The surging demand for sand threatens to dramatically shrink Cambodia’s Tonle Sap, Southeast Asia’s largest freshwater lake. Mining that extracts sand for concrete, glass and landfill are altering the flow of the Mekong River, a new study finds, which could choke off water to one of the region’s most important wildlife habitats and fisheries that support millions of people.
The sand mining problem “has been documented before but is not well understood,” says Brian Eyler, a water policy specialist at the Stimson Center, a think tank in Washington, D.C. He hopes the new study “will elevate this issue to levels where it will get good and useful attention.”
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