Fifty billion tonnes: enough to build a wall 27 metres wide and 27 metres high around planet earth. This is the volume of sand and gravel used each year, making it the second most used resource worldwide after water.
Given by dependency on it, sand must be recognised as a strategic resource and its extraction and use needs to be rethought, a new report by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) said on Tuesday.
The report, Sand and Sustainability: 10 strategic recommendations to avert a crisis, released by UNEP’s GRID-Geneva team, provides the necessary guidance gathered from world experts to switch to improved practices for the resources’ extraction and management.
Extracting sand where it plays an active role, such as rivers, and coastal or marine ecosystems, can lead to erosion, salination of aquifers, loss of protection against storm surges and impacts on biodiversity, which pose a threat to livelihoods through, among other things, water supply, food production, fisheries, or to the tourism industry.
According to the report’s authors, sand must be recognised as a strategic resource, not only as a material for construction, but also for its multiple roles in the environment.
