CplKlinger
Senior Member
Emphasis mine.
"Desert sand grains, eroded by the wind rather than water, is too smooth and rounded to bind together for construction purposes. The sand that is highly sought after is more angular and can lock together. It is typically sourced and extracted from seabeds, coastlines, quarries and rivers around the world.
"China and India top the list of areas where sand extraction impacts on rivers, lakes and on coastlines, largely as a result of soaring infrastructure and construction demand. UNEP has previously warned of thriving “sand mafias,” with groups comprising of builders, dealers and businessmen known to be operating in countries such as Cambodia, Vietnam, Kenya and Sierra Leone. Activists working to shine a light on their activities, UNEP said, are being threatened and even killed.
"'It is still very much new. In many of the development policies, there is no-one even talking about this issue of sand, where it is coming from, the social impacts or the environmental impacts, so there is a lot of things to be done,' Gallagher [a Global Sand Observatory Initiative official] said. 'Yet, no big plans, no standard on how it should be extracted, no land planning on where you should extract and where you should not extract, no monitoring to where it is coming from in most of the places (and) no enforcement of laws because countries are pondering between development needs and the protection of the environment.'"
www.cnbc.com
"Desert sand grains, eroded by the wind rather than water, is too smooth and rounded to bind together for construction purposes. The sand that is highly sought after is more angular and can lock together. It is typically sourced and extracted from seabeds, coastlines, quarries and rivers around the world.
"China and India top the list of areas where sand extraction impacts on rivers, lakes and on coastlines, largely as a result of soaring infrastructure and construction demand. UNEP has previously warned of thriving “sand mafias,” with groups comprising of builders, dealers and businessmen known to be operating in countries such as Cambodia, Vietnam, Kenya and Sierra Leone. Activists working to shine a light on their activities, UNEP said, are being threatened and even killed.
"'It is still very much new. In many of the development policies, there is no-one even talking about this issue of sand, where it is coming from, the social impacts or the environmental impacts, so there is a lot of things to be done,' Gallagher [a Global Sand Observatory Initiative official] said. 'Yet, no big plans, no standard on how it should be extracted, no land planning on where you should extract and where you should not extract, no monitoring to where it is coming from in most of the places (and) no enforcement of laws because countries are pondering between development needs and the protection of the environment.'"
A sand shortage? The world is running out of a crucial — but under-appreciated — commodity
The world is facing a shortage of sand — and climate scientists say it constitutes one of the greatest sustainability challenges of the 21st century.
www.cnbc.com
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