The demand for sand grows without stopping: these are the consequences of its massive extraction

If we look around us, in practically everything we see that has been manufactured by man, sand or components extracted from it have been used. After water, the so-called “aggregates” (including here sand, gravel and other natural materials processed by crushing) are the raw material that is consumed in greater quantity in the world.

According to a report by the Global Sand Observatory, a joint initiative of the United Nations Environment Program and the Global Sand Observatory Initiative (UNEP-GRID), in the last two decades it has tripled in the world the consumption of aggregates. As with other natural resources, very high levels of consumption have been reached. And the demand for these materials, predictably, will continue to grow in the coming decades.

The magnitude of the problem

The first difficulty in evaluating the magnitude of the problem arises from the great lack of data on the production and consumption of aggregates, caused, among other things, by the great heterogeneity of the sector, with different levels of producers, intermediaries and consumers.

Thus, the Observatory estimates that between 40,000 and 50,000 million tons of sand and gravel are extracted in the world in rivers, coastlines, and quarries.

Global data published by the United States Geological Survey, only for siliceous sands for industrial use, are 325 and 265 million tons for the years 2019 and 2020, respectively. Although in this estimate large producers such as China have not been included.

Slightly more than half of the resources extracted are aimed, fundamentally, at meeting the demand of the construction sector. As a relative indicator, the consumption of these materials is ten times higher than that of cement. However, although this is the sector with the highest consumption, it is not the only one.

There are other industrial and technological sectors that require this resource. It has applications in the production of glass and ceramics, electronics, painting and surface treatments, water treatment, the extraction of gas and hydrocarbons, the smelting and obtaining of metals, cosmetics, leisure, etc., uses that require these materials with much more restrictive characteristics and quality than in the case of construction. It is not only used directly as particulate material, but also as a source of elements such as silicon, titanium and the so-called rare earths.

A sustainable use of the resource?

The endowment of this growing and unstoppable demand is conditioned – as is the case with other raw materials – by two factors. One is related to the limited availability of materials, the abundance and characteristics of which are not regular in the world. For example, it is true that there are large areas of sand in deserts, but these sands do not have the quality required for many uses, including construction. The other conditioning factor has to do with the inevitable environmental impact generated by the extractive activity.

A third factor should be added to the two mentioned factors –very related to both–, which is the socioeconomic dimension of the production activity. This in turn shows a double antagonistic facet: on the one hand, it is a generator of wealth for the population. But on the other, the environmental impact, if sustainable policies are not implemented, will cause the loss of ecosystem services of great social value.

On the other hand, the increase in value derived from the scarcity of the resource is generating, as UNEP itself warns in its 2019 report, the rise of groups of bad practices and out-of-control mafias that are causing serious environmental damage. In addition, in some cases, they exert violent pressure on the population that opposes such practices.

Another aspect to consider in the analysis of the sustainability of the resource is the change in the context of local production-consumption: consumption is very far from the center of production, which is precisely where environmental conditions are generated. The most notable examples of this are Dubai and Singapore. The latter is the world’s largest importer of sand from Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Cambodia. Much of the 160 million tonnes of sand used to build the famous Palm Jumeirah archipelago of artificial islands in Dubai comes from Australia.

In this scenario of voracious and unstoppable consumption of aggregates in which the indicated factors intervene, the root of the problem is –as also happens with other natural resources– that we are exceeding the regenerative capacity of nature’s processes. Sedimentary deposits formed after hundreds or thousands of years of erosion, transport and deposition processes are dismantled in just tens of years.

The urgency to take action

Thus, the exploitation of these resources is causing serious impacts in many areas of the world on the continental, coastal and marine hydrological environments and their associated ecosystems. Especially in those areas where these materials are most scarce and whose regulatory frameworks are scarce, inadequate or non-existent.

As the UNEP-GRID Observatory points out, sand and gravel are becoming scarce in many areas, and extractive activities (legal and illegal) are moving to areas with more fragile or vulnerable ecosystems.

The urgency of the problem does not allow us to wait for the development and implementation of the normative bases on which to establish sustainability guidelines on a global scale. For this reason, three levels of actions are proposed to implement solutions at a local, national and regional / transnational scale. These are mainly focused on the construction sector, as the sector with the highest demand, but could also be applied to other sectors:

• Actions aimed at avoiding unnecessary consumption of the resource.
• Actions aimed at the use of recycled or alternative materials.
• Actions aimed at reducing the impacts of the activity through the implementation of good practices and the application of related environmental regulations.

In parallel, it is essential to advance in a greater knowledge of the real state of production and consumption, with the location of the producing places, so that a correct evaluation of the local socioeconomic and environmental impacts generated by the extractive activity can be made. . Without this, it will be difficult to carry out the prospective analysis necessary to design the management and planning measures aimed at the sustainability of the resource.