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[h=1]Is Singapore Being Built on Stolen Ground?[/h]September 27, 2011
By Ben Kritz
In 1965, Singapore had a land area of about 581.5 square kilometers. Today, the city-state – still one of the world’s smallest countries – has expanded to 710 square kilometers, and if Singapore planners have their way, will add another 70 square kilometers of land by 2030.
In order to accomplish this feat of physical growth, Singapore has had to reclaim nearly all that extra space from the sea, and in order to do that, builders need sand. Lots of it. To reclaim one square kilometer, it is estimated about 37.5 million cubic meters – roughly 60 million metric tons – of sand are needed. The only problem is, Singapore doesn’t have any sand; every square meter of land in Singapore is either developed property or carefully-guarded environmental preserves.
So where does the sand come from? Despite bans imposed on sand dredging and exports from Singapore’s traditional sources in Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, and most recently, Cambodia, concerned officials and activists in all of those countries charge that the sand trade has hardly slowed, and even more worrisome, Singapore is beginning to look farther afield to countries like Burma, Bangladesh, and the Philippines – all places with a reputation for being a bit ethically-challenged when it comes to environmental management and preventing trafficking – to sate its enormous appetite for sand.
The environmental damage caused by uncontrolled sand mining can be devastating. Since 2005, 24 of Indonesia’s 17,000 islands have completely disappeared due to dredging, and even when the damage is not so spectacular, the dredging process wrecks fishing grounds and creates erosion and flooding problems along rivers.
While critics in each of the affected countries are quick to point the finger of blame at their own corrupt officials and non-enforcement of sand export bans, the complicity of Singaporean officials can hardly be overlooked. Despite claiming that sand imports, as far as Singapore is concerned, arrive with proper documentation assuring compliance with regulations in the source countries, the numbers and the unmistakable physical evidence of such Singapore landmarks as Changi Airport and the Marina Bay Sands complex – both of which sit in places which were once open water – tend to put a rather large smudge on Singapore’s otherwise law-abiding reputation. In 2008, for example, Singapore reported it had imported three million tons of sand from Malaysia, yet figures taken from the UN Comtrade database for the same year showed that 133 million tons had been sent to Singapore – and all this despite there being an official ban on sand exports from Malaysia.
How long the rest of Singapore’s Southeast Asian neighbors will continue to put up with its appetite for growth encouraging corruption and environmental damage in their own countries is up to them. For their part, leaders and planners in the Lion City seem to be hoping nobody notices just quite yet.
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By Ben Kritz
In 1965, Singapore had a land area of about 581.5 square kilometers. Today, the city-state – still one of the world’s smallest countries – has expanded to 710 square kilometers, and if Singapore planners have their way, will add another 70 square kilometers of land by 2030.In order to accomplish this feat of physical growth, Singapore has had to reclaim nearly all that extra space from the sea, and in order to do that, builders need sand. Lots of it. To reclaim one square kilometer, it is estimated about 37.5 million cubic meters – roughly 60 million metric tons – of sand are needed. The only problem is, Singapore doesn’t have any sand; every square meter of land in Singapore is either developed property or carefully-guarded environmental preserves.
So where does the sand come from? Despite bans imposed on sand dredging and exports from Singapore’s traditional sources in Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, and most recently, Cambodia, concerned officials and activists in all of those countries charge that the sand trade has hardly slowed, and even more worrisome, Singapore is beginning to look farther afield to countries like Burma, Bangladesh, and the Philippines – all places with a reputation for being a bit ethically-challenged when it comes to environmental management and preventing trafficking – to sate its enormous appetite for sand.
The environmental damage caused by uncontrolled sand mining can be devastating. Since 2005, 24 of Indonesia’s 17,000 islands have completely disappeared due to dredging, and even when the damage is not so spectacular, the dredging process wrecks fishing grounds and creates erosion and flooding problems along rivers.
While critics in each of the affected countries are quick to point the finger of blame at their own corrupt officials and non-enforcement of sand export bans, the complicity of Singaporean officials can hardly be overlooked. Despite claiming that sand imports, as far as Singapore is concerned, arrive with proper documentation assuring compliance with regulations in the source countries, the numbers and the unmistakable physical evidence of such Singapore landmarks as Changi Airport and the Marina Bay Sands complex – both of which sit in places which were once open water – tend to put a rather large smudge on Singapore’s otherwise law-abiding reputation. In 2008, for example, Singapore reported it had imported three million tons of sand from Malaysia, yet figures taken from the UN Comtrade database for the same year showed that 133 million tons had been sent to Singapore – and all this despite there being an official ban on sand exports from Malaysia.
How long the rest of Singapore’s Southeast Asian neighbors will continue to put up with its appetite for growth encouraging corruption and environmental damage in their own countries is up to them. For their part, leaders and planners in the Lion City seem to be hoping nobody notices just quite yet.
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