SAND is as plentiful as the stars, one popular adage goes. The world will never run out of it.Scientists today beg to disagree. Next to water, sand and gravel are the second largest resource extracted and traded by volume.Our supply of sand is limited. And we are not replenishing the sand we use.Because regulations covering sand mining vary from country to country, it is difficult to curb the illegal extraction of sand around the world.The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) recently developed a global data platform on sand and other sediment extraction. UNEP's Marine Sand Watch tracks sand-dredging activities through a dredging vessel's automatic identification system.Data gathered by the Marine Sand Watch reveals that the sand-extracting industry is digging up 6 billion tons of sand and other sediment annually, the equivalent of more than 1 million dump trucks a day, the UNEP said.'The world is approaching the natural replenishment rate of 10 to 16 billion tons per year, which is needed by rivers to maintain coastal and marine ecosystem structure and function,' it said.'We are spending our sand 'budget' faster than we can produce it responsibly,' one UNEP official warned in 2019. The data presented by Marine Sand Watch indicates that the warning has gone largely unheeded.Sand is the primary raw material for construction and land reclamation, but it has myriad other uses, including as the basic ingredient in making glass, paint and even microchips.The rising demand for sand in construction has spawned a billion-dollar international trade that grows at a projected rate of 5.5 percent a year. Monitoring the shipments of mined sand is the first step in the UNEP's efforts to initiate a productive global conversation on sand extraction.Because of the wide disparity in rules and practices governing sand mining, the sand industry has managed to skirt legal roadblocks that could otherwise undermine its operation. Some large-scale sand-extracting operations have become powerful enough to challenge local authorities.In India, a 'sand mafia' is said to have been illegally harvesting sand from a village. Those who resist are killed.In Indonesia, sand from 24 islands have been dug up since 2005 and exported to Singapore to feed that country's construction frenzy.In the Philippines, a special kind of sand has stirred a controversy that continues to hound communities facing the Lingayen Gulf in Pangasinan.Magnetite is an iron ore that is a key component in manufacturing steel. It is also a catalyst in the process for making ammonia. It has properties that act as micromagnets for high-tech industrial applications.It is magnetite that makes some beaches along the Lingayen Gulf black.In 2020, Malacañang was reported to have issued a permit to the Iron Ore, Gold and Vanadium Resources (Phils.) Inc. to dredge 10,000 hectares of the gulf for magnetite. The project allows the company to extract 25 million metric tons of black sand yearly from the gulf.The sand extractor was given 25 years to haul away a total of 625 million MT of black sand.Local communities and environmental watchdogs opposed the project, saying the disturbed seabed will stir up sediment that will eventually kill marine life and devastate Lingayen's fishing industry.The project's critics also claim that it ignores the fact that Lingayen Gulf had been classified as an environmentally critical area (ECA) in 1993 by then-president Fidel Ramos.As the debate rages over the Lingayen dredging project, massive sand mining continues along the Luzon coastline and as far south as Leyte.There were reports the Chinese dredgers were 'stealing' black sand in the Ilocos region and loading it onto barges bound for China.Dredging sand to reclaim land from the sea also threatens several towns in Cavite, as Manila Bay, their fishing ground, continues to shrink.The UNEP has proposed the creation of legal frameworks for sand extraction. More importantly, however, there should be a vigorous campaign to give sand the same prominence as clean air and clean water as a major resource that needs to be sustainable.
