10.04.2021

Why The World Is Running Out Of Sand ?

Sand, however, is the most-consumed natural resource on the planet besides water. People use some 50 billion tonnes of “aggregate” – the industry term for sand and gravel, which tend to be found together – every year. The problem lies in the type of sand we are using. Desert sand is largely useless to us. The overwhelming bulk of the sand we harvest goes to make concrete, and for that purpose, desert sand grains are the wrong shape. Eroded by wind rather than water, they are too smooth and rounded to lock together to form stable concrete. The sand we need is the more angular stuff found in the beds, banks, and floodplains of rivers, as well as in lakes and on the seashore. The demand for that material is so intense that around the world, riverbeds and beaches are being stripped bare, and farmlands and forests torn up to get at the precious grains. And in a growing number of countries, criminal gangs have moved in to the trade, spawning an often lethal black market in sand. The main driver of this crisis is breakneck urbanisation. Every year there are more and more people on the planet, with an ever growing number of them moving from the rural countryside into cities, especially in the developing world. Across Asia, Africa, and Latin America, cities are expanding at a pace and on a scale far greater than any time in human history. The number of people living in urban areas has more than quadrupled since 1950 to some 4.2 billion today, and the United Nations predicts another 2.5 billion will join them in the next three decades. That’s the equivalent of adding eight cities the size of New York every single year. The competition for sand has grown so intense that in many places criminal gangs have gotten into the trade, digging grains up by the megatonne to sell on the black market. In parts of Latin America and Africa, according to human rights groups, children are forced to work as virtual slaves in sand mines. The gangs get away with all this the same way organised crime does everywhere – by paying off corrupt police and government officials to leave them alone. And, when they deem it necessary, by assaulting and even killing those who get in their way. Credit: Brut.