Foreign Affairs

unhappycamper

(60,364 posts) Fri Oct 3, 2014, 07:10 AM Oct 2014

The Sand Thieves: World's Beaches Become Victims of Construction Boom

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/global-sand-stocks-disappear-as-it-becomes-highly-sought-resource-a-994851.html

Sand is becoming so scarce that stealing it has become an attractive business model. With residential towers rising ever higher and development continuing apace in Asia and Africa, demand for the finite resource is insatiable.

The Sand Thieves: World's Beaches Become Victims of Construction Boom
By Laura Höflinger
October 02, 2014 – 09:55 AM

It's during the few hours when the sea retreats and reveals its underlying treasure that the people come. At first they appear like ants, small dots on the mountain slope, but the group, perhaps 100, quickly draws closer. The men carry shovels, and the women, buckets. They've come to steal Cape Verde's sand.

A young man jumps into the ocean and wades a few meters out. The water rises up to his chest. He dives under, and when he returns to the surface, his sludgy bounty drips from his shovel.

He energetically shovels the mass into a bucket held by a woman waiting next to him. As she lifts the heavy bucket onto her head, she pauses for a moment, closing her eyes. A wave hits from behind and rolls over her. Once it passes, she clenches her teeth as she wades back to shore.

The sand robbers are in a hurry. The ebb here lasts six hours and they can only mine the sand during low tide. Very few of the people here can swim, and the task can be life-threatening even at low tide as the waves break over their heads and the currents tug at their legs.

3 replies

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The Sand Thieves: World's Beaches Become Victims of Construction Boom (Original Post) unhappycamper Oct 2014 OP

Without massive amounts of sand, fracking would be impossible. Divernan Oct 2014 #1

So how much sand from US beaches is being used for fracking? Divernan Oct 2014 #3

Kick for important report w/ international impact! Divernan Oct 2014 #2

Divernan

(15,480 posts)

1. Without massive amounts of sand, fracking would be impossible.

Reply to unhappycamper (Original post)

Fri Oct 3, 2014, 07:51 AM

Oct 2014

Never before has Earth been graced with the prosperity we are seeing today, with countries like China, India and Brazil booming. But that also means that demand for sand has never been so great. It is used in the production of computer chips, plates and mobile phones. More than anything, though, it is used to make cement. You can find it in the skyscrapers in Shanghai, the artificial islands of Dubai and in Germany's autobahns.

'Sand Is Like Oil, It Is Finite'

In 2012, Germany alone mined 235 million tons of sand and gravel, with 95 percent of it going to the construction industry. The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) estimates global consumption at an average of 40 billion tons per year, with close to 30 billion tons of that used in concrete. That would be enough to build a 27-meter by 27-meter (88.5 feet) wall circling the globe. Sands are "now being extracted at a rate far greater than their renewal," a March 2014 UNEP report found. "Sand is rarer than one thinks," it reads.

At times, the paucity of sand has even forced workers to put down their tools at construction sites in India and China. It has also halted fracking-related drilling in the United States because the process requires that sand be mixed in with the water pumped into the ground in order to keep open the fissures from which gas is extracted.

Divernan

(15,480 posts)

3. So how much sand from US beaches is being used for fracking?

Reply to Divernan (Reply #1)

Fri Oct 3, 2014, 10:34 AM

Oct 2014

The US has a choice to reserve extraction of its sands for domestic use for construction of highways, bridges, buildings, etc., or let Big Fracking use it to extract gas for foreign export.