Unsustainable sand mining is threatening lives along the Mekong River in Cambodia
It’s a resource used in global construction and mined from rivers and coasts across the world. Now new research, as part of a project led by University of Southampton, has shown sand mining is causing river beds to lower, leading to riverbank instability and increasing the likelihood of dangerous river bank collapse, damaging infrastructure and housing and putting lives at risk.
The new research has been published in the journal Nature Sustainability.
Researchers focused on the Mekong River – one of the world’s major sand-bedded rivers – in Cambodia.
