Sand and Sustainability: 10 Strategic Insights to Avert a Crisis
About this book
Sand and Sustainability: 10 Strategic Recommendations to Avert a Crisis, published by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in 2022, addresses one of the most overlooked resource crises of our time: the global overexploitation of sand and gravel, the second most consumed natural resource after water. The report synthesises scientific evidence, industry data, and policy analysis to document the scale of the problem and propose a comprehensive governance response. Sand and gravel (also called aggregates) are consumed at an estimated 50 billion tonnes per year globally — a figure that has tripled since the 1990s, driven by the construction boom in China, Southeast Asia, India, and the Middle East.
The paradox highlighted by the report is that despite being found on virtually every beach and desert, the specific types of sand used in construction — coarse, angular river and lake sand — are in critically short supply in many regions, because desert sand is too fine and rounded for use in concrete. The environmental consequences of sand extraction are documented in detail. River sand mining destroys riverbed habitats, increases bank erosion, undermines bridges and infrastructure, reduces groundwater recharge, and increases saltwater intrusion in coastal deltas.
Coastal sand mining accelerates shoreline erosion, undermines coastal protection infrastructure, and degrades coral reef and seagrass habitats. The report estimates that hundreds of small islands and sand cays in Southeast Asia have disappeared entirely due to sand mining, while major river deltas including the Mekong, Irrawaddy, and Niger are contracting due to upstream sand extraction interrupting sediment flows. The governance of sand extraction is characterised as fundamentally inadequate.
The majority of global sand extraction occurs in the informal sector, largely unregulated, with the trade often linked to organised crime — what the report terms 'sand mafias'. Existing data systems for monitoring extraction volumes are described as severely deficient. Ten strategic recommendations are developed: establishing national sand resource inventories, introducing sand extraction licensing and royalty systems, developing standards for recycled aggregate use in construction, promoting manufactured sand from crushed rock, incentivising concrete mix optimisation and material efficiency, and building international governance frameworks for cross-border sand resources.