UN warns: We are facing a sand crisis

Sand is the most exploited natural resource in the world, after water, but its uses are unsupervised.

Global consumption of sand for the use of building materials, concrete and glass has tripled in the last two decades and now reaches 50 billion tons per year, or about 17 kg per capita per day.

Reuters

26/04/2022

Tuesday, 26 April 2022, 14:32 Updated: 14:45

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A new UN report released today (Tuesday) calls for urgent action to prevent a "sand crisis", including a ban on marine sand mining.

Sand is the most exploited natural resource in the world, after water, but its uses are unsupervised, meaning we consume it faster than geological processes lasting hundreds of thousands of years are able to compensate for the missing sand, according to the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) report .

Global consumption of sand for building materials, concrete and glass has tripled in the last two decades and now reaches 50 billion tons per year, or about 17 kg per capita per day, according to the report, which harms rivers and beaches, and even leads to the extinction of small islands.

"We now find ourselves in a position where the needs and expectations of our society can not be met without better oversight of the sand resources," said the head of UNEP's economics department, Sheila Agrwal-Kahan.

"If we act now, we can still prevent a sand crisis."

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The consumption of sand tripled.

Sand mine (Photo: Reuters, REUTERS / Andres Martinez Casares)

Pascal Peducci of UNEP, who oversaw the report, compiled by 22 authors, said some of the consequences of overexploitation were already being felt.

In the Sri Lankan river, sand removal has altered water flow, meaning ocean water flows into land and carries with it crocodiles of saline water, he said.

According to the report, demand is now shifting to Africa, where villagers remove sand from shores to build cities.

In some cases, this may cause the coastline to be more exposed to the consequences of climate change, such as powerful storms.

The report recommends a ban on sand mining and the creation of an international standard to prevent damage to biodiversity in the oceans. In addition, demand should be reduced through the use of sand from recycled materials such as concrete instead of natural sand.

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