CHENNIMALAI, India – There is river and beach sand aplenty in Tamil Nadu. At 130,000 square kilometers (50,200 square miles), the state is about the same size as Nicaragua and has 95 rivers with sandy bottoms and a long Bay of Bengal shoreline. Or did. For almost all of its thousand-year history, the state of Tamil Nadu took all that sand for granted. No longer.

CHENNAI, India – Almost a decade ago, when the first of Chennai’s bleach-white IT office buildings replaced coconut groves along the Bay of Bengal south of the city center, leaders hailed the potential for a new wave of clean jobs. Nine years later, it is clear that planners did not fully anticipate the consequences.