River Sand and Gravel Mining: Global Drivers, Impacts, and Pathways for Sustainable Management

River sand and gravel are mined worldwide at volumes that now rival their natural replenishment, yet quantitative knowledge of this mining activity and its consequences lags far behind many other global environmental pressures. We synthesize 411 peer-reviewed studies published since 1974 within a new Driver-to-Management Pathway for Sustainable Sand and Gravel Mining framework that links socio-economic demand, spatial-temporal extent of extraction, hydrogeomorphic change, socio-ecological disruption, and management response. Evidence shows a pronounced scale mismatch: regional-to-global drivers fuel largely unreported local extraction, while impacts propagate well beyond mining sites. In most documented cases, annual removal exceeds bed-material supply several-fold, producing channel incision, bank collapse, declining groundwater tables, deteriorating water quality, and inland migration of saline water in coastal areas. These physical changes cascade into habitat loss, infrastructure damage, and livelihood insecurity, especially across rapidly developing regions of Asia and Africa. Despite the proliferation of impact studies (69% of the literature), research is dominated by hydrogeomorphic perspectives, with ecological and socio-economic impacts far more often treated as secondary or co-occurring components rather than primary foci; meanwhile, only 27% of studies quantify extraction extent and 24% analyze demand drivers, hampering the design of effective interventions. Together, these findings highlight the need for basin-scale monitoring, cross-boundary governance, and demand-side interventions that explicitly link extraction limits to sediment budgets.