Sand mining cements an environmental crisis

For years, Beijing has regularly deployed thousands of Chinese dredging vessels, colossal vessels capable of sucking up thousands of tons of sand. Their mission is clear: to increase the pressure and bring back sand, whole cargoes. From the shores of Taiwan to the coast of the Philippines, China has transported enough material to expand its territory and manufacture islands in contested waters.

The mobilization of flirts is part of “Beijing’s continuing malign effort to use coercion without violence,” said Ryan Hass, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “It’s one of the many tools in their toolbox.”

For a raw material that seems to be endlessly available, sand might seem like a curious geopolitical goal. But the resource is more vital — and usable quantities are more limited — than one might think. Essential for everything from concrete to glass, modern civilizations are forged with sand, and China’s demand has only skyrocketed as it pushes ahead with its ambitious development plans.

“Our society is literally built on sand,” said Pascal Peduzzi, director of GRID-Geneva at the United Nations Environment Programme. “We are totally dependent on this material.”

This addiction has come at a high cost. As countries feed their appetite for sand, the mining boom has come at an alarming price: disappearing islands, shrinking rivers, collapsing ecosystems and the rise of powerful sand mafias. For many people, the worst may be yet to come. Since sand protects inland regions from flooding, overexploitation puts coastal communities at risk, a threat that will only grow as climate change causes sea levels to rise. But even with these risks, the governments still don’t know exactly how much sand is being mined, or even realize that a crisis is looming.

“It really puts lives at risk,” said Kiran Pereira, the author of Sand stories. “We’re kind of eating away at our own defenses.”

Centuries later, modern civilizations still revolve around sand. All countries need this resource because mixing it with cement and crushed rock produces the concrete needed for construction, while adding heat and chemical treatments turns it into glass. Today, sand is crucial for the development of skyscrapers, highways and even smartphone screens.

“Sand is really the key ingredient in our modern society,” said Mette Bendixen, assistant professor at McGill University.

As countries promote massive infrastructure booms, demand for the resource has been explosive. Sand is the world’s most mined resource after water, accounting for the vast majority – almost 85% – of global mining operations. “We’ve seen exponential growth in the use of sand over the last 20 to 30 years,” said Chatham House research associate Oli Brown.

Most of this demand comes from China, which in just three years used more cement than the United States in the entire 20th century. By plundering national rivers and lakes, and now encroaching on the waters of its neighbours, Beijing has extracted the billions of tons of sand needed to build its sprawling cities and carve out new territories.

Sand can be plentiful, but not all types are suitable for construction. Neither ocean nor desert sand can be used for concrete. Windswept desert granules are too smooth, while salt-riddled sea sand is best suited for land reclamation.

The most optimal sand is drawn from rivers, with its water-eroded angular edges that bond well to the cement. Not all countries have sufficient supplies either; governments that desperately need more sand must pay the price. Singapore, for example, shelled out hundreds of millions of dollars to import over 500 million tonnes from its neighbors until they banned the trade.

Mining tends to conjure up images of greedy corporations rolling in wealth, but many miners live a harsher reality. In India, some miners risk drowning to make ends meet, diving to dangerous depths to scoop sand into their iron buckets. In Kenya, others painstakingly dig the sand with shovels, grueling work that leaves them vulnerable to collapsing rock faces. Salaries are meager and mining can be fatal. People have died in the quarries.

Many sand miners are “just about to survive,” Peduzzi said. “They have no other choice.”

Elsewhere, illegal sand mining has turned into a highly lucrative business that has fueled illicit networks. The sand is in a “blind spot”, Pereira said. “It’s an important resource, yet no one keeps track of how much is being extracted.” She added: “That kind of creates an environment where corruption can thrive.”

Take India, where parts of the industry are now dominated by the Sand Mafia, a powerful elite network of individuals that can include politicians and wealthy businessmen. Corruption can be entrenched and the resource’s high profit margins are often alluring but also dangerous.

“These are powerful people, politically well-connected people, who can control the sand trade in a lot of regions,” Pereira said. “They are quite territorial so they can get quite aggressive if someone encroaches on their territory. They can be quite ruthless.

Run-ins with the Sand Mafia can be death sentences. Over the past two years, nearly 200 people have reportedly been killed in illegal sand mining operations in India. People who challenge the sand mafia “get attacked, get murdered, get fired from their jobs,” said Sumaira Abdulali, founder of the Awaaz Foundation, an Indian non-governmental organization.

“People are afraid to speak up,” she added. “The threat is very real.

Dredgers dig sand on the Yangtze River beach in Chongqing, China February 3, 2007.China Photos/Getty Images

It’s an extremely fast rate of extraction that could have catastrophic impacts. The current scale of mining is “unprecedented”, Pereira said. “It’s not something nature can handle. This can lock in some pretty drastic changes.

Some of this damage has already been locked away. After many years of sand mining, at least two dozen Indonesian islands have disappeared. Across the South China Sea, the depletion of Vietnam’s vast Mekong River has strained ecosystems and destroyed the riverbank. And in Mozambique, once lush beaches have been stripped entirely, leaving the country more vulnerable to severe flooding.

This degradation is particularly detrimental to local communities, which are often on the front line of climate change. In Vietnam, a half-mile area of ​​homes and roads collapsed into the Van Nao River after its bank, weakened by years of dredging, finally collapsed. Farming communities are often deprived of land and livelihoods. In Myanmar, many farmers have lost hectares of fertile land to erosion exacerbated by sand mining.

As sea levels rise, these impacts could become particularly severe. The sand serves as a natural defense against storms and erosion. Without it, coastal communities are more exposed to flooding and the devastating effects of storms. And with a large share of the world’s population living in coastal areas, the stakes are high, said Arpita Bisht, a researcher at Erasmus University Rotterdam. In the United States, nearly 40% of the population resides in coastal regions; worldwide, eight of the 10 largest cities are coastal.

“We think sand is something that’s everywhere, but now we realize we’re taking in so much sand that it’s really not sustainable,” Bendixen said.

These tensions will only grow as more countries turn to building and expanding infrastructure to accommodate growing populations. “Population growth, rural exodus and catch-up development are three factors that will put exponential pressure on sand resources,” Peduzzi said. “It is very important that governments anticipate this.”

Failure to do so could have dangerous consequences for the climate, regional development and the very communities whose lives revolve around the material. “It’s still possible to avoid a crisis,” Peduzzi said, but “we need to be much wiser about how we use the sand.”