Evaluating the Impact of India’s Sand Mining Bans

Policy Context

India consumes over 700 million tonnes of sand annually, most of which is used for construction. This sand is primarily sourced from riverbeds, since river sand has an ideal grain size for binding concrete. Unfortunately, Illicit and excessive sand mining in riverbeds is causing an economic and environmental crisis. This project provides the first quantitative estimates of these impacts in India, focusing on rivers in the Gangetic Basin.

Study Design

The researchers’ first contribution is an innovative approach to detecting sand mining activity using publicly available satellite imagery. Researchers combine high resolution (10m) Sentinel 2 imagery, with state-of-the art machine learning tools to detect sand mining footprints in roughly 50 major rivers in the Gangetic Basin at a high level of accuracy. Using this data, researchers create a village level panel dataset which describes the village level exposure to sand mining (quarterly, from 2018 – 2024). The second contribution is an analysis of the quantitative impact of sand mining on local economic and environmental outcomes.

Results and Policy Lessons

Preliminary results reveal that sand mining has a positive impact on local economic activity (measured via nightlights). However, researchers also find that the opening of a sand mine increases the likelihood of flooding in the following months, and find (suggestive evidence) that the opening of sand mines might have an adverse impact on local agriculture. The research team’s goal is to extend this analysis to understand the efficacy of regulations that have banned sand mining. Researchers are specifically interested in understanding if such regulations effectively reduce illegal mining, and whether they produce negative externalities: anecdotal evidence suggests that these bans might have raised construction prices, increased corruption, and disrupted local livelihoods.