Spiegel: The Sand Thieves
World’s Beaches Become Victims of Construction Boom
Summary:
by trueHUEnews staff October 11, 2014:
With residential construction booming in Asia and Africa the demand for sand has never been as great as today. Used in computer chips, cellualr phones and most important cement. Beaches like those in Cape Verde, Senegal are rapidly disappearing due to the theft of their sand.
Laura Höflinger of Spiegel reports:
Published 10/02/2014 09:55 AM
In 2012, Germany alone mined 235 million tons of sand and gravel, with 95 percent of it going to the construction industry. The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) estimates global consumption at an average of 40 billion tons per year, with close to 30 billion tons of that used in concrete. That would be enough to build a 27-meter by 27-meter (88.5 feet) wall circling the globe. Sands are “now being extracted at a rate far greater than their renewal,” a March 2014 UNEP report found. “Sand is rarer than one thinks,” it reads.
At times, the paucity of sand has even forced workers to put down their tools at construction sites in India and China. It has also halted fracking-related drilling in the United States because the process requires that sand be mixed in with the water pumped into the ground in order to keep open the fissures from which gas is extracted.
“Sand is like oil,” explains Klaus Schwarzer, a geoscientist at Germany’s University of Kiel. “It is finite.” Western Carolina University’s Young adds, “If we’re not careful, we’ll run out of sand.”
In 2012, the environmental organization Global Witness released satellite images showing how Singapore has expanded its territory by 22 percent over the past 50 years. The group provided evidence that the sand used to enlarge Singapore came from neighboring countries like Vietnam, Indonesia and Malaysia and had, in some instances, been extracted illegally. One country after the other then issued a ban on mining sand. Singaporean dredging vessels responded by setting course for Cambodia. Phnom Penh responded by likewise banning exports of the resource.
Prospecting for sand has also been prohibited in Cape Verde since 2002 and the military does in fact patrol parts of the coastline for illegal mining activity. Sometimes they even arrest sand thieves, but the punitive measures have thus far done little to stop illicit trade.
One might think that the Arab Peninsula, with its high sand dunes, would have the largest reserves, but desert sand isn’t suitable for every purpose. It contains a surfeit of chalk, clay and iron oxide. And while the countries have considerable amounts of marl, quality sand is also necessary to produce cement. Paradoxically, then, the desert region is suffering a shortage of sand.
In Germany, too, firms have begun mining sand from the ocean floor. Using dredgers the size of aircraft carriers, they trawl the North and Baltic seas, with gigantic suction heads vacuuming the grains from the sea floor. Nature conservation organizations fear the dredging could disturb the habitat of harbor porpoises and seals and that sustained damage is being done to the ocean floor ecosystem. “Anything that gets sucked in is killed,” says Kim Detloff of Germany’s Nature and Biodiversity Conservation Union (NABU).
Read more:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/global-sand-stocks-disappear-as-it-becomes-highly-sought-resource-a-994851.html
