A Political Ecology of Sand Mining in Awka, Southeast Nigeria

Abstract

This study applies a political ecology lens to examine the drivers, actor relations, and consequences of sand mining in Awka, the capital of Anambra State in southeastern Nigeria, a region already prone to severe gully erosion. Adopting a qualitative case study design, data were generated through 32 semi-structured interviews with artisanal miners, community and traditional leaders, government officials, and residents, complemented by observation at four active mining sites and review of regulatory documents. Data were analyzed thematically using Ribot and Peluso's theory of access as an interpretive framework. Findings show that Awka's rapidly expanding construction sector has driven a sand economy governed less by statutory regulation than by an informal alliance of land-owning families, community and youth leaders, transport unions, and complicit local enforcement agents, each drawing on distinct rights-based, structural, relational, or illegal mechanisms of access. This governance arrangement distributes benefits unevenly while concentrating environmental costs—gully initiation, riverbank collapse, stream siltation, and farmland degradation—on downslope farming communities who are largely excluded from decision-making. The study argues that sand mining in Awka is best understood not as a simple regulatory failure but as a politically structured system of access in which environmental degradation and livelihood benefit are two sides of the same set of power relations. It recommends a hybrid governance model that formalizes artisanal mining, redistributes levies toward site rehabilitation, and strengthens community participation in environmental oversight