What do the buildings we live in, the cups we drink from and the computers we work from have in common? The answer is yes: sand. It is a key raw material that we find everywhere in modern life.

But the scary thing is that almost no one knows how much sand is left on Earth and how much can still be mined.

A recent commentary published in the British journal Nature said that the current rate of sand and gravel extraction has exceeded the rate of natural recovery. The reason for this unsustainable extraction is oversight. The report of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) has "put a heavy footprint in the sand", and now action and regulations must keep up.

Demand may soon exceed supply

Many people do not believe that there will be a shortage of sand. As we all know, deserts cover 20% of the land surface of the earth. Unfortunately, however, the sand in deserts is too smooth to be used. Most of the angular sand suitable for industrial use comes from rivers, which cover less than 1% of the earth's surface.

Sand and gravel are already the most extracted raw materials, more than fossil fuels. Demand is increasing dramatically because of urbanization and global population growth. The world uses between 32 billion and 50 billion tons of sand each year, mainly to make cement, glass and electronics.

This usage is higher than the natural rate of regeneration, according to new research. As a result, demand could outstrip supply by as early as the middle of this century.

Estimates of global sand extraction have been unreliable¡ªand clearly too low. As of early 2019, the researchers searched for 443 papers on sand extraction, of which only 38 described it quantitatively, and there are few long-term, basin-wide sediment monitoring programs.

Of course, it is technically difficult to quantitatively assess how sand moves or is deposited along rivers, and many large rivers flow through multiple countries, making statistics even more difficult.

Urgent need for regulation and statistics

All of these issues are highlighted in a report by WWF and UNEP, which also questions whether current sand mining is sustainable. The report argues that the root of the problem is a lack of adequate data and policies to guide sand consumption and mining at a reasonable rate.

For example, the UN trade database only divides imports and exports of sand and gravel into one or two categories based on quality and composition. It does not distinguish between active sources with natural replenishment, such as rivers and deltas, and passive sources without replenishment, such as geological sediments.

On the other hand, the international sand trade database is too rudimentary to judge sustainability. The Nature article says that most sand trade is not recorded. For example, between 2006 and 2016, Singapore reported importing 80 million tons of sand from Cambodia, but Cambodia confirmed exports of less than 4%.

Now a group of researchers is calling for UNEP and the World Trade Organization (WTO) to establish and oversee a global sand monitoring system. The scientific community should build a system that can count the amount of sand generated and removed from rivers.

The new system should include both legal and illegal extraction. They need to make the scale of the problem clear to the public, academia and governments. In addition, local sand quotas and laws must be established to encourage reasonable use.

Sustainability is crucial

In the process of establishing the system and formulating rules, the Nature article gives several suggestions, the most important of which is to find and confirm sustainable sources of sand.

For example, the sand added to the coastline by the retreat of the Greenland ice sheet. The United Nations needs to establish a plan similar to sustainable forest management. It is also necessary to find new passive sand sources that will not affect rivers, thereby reducing the impact on the ecology.

The second is alternative solutions. Local and national governments and relevant planning departments should encourage the use of sand substitutes, such as crushed stone, industrial slag, recycled plastics, etc. At the same time, base materials should be recycled as much as possible.

Third, it is to reduce demand. This requires the establishment of industry standards to control material quality and enforce them.

In addition, there is governance and education. An international or multilateral policy framework needs to be established to regulate and control sand mining. UNEP and WTO should also come up with a global sand mining guide, for example, indicating where sand mining is or is not sustainable. Governments, scientists and industry have an obligation to spread information about sand mining issues.

Finally, there is the issue of monitoring. A global data collection and sharing project is crucial because all implementation plans rely on quantitative statistics of sand mining locations, scales, and natural fluctuations in global river sand.

In this regard, the "Surface Water and Ocean Topography" mission planned by NASA to be launched in 2021 will be able to monitor the flow of large rivers with a width of more than 100 meters, covering a much larger scale than before; and the EU's "Raw Materials and Copernicus Earth" observation mission will also use space imaging technology to assist management.

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