Disappearing Langkawi

The lovely island of Langkawi was once entirely covered with rainforest. Early settlers came to grow pepper. Fishing villages sprang up along the coast. People planted gardens among the trees and kept goats that grazed and cleared the underbrush. Fallen trees were used for timber to repair and build boats and to build houses.

Rice was planted on the cleared land, allowing a permanent population to thrive. Cashew plantations appeared, then rubber plantations. By the beginning of the 20th century almost all the low lying forest had been cleared, but Langkawi maintained of a resolutely rural character.

Now in the 21st century Langkawi is changing fast. The children of rice farmers and fishermen surf the internet in air-conditioned spaces. Tourists visit from all over the planet, leading to a construction boom that needs concrete made with sand.

The most easily accessible stocks of sand are under the rice crops. Langkawi's rice paddies are rapidly disappearing. The pits left by the mined sand are either left to fill with water (leading to several drownings of children) or more frequently filled with rubble quarried from nearby hills that have been stripped of vegetation that in turn was one a unique habitat for a host of species.

The scenes in this short video can be witnessed all over the island. These fields will never grow rice again, just as the rice they grew will never be covered by the original first-growth rainforest. Instead these plots become construction sites for more houses and hotels and guesthouses, requiring more sand for concrete, permanently altering the island's landscape. ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GREACNOIUSA