafias and illegal extraction, our research shows that this should not be generalized and can hide a much more complex governance structure. Moreover, it downplays the importance sand labour can have in localised livelihoods. The surveys show that in Nepal and Bangladesh sand workers earn about the same as other low-skilled workers. It allows for diversified livelihoods, and more regular income than other forms of low-skilled labour such as agriculture or construction work. The data further suggests that sand work is an alternative to labour migration, which normally gives higher income, but at the cost of being away from the family for months or even years. In contrast to Nepal, where family groups engage in artisanal sand mining, (mechanised) sand mining in Bangladesh is a male profession. This is different in sand ports, where female labour was dominant in (lowly paid) unloading labour. In Bangladesh we have been able to document the transition of more locally embedded artisanal sand mining to mechanised, capital-intensive dredging operations. Other fieldsites continued to see mostly artisanal and small-scale mining, including rudimentary tools, working in small teams, sometimes consisting of members of a single household. Our research shows that in many cases sand labourers not only have more agency and accrue more benefits from sand work while working in small scale and artisanal mining sites. Such extraction, given the more limited scale of the operation could also be more sustainable. Our research in all three cases showed that labour and its links to different technologies of extraction should be taken into account when devising strategies for inclusive sand governance. Such a focus on the complexities of sand governance and labour should however not downplay the ecological impacts of sand mining. Environmental concerns associated with sand mining along the Brahmaputra River were discussed with informants in India, including violations of ecological norms, erosion, and alterations to river courses. The lack of environmental considerations in mining plans and inadequate monitoring in most of our fieldwork sites across the GBM basis raise concerns. In conclusion, the research provides a nuanced understanding of the diverse sand mining sector in South Asia. It challenges stereotypes associated with sand mafias and highlights the varying impacts of different extraction methods. The study emphasizes the importance of local governance frameworks in protecting laborers and addresses the need for sustainable mining practices to balance environmental and social concerns.

Outcomes: The project has built extensive knowledge on the political economy of sand extraction in South-Asia. This knowledge has been and will be further communicated to the academic community, as well as policy makers. The knowledge has been used to provide policy advice (e.g. to UNEP and the Belgian Directorate-General for Development) on how this growing industry can be regulated taking into account the power structures that exist at the local level and the interests of sand labourers. The core target group are local and national governments, as well international agencies working on regulation of natural resources. Impacts: The project has enabled the establishment of a network of researchers interesting in the fieldwork based study of sand economies. Ideally the project’s insights will be used to counteract elite capture of natural resources in fast growing Asian economies. Detailed knowledge of the industry and the people who benefits from it, including workers who may be poor, can be used to design policy instruments that may improve regulation, and ultimately benefit the local community, including farmers, workers, and potentially also the local elite, as over exploitation of resources may be avoided.

South Asia's riverbeds are a primary site of conflict between the need for development and environmental protection. The region's unprecedented construction boom has created a scramble for sand, and one of the primary sources for this newly valuable commodity is its vulnerable river systems. The large Ganga-Brahmaputra-Meghna (GBM) River Basin has been particularly affected by the search for sand sources. This multi-disciplinary, multi-sited project will use innovative theoretical and methodological approaches to investigate sand mining in the GBM River Basin. The project will focus on Artisanal and Small-scale mining, which are the primary modes employed within the basin, and approach them from the perspective of commodity chain analysis. It will include fieldwork at four sites within the watershed and a household survey. Its outcomes will contribute substantially to the literature on the political economies and ecologies of sand extraction, inform government policies on sand-mining, and inform public conversations on resource management. Additionaly, such a focus will strengthen and further develop research on Asia in Norway by developing interdisciplinary cooperation between Norwegian, Asian and other scholars engaged in research on Asia.