Paradise is a beach, we are told. Pristine white or coral pink. We leaf through brochures in search of perfect sand. There is a Paradise Beach on Barbados, and in Croatia, and Thailand, and South Africa, too. In every tourist-hungry part of the globe, in fact. The naturalist Desmond Morris believes that, as descendants of water-loving apes, we are hard-wired to seek out these places, lulled by the rhythmic advance and retreat of the ocean as we soak up the sun, sand grains trickling through our workless fingers.
And so much to go around. Man has always used sand as an analogy for the infinite, a limitless resource, ordinary and yet magical, incapable of exhaustion. When astronomers seek to impress upon us the size of the universe, they speak of stars being more numerous than grains of sand. There are quite a few grains, as it happens – 7.5 x 10 to the 18th power, according to researchers at the University of Hawaii. That’s 7 quintillion, 500 quadrillion – give or take the odd trillion.
Yet sand in the right places is anything but infinite. Our insatiable appetite for new buildings, roads, coastal defences, glass, fracking, even electronics, threatens the places we are designed by evolution to love most. The world consumes between 30 and 40bn tonnes of building aggregate a year, and half of this is sand. Enough material to build a wall 27m high and 27m wide around the equator. Sand is second only to water as a natural material extracted by humans, and our society is built on it, quite literally. Global production has risen by a quarter in just five years, fuelled by the insatiable demands of China and India for housing and infrastructure. Of the 15 to 20bn tonnes used annually, about half goes into concrete. Our need for concrete is such that we make almost 2 cubic metres worth each year for every man, woman and child on the planet.
But what of those oceans of sand stretching from the Atlantic to the Persian Gulf – the Sahara and the Arabian Desert? The wrong kind of sand, unfortunately. Wind action in deserts results in rounded grains that are too smooth and too small to bind well in concrete. Builders like angular sand of the kind found on riverbeds. Sand, sand everywhere, nor any grain to use, to paraphrase Coleridge. A textbook example is the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the world’s tallest skyscraper. Despite being surrounded by sand, it was constructed with concrete incorporating the “right kind of sand” from Australia. Riverbed sand is prized, being of the correct gritty texture and purity, washed clean by running fresh water. Marine sand from the seabed is also used in increasing quantities, but it must be cleansed of salt to avoid metal corrosion in buildings. It all comes at a cost.
China leads the charge in today’s sand-fuelled construction boom, consuming half the world’s supply of concrete. Between 2011 and 2014 it used more concrete than the United States did in the entire 20th century. Aggregate is the main ingredient for roads, and China laid down 146,000km of new highway in a single year. By 2050, two-thirds of humanity will live in urban areas, a product of migration and population growth. The population of India, second only to China in its hunger for concrete, is expected to grow from 1.32bn to 1.7bn by the middle of the century. Mumbai, India’s commercial capital, is one of the world’s top 10 mega-cities, with a population of 22m. China and India rely largely on national supplies of sand – to minimise transport costs – but as the skyscrapers rise in Shanghai and Mumbai so does the price of this once-humble ingredient. China’s hunger for sand is insatiable, its biggest dredging site at Lake Poyang produces 989,000 tonnes per day.
International trade in sand is rising as local supply outstrips demand. The destruction of habitats vital to fish, crocodiles, turtles and other forms of riverine and marine life accompanies the destruction of sand barriers and coral reefs protecting coastal communities, as in Sri Lanka. Sand extraction lowers the water table and pollutes drinking water, as in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam, while stagnant pools created by extraction on land foster malaria.
No one knows how much damage is being done to the environment because sand extraction is a largely hidden threat, under-researched and often happening in isolated places. “We are addicted to sand but don’t know it because we don’t buy it as individuals,” says Aurora Torres, a Spanish ecologist who is studying the effects of global sand extraction at Germany’s Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research. “Extraction has grown strongly over the past four decades and has accelerated since 2000. Urban development is putting more and more strain on limited accessible deposits, causing conflict around the world. Sand dredging degrades corals, seaweeds and seagrass meadows and is a driver of biodiversity loss, threatening species already on the verge of extinction. Our consumption of sand is outstripping our understanding of its environmental and social effects.”
Sand accounted for 85% of the total weight of mined material in 2014, yet it is replenished by rock erosion only over thousands of years. Booming demand means scarcity, scarcity means money and money means criminality. Globally, sand extraction is estimated to be worth £50bn per year, a cubic metre of sand selling for as much as £62 in areas of high demand and scarce supply. This makes it vulnerable to illegal exploitation, particularly in the developing world. Why buy expensive sand, sourced from licensed mines, when you can anchor your dredger in some remote estuary, blast the sand out of the riverbed with a water jet and suck it up? Or steal a beach? Or dismantle an entire island? Or whole groups of islands? This is what the “sand mafias” do. Criminal enterprises, their illegal mining operations in Asia, Africa and elsewhere, are protected by officials and police paid to look the other way – and powerful customers in the construction industry who prefer not to ask too many questions.
From Jamaica to Morocco to India and Indonesia, sand mafias ruin habitats, remove whole beaches by truck in a single night and pollute farmlands and fishing grounds. Those who get in their way – environmentalists, journalists or honest policemen – face intimidation, injury and even death. “It’s very attractive for these sand mafias,” says Torres, who is one of the few academics studying this Cinderella issue – overshadowed as it is by climate change, plastic pollution and other environmental threats. “Sand has become very profitable in a short time, which makes for a healthy black market.”
And so much to go around. Man has always used sand as an analogy for the infinite, a limitless resource, ordinary and yet magical, incapable of exhaustion. When astronomers seek to impress upon us the size of the universe, they speak of stars being more numerous than grains of sand. There are quite a few grains, as it happens – 7.5 x 10 to the 18th power, according to researchers at the University of Hawaii. That’s 7 quintillion, 500 quadrillion – give or take the odd trillion.
Yet sand in the right places is anything but infinite. Our insatiable appetite for new buildings, roads, coastal defences, glass, fracking, even electronics, threatens the places we are designed by evolution to love most. The world consumes between 30 and 40bn tonnes of building aggregate a year, and half of this is sand. Enough material to build a wall 27m high and 27m wide around the equator. Sand is second only to water as a natural material extracted by humans, and our society is built on it, quite literally. Global production has risen by a quarter in just five years, fuelled by the insatiable demands of China and India for housing and infrastructure. Of the 15 to 20bn tonnes used annually, about half goes into concrete. Our need for concrete is such that we make almost 2 cubic metres worth each year for every man, woman and child on the planet.But what of those oceans of sand stretching from the Atlantic to the Persian Gulf – the Sahara and the Arabian Desert? The wrong kind of sand, unfortunately. Wind action in deserts results in rounded grains that are too smooth and too small to bind well in concrete. Builders like angular sand of the kind found on riverbeds. Sand, sand everywhere, nor any grain to use, to paraphrase Coleridge. A textbook example is the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the world’s tallest skyscraper. Despite being surrounded by sand, it was constructed with concrete incorporating the “right kind of sand” from Australia. Riverbed sand is prized, being of the correct gritty texture and purity, washed clean by running fresh water. Marine sand from the seabed is also used in increasing quantities, but it must be cleansed of salt to avoid metal corrosion in buildings. It all comes at a cost.
China leads the charge in today’s sand-fuelled construction boom, consuming half the world’s supply of concrete. Between 2011 and 2014 it used more concrete than the United States did in the entire 20th century. Aggregate is the main ingredient for roads, and China laid down 146,000km of new highway in a single year. By 2050, two-thirds of humanity will live in urban areas, a product of migration and population growth. The population of India, second only to China in its hunger for concrete, is expected to grow from 1.32bn to 1.7bn by the middle of the century. Mumbai, India’s commercial capital, is one of the world’s top 10 mega-cities, with a population of 22m. China and India rely largely on national supplies of sand – to minimise transport costs – but as the skyscrapers rise in Shanghai and Mumbai so does the price of this once-humble ingredient. China’s hunger for sand is insatiable, its biggest dredging site at Lake Poyang produces 989,000 tonnes per day.
International trade in sand is rising as local supply outstrips demand. The destruction of habitats vital to fish, crocodiles, turtles and other forms of riverine and marine life accompanies the destruction of sand barriers and coral reefs protecting coastal communities, as in Sri Lanka. Sand extraction lowers the water table and pollutes drinking water, as in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam, while stagnant pools created by extraction on land foster malaria.
No one knows how much damage is being done to the environment because sand extraction is a largely hidden threat, under-researched and often happening in isolated places. “We are addicted to sand but don’t know it because we don’t buy it as individuals,” says Aurora Torres, a Spanish ecologist who is studying the effects of global sand extraction at Germany’s Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research. “Extraction has grown strongly over the past four decades and has accelerated since 2000. Urban development is putting more and more strain on limited accessible deposits, causing conflict around the world. Sand dredging degrades corals, seaweeds and seagrass meadows and is a driver of biodiversity loss, threatening species already on the verge of extinction. Our consumption of sand is outstripping our understanding of its environmental and social effects.”
Sand accounted for 85% of the total weight of mined material in 2014, yet it is replenished by rock erosion only over thousands of years. Booming demand means scarcity, scarcity means money and money means criminality. Globally, sand extraction is estimated to be worth £50bn per year, a cubic metre of sand selling for as much as £62 in areas of high demand and scarce supply. This makes it vulnerable to illegal exploitation, particularly in the developing world. Why buy expensive sand, sourced from licensed mines, when you can anchor your dredger in some remote estuary, blast the sand out of the riverbed with a water jet and suck it up? Or steal a beach? Or dismantle an entire island? Or whole groups of islands? This is what the “sand mafias” do. Criminal enterprises, their illegal mining operations in Asia, Africa and elsewhere, are protected by officials and police paid to look the other way – and powerful customers in the construction industry who prefer not to ask too many questions.
From Jamaica to Morocco to India and Indonesia, sand mafias ruin habitats, remove whole beaches by truck in a single night and pollute farmlands and fishing grounds. Those who get in their way – environmentalists, journalists or honest policemen – face intimidation, injury and even death. “It’s very attractive for these sand mafias,” says Torres, who is one of the few academics studying this Cinderella issue – overshadowed as it is by climate change, plastic pollution and other environmental threats. “Sand has become very profitable in a short time, which makes for a healthy black market.”
by Neil Tweedie, The Guardian | Read more:
Image: Alarmy
