A year in review – India Sand Watch – event recap

Note: This post does a detailed recap from the event celebrating our project India Sand Watch being in the public domain for a year.

Recognizing the devastating impact of illegal sand mining on India’s rivers, in 2023, Veditum India Foundation launched India Sand Watch¹ – an environmental accountability project with an open-data platform at its heart.

This platform, built in partnership with Ooloi Labs², is enabling collection, annotation & archiving of data related to sand mining in India. This open-data archive of reports addresses critical gaps in data and evidence for better monitoring and management of sand mining in India.

As the India Sand Watch platform and project completed one year in the public domain, the team got together with partners and supporters in a public online event to celebrate some of the milestones achieved through collaborative work this past year, and to share future possibilities and plans.

Introduction

The event started with an introduction to the work we do at Veditum and the journey that led us to India Sand Watch, by Siddharth Agarwal⁴, Veditum’s founder.

This was followed up by an exciting update from Rhea Lopez⁵, Associate at Veditum, that the India Sand Watch platform now hosts over 2,000 reports (with detailed metadata), including news reports, policy documents, research material, observation records, and court documents related to sand mining in India’s rivers!

Want to contribute to the archive on India Sand Watch? Create an account on the platform today and get started!

Or email us at sandwatch@veditum.org to register for an introduction and walk-through on how to source and upload reports to ISW.

We talked about what we’ve been able to do in the past year, and shared some of the strategies deployed to achieve our targets, including Data Sprints⁶ to encourage citizen action in collating sand mining data, and Sediment Stories⁷, to share knowledge and appreciation of sediments, through conversations with people from diverse backgrounds linked to rivers and sediments.

Partners Talks + Feature Announcements

Partners Talk 01 – Akshay Roongta, Ooloi Labs

Our key collaborator Akshay Roongta⁸ from Ooloi Labs talked about setting up the India Sand Watch platform with Veditum, and the challenges and immense possibilities that come with creating an open-data archive for environmental accountability and monitoring.

Akshay also made the exciting announcement that ISW platform users can now access the data on the platform as an easy-to-download CSV!

Data Visualisations

Aishani Goswami⁹, Associate at Veditum, followed this up with examples of some of the visualisations and understandings that emerge from this large data sets. We discussed how these could find use in research, education, policy design, resource management & monitoring, legal advocacy, on-ground action, media reporting and so much more.

Are you a journalist reporting on sand mining, or an environmental lawyer or a researcher studying rivers and sand mining in India?

Get in touch with us at sandwatch@veditum.org to discuss how you can use this data for your purpose, or if you have ideas of collaborating with your organisation.

Partners Talk 02 – Tarun Nair & Dr. Nachiket Kelkar, Wildlife Conservation Trust

Tarun Nair¹⁰ and Dr. Nachiket Kelkar¹¹ from the Wildlife Conservation Trust¹² (WCT) talked about the devastating impact of sand mining in their field sites, particularly on Gharial habitats along the Chambal river.

Through the India Sand Watch partnership with WCT, we have been monitoring sand mining on the Chambal and are working to continue building this archive, and advance river conservation work across India.

Do you work along rivers in India and observe sand mining threatening the landscape?

Please create an account and upload your observations to the India Sand Watch platform, or send your observations to us at sandwatch@veditum.org

Partners Talk 03 – Suraj Nair, Berkeley School of Information, UC Berkeley

What if we were able to use publicly available datasets to identify sand mining activity at scale? With the advancements in geospatial data availability and improved computing capabilities, this is a possibility we’ve engaged with for years.

Suraj Nair¹³ from the Berkeley School of Information¹⁴ talked about their project – Sand Mining Watch¹⁵, a set of open-source tools which enables the production of high-resolution, real-time maps of sand mining activity in river basins across the world.

Their model uses knowledge & data from India Sand Watch and we are collaboratively piloting and evaluating results from their model for India.

During the event, we made predictions available on the India Sand Watch site. These are currently available for 5 rivers – Ajay, Chambal, Damodar, Ken & Mahananda – across 4 time periods. You can adjust the settings to choose the river and time period to view predictions for sand mining locations during that time.

Find the predictions at this link: Mining Predictions, India Sand Watch¹⁶

Partners Talk 04 – Simran Pavecha, Youth Ki Awaaz

Simran¹⁷ from Youth Ki Awaaz¹⁸ talked about India Sand Watch as a tool for informed journalism, highlighting our participation in their City Writers’ program that published articles on the drivers and impacts of illegal sand mining in two states in India.

She also shared our plans of understanding and building public perception on this issue, and possible pathways of using this information for informing policy.

Communicating stories, India Sand Watch story map – Kabini Amin

This was followed by a word from Kabini Amin¹⁹, on her journey as a fellow on Veditum’s ‘Moving Upstream: Betwa’ fellowship²⁰ – and how she drew from the experience and her learnings about sand mining to create compelling visuals and graphic narratives to effectively communicate sand mining and its associated threats.

She introduced her most recent project, tracing the journey of India Sand Watch from inspiration to creation, which was prepared with our partners from Agami²¹. The Agami team joined in to reveal the final product – a beautifully illustrated scroll²² that tells the story of India Sand Watch.

Check out the scroll at this link!

Partners Talk 05 – Sachin Malhan & Atreyo Banerjee, Agami

Sachin Malhan²³, co-founder of Agami, spoke about why a project like India Sand Watch is of interest to an organisation like Agami that focusses on law and justice. Innovation in creating evidence at scale in a structured manner is useful for different kinds of actors. And how we’re also collaborating to bring change makers together!

Atreyo Banerjee²⁴ from Agami also discussed the value of ISW data in monitoring mining and building evidence for action-oriented legal interventions, and shared our plans to for Agami’s upcoming Open NYAI Residency. We will be collaborating with different actors to build a legal toolkit for action on this issue, and figure out how to enable action.

Open Discussion

After hearing about all the exciting work being done with our partners through the India Sand Watch project, we had an open discussion with the audience about their experiences with sand mining, and their thoughts and ideas on possible collaborative work for the coming year.

Again, you can find the recording of the event at this link.

Appeal

If our work inspires you, please consider supporting us or connecting us with organisations and individuals who might be able to contribute to our projects.

We are in the last week of our Annual Crowdfunding Campaign. Please donate, if you can, and please share it with others.

Link to the fundraiser: https://pages.razorpay.com/vif-cf-2425

Stay in touch

For updates, you can follow us on social media on the following links or sign up for our newsletter.

Veditum : LinkedIn / Instagram / Twitter / Facebook / Newsletter

India Sand Watch : Instagram / Twitter / Facebook

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References & Contacts

1. India Sand Watch; http://sandwatch.envmonitoring.in ↩︎
2. Ooloi Labs; http://ooloilabs.in ↩︎
3. Event Recording, A year in review, India Sand Watch; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQa6OChizUI ↩︎
4. Siddharth Agarwal, Veditum India Foundation; asid@veditum.org, (LinkedIn) ↩︎
5. Rhea Lopez, Veditum India Foundation; rhealopez@veditum.org, (LinkedIn) ↩︎
6. Data Sprints by India Sand Watch; http://veditum.org/datasprints ↩︎
7. Sediment Stories by India Sand Watch; http://veditum.org/sedimentstories/ ↩︎
8. Akshay Roongta, Ooloi Labs; akshay@ooloilabs.in, (LinkedIn) ↩︎
9. Aishani Goswami, Veditum India Foundation; aishani@veditum.org, (LinkedIn) ↩︎
10. Tarun Nair, Wildlife Conservation Trust; tarun@wctindia.org, (Google Scholar) ↩︎
11. Dr. Nachiket Kelkar, Wildlife Conservation Trust; nachiket@wctindia.org, (LinkedIn) ↩︎
12. Wildlife Conservation Trust; http://wildlifeconservationtrust.org ↩︎
13. Suraj Nair, Berkeley School of Information; suraj.nair@berkeley.edu, (LinkedIn) ↩︎
14. Berkeley School of Information; https://www.ischool.berkeley.edu/ ↩︎
15. Sand Mining Watch; https://vcresearch.berkeley.edu/news/new-research-aims-curb-illegal-sand-mining-data-driven-mapping-tools ↩︎
16. Mining Predictions, India Sand Watch; https://sandwatch.envmonitoring.in/published-page/staticPages?id=66c432321db625000b9efeb0 ↩︎
17. Simran Pavecha, Youth Ki Awaaz; simran@youthkiawaaz.com, (LinkedIn) ↩︎
18. Youth Ki Awaaz; https://www.youthkiawaaz.com/ ↩︎
19. Kabini Amin, Independent Artist; kabiniamin@gmail.com, (Portfolio on Cargo) ↩︎
20. Moving Upstream Fellowship, Veditum India Foundation; https://veditum.org/moving-upstream-fellowship/ ↩︎
21. Agami; https://agami.in/ ↩︎
22. India Sand Watch – A story map; https://veditum.org/iswstorymap/ ↩︎
23. Sachin Malhan, Agami; sachin@agami.in, (LinkedIn) ↩︎
24. Atreyo Banerjee, Agami; atreyo@agami.in, (LinkedIn) ↩︎