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The consequences of mechanized sand mining on women in Lagos

By Esther Olubukola Adedeji

For many decades, manual sand mining has been a traditional occupation of the Rabaka community in Lagos state, Nigeria.

Skilled male divers fill buckets of sand from the bottom of the lagoon and load them onto canoes. Women generally stockpile this sand for sale to truck drivers, earning about a thousand naira per day (less than US$2), unless they own a canoe, which allows them to employ divers and stockpilers of their own.

This traditional method of sand mining sustained livelihoods for decades by balancing sand harvesting with what the environment could sustainably provide.

However, it took only a few years for mechanization to take over. Foreign men arrived in the region and began using powerful mechanized dredgers and tractors to load the trucks, extracting tons of sand within a few hours and rapidly pushing the manual sand miners out of business.

Although the resulting environmental degradation and complaints from citizens led to the former governor of Lagos state banning sand mining in some areas, these activities have continued illegally.

The consequences for the communities have been enormous, particularly for women who are now losing access to this source of livelihood without a viable alternative. Many women have resorted to other activities, including harvesting mangroves for sale as firewood; collecting and selling plastic bottles from the lagoon; and unregulated fishing.

Men in the Rabaka community of Ikorodu, a coastal city along the Lagos Lagoon, Nigeria, collect sand from the bottom of the lagoon and load it onto canoes (a). Once brought ashore, women transfer the sand into stockpiles ready for sale (b). The recent arrival of mechanized dredgers (c) has pushed women out of the sand mining business and into alternative livelihoods such as fishing (d), harvesting mangroves for firewood (e), or collecting and selling plastic bottles (f). Credit: Esther Olubukola Adedeji
Fishers’ livelihoods are further threatened by mechanized sand mining: noise pollution and habitat destruction reduce their catch while dredging machinery destroys fishing nets, sparking conflicts between the fishers and miners. For the men of Rabaka, it has also been difficult to find alternative employment on the mechanized platforms since the workforce is primarily composed of foreigners or men from other neighboring communities.

While monitoring and control of the mechanized dredging operations are needed and still lagging, efforts are underway to develop sustainable livelihood pathways for the women affected.

Esther Olubukola Adedeji is an Environmentalist and currently a Senior Consultant with Carbon Limits Nigeria.

This article was first published on ORRAA report; Putting Sand on Ocean Sustainability Agenda.

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