The growing scarcity of sand in parts of the world is a serious issue that has been linked with everything from organised crime to natural disasters. China and India top the list of critical hotspots for sand extraction resulting in major environmental degradation. The scale of the challenge inherent in sand and gravel extraction makes it one of the major sustainability challenge of the 21st century.
The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report, Sand and Sustainability: Finding new solutions for environmental governance of global sand resources, published on May 7, 2019, highlights that sand consumption globally has been increasing and we are extracting it at rates exceeding natural replenishment rates. The report seeks ways to reduce demand to responsible levels and stop environmentally damaging practices to protect sensitive ecosystems and meet biodiversity conservation goals.
As per the report, sand and gravel are the second largest natural resources extracted and traded by volume after water, but they are among the least regulated. Sand mining is eroding the world’s river deltas and coastlines, damaging the environment and hurting livelihoods from Cambodia to Colombia. Global demand for sand and gravel, used extensively in construction, is about 50 billion tonnes or an average of 18 kg (40 lb) per person per day. The sand budget is being spent faster than the rate of its production. Extraction in rivers and beaches has increased pollution and flooding, lowered ground water levels, hurt marine life, and exacerbated the occurrence and severity of landslides and drought. Most large rivers of the world have lost between half and 95 per cent of their natural sand and gravel delivery to ocean. In 2017, China recorded the highest use of cement, including sand, in the world, at an estimated 2.4 billion tonnes. In the same year, India came second with 270 million tonnes followed by the US with 86.3 million tonnes.
Over the last two decades, China and India have seen a three-fold increase in demand for sand due to growing population, increasing urbanisation, land reclamation projects, and rapid infrastructure development. It is critical to raise awareness that what is seen as cheap and freely available is in fact a limited resource. With awareness, the other key issue is governance, and in this regard the report suggests to strengthen standards and best practices to curb irresponsible extraction; invest in sand production and consumption measurement, monitoring and planning; and establish dialogue based on transparency and accountability.
The report calls for large-scale multipronged actions from global to local levels, involving public, private and civil society organisations. This will mean building consensus, defining what success would look like, and reconciling policies and standards with sand availability, development imperatives and standards and enforcement realities. But, in the meantime, damming of rivers and excessive extraction have reduced the sediment carried by rivers to coastal areas, leading to reduced deposits in river deltas and faster beach erosion.
Communities in the Asian deltas are the biggest losers, with the combined effect of sand mining; hydropower dams and groundwater extraction causing large areas of land to sink and shrink. Ironically, enforcement of law to stop or limit extraction seems difficult as long as demand for sand remains high and no alternative sourcing is available.
Current legal frameworks are not sufficient, and ‘sand mafias’ comprising builders, businessmen and dealers in countries such as Cambodia, Vietnam, India, Kenya and Sierra Leone regularly flout existing laws, said the UNEP. India has rules to check sand mining under Sustainable Sand Mining Management Guidelines, 2016. The Guidelines prohibit beach and creek sand mining and declare these activities as illegal.
As long as demand for sand remains high and no alternative sourcing is available, enforcement is close to impossible, as the economy is based on sand. Communities are losing their land and their homes because of sand mining, but they are split over the issue because some people make a living from it, while others feel that the practice is ruining their lives.
In India, a 2017 Thomson Reuters Foundation investigation revealed that workers were drowning while illegally mining sand in some parts of the country. While awareness of the impacts of sand mining have grown, and more laws are in place, greater efforts are needed to map supply and demand for effective regulation.