topic of the month
“Sand is the main material that modern cities are made of. It is to cities what flour is to bread, what cells are to our bodies”, says the journalist Vincent Beiser in his book “The World in a Grain: The Story of Sand and How It Transformed Civilization”. Even though the sand is hidden from our eyes it is everywhere around us. We use it not only for making glass, steel and concrete - which is literally the fundament of every modern city -, but also paint, computer chips and even toothpaste. In fact, we use sand so much, that besides water it is the most relevant resource in the world.
B
ut not every kind of sand is fit for further processing. Based on the size of the grain sand can be classified into three categories: coarse, medium and fine. The first one is more suitable for building and forming since it sticks together easily. While coarse sand mostly comes from coasts, rivers, and lakes and has rough edges shaped by water, finer one is smoothed down by the wind in deserts.
Impact of sand mining Removing sand from coasts and waters is extremely problematic though. Sand is an essential element for ecosystems and part of biotopes that provide a home to very specialized life forms such as aquatic plants, shells, crustaceans, birds, fishes, snails and many others. They are all part of a complicated biotope sensitive to external influences. 4 - VOICES
Extracting sand from marine habitats does directly endanger the species living in and on the sand, by that it also brings imbalance to the food chains. Sea birds, for example, which eat worms and mussels living in the sand, might lose their most important food source. In addition, the process of sand mining in itself already leads to the pollution of surface and groundwater, which again has devastating consequences for the marine wildlife and human populations living there. Sand mining is a menace for biodiversity.
“More than 20 Indonesian islands have disappeared into the ocean and the Maldives [...] will be gone by the end of the century.” Moreover, sand acts as a natural barrier against costal erosion and natural
disasters like tsunamis and hurricanes. Without a natural sand barrier, salt water can seep into the soil resulting in infertile and instable grounds. Extensive beaches gently break down waves and can reduce their energy to 50% per 4,5 meters. This is vital for people living close to water and especially those living on islands. If too much sand is taken away the consequences are collapsing riverbanks, sinking islands and disappearing shorelines. This risk only increases with the rising sea levels because of climate change. The consequences of sand mining can be seen all over the world. Over 75% of all the beaches in the world are already retreating. More than 20 Indonesian islands have disappeared into the ocean and the Maldives, according to the national geographic, will be gone by the end of the century. In India, Peru and Morocco water pollution, erosion and the loss of biodiversity have
