Just last month, Prime Minister Hun Sen reiterated his determination to crack down on “anarchic” sand dredging. The following year, citing environmental concerns, they banned all sand exports to Singapore-a step many other nearby countries have also taken in recent years. Meanwhile, the group brought to light United Nations trade data showing that Cambodia had been massively under-reporting the amount of sand being exported to Singapore.Įmbarrassed by the mounting local and international attention on the issue, in late 2016 the Phnom Penh government shut down sand dredging for export in the Koh Kong area. Three activists were jailed for ten months on charges of threatening to damage the dredging boats, drawing foreign press attention. In 2015, Mother Nature, a feisty Cambodian environmental group, launched a campaign to rein in the dredging, petitioning government officials and even blockading and boarding the ships. The city-state has “reclaimed” some 140 square kilometers of land from the sea since 1965. Much of the sand was sold to Singapore, which uses titanic quantities of the material for its ongoing effort to bulk up its tiny territory with artificial land.

The dredging also threatened endangered native dolphins, turtles, and otters. Many families have had to send members to work in garment factories in the distant capital of Phnom Penh, or have simply moved away. Since the mid-’00s, fishers in villages in the mangrove-rich estuaries of Koh Kong province have complained that rampant sand mining was wiping out the crabs and fish that provide their living. The bad news is that environmentally destructive sand mining continues in other parts of Cambodia, throughout Southeast Asia, and in fact around the world. If you were disturbed by the damage done to Cambodian coastal fisheries by the industrial-scale dredging of sand for sale to Singapore, as shown in the new documentary short “ The Lost World,” there’s good news: the practice has largely been shut down in Koh Kong, the area featured in the film.

International sand dredging companies