Indonesia’s recent announcement that it is ending its 2007 ban on sand exports to Singapore comes as no surprise. It fits a broad and perplexing pattern of flagrant disregard by Southeast Asian governments for their countries’ natural environments. Given Singapore’s wealth, the temptation for neighboring nations, particularly Malaysia and Indonesia, to sell off their sand for immediate monetary gain appears simply too great to resist. It’s understandable, but decidedly, if not dangerously, shortsighted.
Marine sand is the first line of defense against sea level rises, which, if the predictions of scientists are correct, will soon be inundating Malaysia’s and Indonesia’s low-lying shores, putting its people and property at high risk and incurring significant economic losses.
The UN Calls for Sand Mining Sustainability
According to a 2022 United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report, much greater awareness is needed about the hazards inherent in the “extraction, sourcing, use, and management” of sand. No clearer example of the need for global sand extraction regulations exists than the sand bazaar free-for-all example set by Singapore, Southeast Asia’s leading consumer of marine sand.
The UNEP claims that sand extraction remains “largely ungoverned in many regions of the world.” This is certainly the case with Singapore’s import of sand, which promotes rampant sand dredging and perpetuates a clear and present eco-danger for the region. Put another way, Singapore has created an environmental conscience-free zone, extending back decades, that has harmed its neighbors’ shoreline protections, while abetting its own territorial expansion.
Long the dominant sand buyer in Asia, commissioning droves of dredgers to pluck up sand from every nation with coastlines in the region, Singapore has generally played according to its own rules – or rather, no environmental rules at all. It purchases what it wants when it wants, the environmental consequences to other nations be damned.
Singapore, the Sand Magnet
Not a year goes by that Singapore doesn’t court its neighbors, offering tens of millions of Singapore dollars to pull, like an army of magnets, millions of tons of sand from their over-exploited and increasingly sand-barren shores. Things are particularly bad in Malaysia, where it is no state secret that the country’s decades of sand sales to its rich neighbor are effectively denuding its national shores of suitable reclamation sand. This serves not only to provide habitat for essential aquamarine biodiversity but also to protect against encroaching coastal erosion, which is critical to inland protection as global sea levels rise and climate change-induced super-storms loom on the horizon.
Indeed, in 2021, according to U.N. Comtrade, Singapore paid Malaysia around $424 million for the right to dig up sea sand along the Malacca Straits and ship millions of tons to Tekong Island and Tuas Port to support the miniature nation’s ever-expanding list of land reclamation projects.
Where are all those boatloads of Singapore dollars going?
These staggering annual sums of sand, extracted even after Malaysia’s Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad issued a blanket sand export ban in 2018, continue to aggravate coastal erosion and deplete the shores of their vital, stabilizing resources. Much of this sand is said to be extracted from the waters around Johor, the Malaysian state directly adjacent to Singapore. According to Malaysiakini, the Sultan of Johor has in the past profited handsomely from sand sales, through Mados Sdn Bhd, a sand extraction company owned by the royal family. The current sultan, Sultan Ibrahim Ishmail, is listed as a director of the company, together with the remaining shareholders, which include “his second wife and nine out of 10 children.”
In 2002, according to the Malaysiakini report, the Johor state government granted Mados a concession to extract sea sand in two areas – at Ramunia Shoal and Kukup in southern Johor. More recently, in 2014, Crown Prince Tunku Ismail Idris also became involved in two major Malaysian reclamation projects. They were led by Benalec Holdings Bnh, and required the extraction of huge volumes of Johor sea sand. Whether Benalec Holdings has exported sea sand to Singapore through one of its land reclamation and dredging subsidiaries remains unclear.
But there’s reason to believe that Mados is supporting sand exports to Singapore, through a third-party proxy company. For instance, in 2022, a complaint was filed by Mighty Earth against Mado’s Holdings Sdn Bhd, which stated that “the primary beneficial owner of Mados’s Holdings Sdn Bhd (a Sultan of a state of Malaysia) has been using a third-party ‘proxy’ company (Nadi Mesra Sdn Bhd) to develop oil palm plantations,” while alleging that “no HCV [High Conservation Values] assessments were conducted prior to any land clearing.”
If indeed the sultan and/or any of his family members or companies held or controlled by them are still involved in exporting Johor’s sand to Singapore, he and his family should consider their duty of care to the people of the state. Johor’s shores continue to be degraded, year after year, and one year, the sand, for all practical purposes, may be virtually gone.
Is Indonesia the next Malaysia?
Today, with the lifting of Indonesia’s decade-and-a-half sand ban, President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo appears to be ready to take up where Johor may have left off. One needs only recall the reasons why its original sand ban was put in place: the multiple disappearances of islands, swallowed up by the environmental ravages of relentless sand dredging. That the current president, the elected caretaker for the more than 18,000 islands in the Indonesian archipelago, would choose to ignore the havoc Singapore-bound dredging will do to his people’s homeland is both remarkable and disappointing.
Indonesia’s low-lying coastlines are already vulnerable to rising global sea levels, so to blithely permit the systematic strip-mining of Indonesia’s national shores is the height of irresponsibility. Jokowi needs to answer these questions: How many islands will simply vanish as a result of his new policy? And was his shift in policy even debated during the last election cycle, or was the deal between Indonesia and Singapore concluded quietly behind closed doors after Jokowi’s re-election in 2019?
What’s even more surprising is that Indonesia has actually been selling sand to Singapore for many years, despite its so-called 2007 sand export ban. In fact, Singapore has reported to U.N. Comtrade that it bought $76 million worth of sand from Indonesia in 2017, followed by $78 million in 2018, $69 million in 2019, $55 million in 2020, and $85 million in 2021. This amounts to a total of $363 million over five years. That’s some kind of sand ban. At prevailing market prices, it amounts to roughly 30 million tons of sand over five years – or the equivalent of about one year of Malaysia’s sand exports to Singapore.
Puzzlingly, while Singapore reported purchasing a total of $363 million in sand from Indonesia between 2017 to 2021, Indonesia reported sales of only $243 million during this same time frame to U.N. Comtrade. That’s a difference of $120 million, or more than 48 percent of the total reported by Singapore. So, what accounts for the difference? Where did this extra money go?
How Will It End?
It appears that Indonesia is poised to become the new Malaysia, selling off its precious natural resources at the expense of its own citizens’ national bounty – and, eventually, their safety. All the while, the coastlines of its wealthy neighbor will continue to expand, even as those of Indonesia and Malaysia shrink. All for a relatively insignificant amount of money.
And while Singapore expands – doling out cash to its poorer neighbors eager to sell off their irreplaceable natural heritage, dredger by dredger, barge by barge – the U.N. looks on, a helpless bystander. As always on this issue, Singapore plays and wins according to its own rules – which is to say, by no environmental rules at all.