As the @third_pole seminar on sandmining begins, @zofeen28 struggles to introduce @dipak_gyawali because there is so much to tell!

"Entire villages are under the danger of landslides"
"Aquatic life is in decline"
"Massive decline in fish species and abundance"
"Both depth and width of rivers have decreased"
"Groundwater has fallen in surrounding areas"

All effects of sandminging - Dipak Gyawali

"I am one of those that argue for harvesting rather than mining"

"Politics of harvesting implies sustainability... whereas mining means hang everything else, just make a profit now."

"Kosi brings 100 million tons of sediment every year, so some kind of harvesting is needed"

"There are windfall benefits to the miners that are not properly taxed."

"These revenues are going to distort our democracy"

"There is a nexus between crushers, politicians and bureaucrats"

"Recent newspaper headline said crushers are so powerful they can transfer any officer"

"Recent case of an officer (Mahatao) who was killed, run over by a chipper, as he tried to regulate mining"

"Activists killed, threatened"

"Unless we control this, we will have a type of mafia rule over democracy"

Gyawali ends.

Now introducing @sidagarwal of @veditum, a former aeronautical engineer, now walking across the rivers of India, as an effort to "slow down", to challenge the "status quo", telling the stories of the rivers.

"As long as we have an economy runs just on consumptive growth, we will not have sustainability", Siddharth begins.

"Simple observation can make a major change on how we report"

"The Himalayan rivers have a huge gradient [because of the young mountain range] so there is a huge amount of sediment that comes down."

"Nothing is sacred when sandmining and riverbed mining is concerned."

"Are the laws appropriate for the boundaries of the states?"

"The current framework asks districts how much sand can be mined rather than how much should be mined."

"The rules looks at districts, not at rivers."

"Rules consider that river minerals are replenished every year. It does not consider how this happens, or even if it happens."

"Administrative boundaries divide up the river and invisibilise whole set of people involved in what we call the "sand mafia" "

"As humans of the anthropocene, what has brought us here, is because we invisibilise all violence except what ends up as human deaths"

"We need to slow down to see"

"Even if we just look at human deaths, the scale of the violence is horrifying."

"There is often no data, if there is data it is overwhelming."

"There needs to be coordination."

"Technology can be a tool, but only if it creates a community"

"Technology can alienate communities involved, but we can develop inclusive models of technology"

"All progress has been because of communities standing up to this extraction, and technology must support that."

Siddharth ends.

Now @zofeen28 introduces Syeda Rizwana Hasan, a famous attorney who has been working on community rights.

"I echo most of the points of the previous speakers, our problems in Bangladesh are similar to those of Nepal and India."

Shocking images, dead river and sand extraction:

This is sandmining in areas of indigineous communities, they live on the edge of death

"It is not as if we don't have laws, but I don't know if any of them get followed"

"Listing of sand 'mahauls' keeps increasing, delisting hardly ever happens"

"There is no requirement for environmental impact assessment before mining."

"Miners are hardly ever arrested, even if there are murders, but dredgers - labourers - are sometimes caught"

"The department of environment representatives are there at the committees, but they are under so much pressure that they hardly get a say."

"We tried to file Right to Information on how much money is made, but got no information"

"The crimes are punishable by a maximum of two years of 50,000 takas, which is very little, the miners would rather pay the fine than stop because they make much more"

"If we have a list of people with leases why can't they be held accountable?"

"I don't think anything has succeeded completely anywhere in S Asia, but where authorities have been sensitive to local protests some progress has happened"

Hasan ends.

Now Zofeen introduces Vaqar Zakaria, the doyen of EIAs in Pakistan according to Zofeen.

Apparently his other claim to fame is that he makes the best thin crust pizzas in Islamabad at home!

Zakaria "If I show you pictures, it would be impossible to say if they are from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh or Nepal, the tragedy is so similar"

"I will talk of what worked, rather than what we thought would work."

"We have the case of living rivers as in New Zealand, and we need that perspective"

"If I was a fish in a river, I see the river very differently"

"In the Poonch river the mechanised mining has restricted the river, and made breeding impossible"

"We got it listed as a national park, and inserted sustainable harvesting by local communities"

"There was a hydropower, which made the situation, but there was an EIA, which could be used."

"Sand mining was one of the problems, there was also encroachment, dynamiting to fish, pollution."

"Asked how much minerals are coming in, how much is going out, what are community interests and needs, need a comprehensive model"

"There are comprehensive ecosystem models used in South Africa"

"We finally get to a plan of what we can do where"

There were protests, lobbying, don't ask me how much personal connections we needed to use to get everybody on board"

"It required a lot of work"

"The key to this 42 village organisations working along the rivers who help regulate"

"I worked for 3 years at the river Ravi, but that has not worked"

"We tried to work with the government for a national park, but that did not happen, but now civil society in Lahore is standing up and demanding changes."

"It's a long-term challenge"

"get in early, get the people to own the changes."

"Local ownership is the key. Without that, people sitting far away will not work."

"Taking sand mining head on is not possible, they will crush you. I do not want deaths"

Zakaria ends.

Now Zofeen introduces Marc Goichot, who has been working on rivers in the Mekong.

"Here comes my French accent" :)

"Let me talk of the most forgotten species"

"The role of the WWF is to protect biodiversity"

"We are losing species in freshwater biomes much faster than any other."

"Who cares for fish? They are not charismatic, like tigers or elephants."

"Fish are key to nutrition for marginalised communities"

"the Sixth Extinction is happening in our rivers"

Great visualisation of how deltas are sinking

"We are losing large areas of resilience in the world"

"If people don't care about fish because they are not charismatic, let's talk of the human aspect"

"Most of the cities are sitting on sinking areas, and these are where the demand for sand is coming from"

"Often I hear that mangroves will protect us"

"They are good, but they need not just mud, but also sandbanks"

"If sandbanks end up in mixed concrete, the feasibility of restoring mangroves will be in danger."

"Managing sand is key to reslience, to food security, to disaster preparedness"

"Over extraction of sand from rivers is a thing of the past"

"Need for alternatives"

"Rivers are not bottomless pits of sand"

"Obvious that overestraction of sand to continue is complete nonsense"

Goichot ends.

Very interesting responses by Agarwal and Gyawali that administrative and political structures are not enough, that governments are easily corrupted because it feeds the political economy.

Civic activism is key, environment ministries are not enough.

Agrawal: "Unless we understand the right of the river, we will never agree upon how transboundary rivers are managed."

Zofeen: "This is why we need the paradigm of living rivers"