Context: “Around six billion tonnes of sand is being extracted annually from the floor of the world’s oceans, causing irreparable damage to benthic life,” according to a data platform, Marine Sand Watch.

Key highlights

• The new data platform, Marine Sand Watch, has been developed by GRID-Geneva, a Centre for Analytics within the UN Environment Programme (UNEP). 

• This platform provides all stakeholders and the dredging sector with the required data and information to engage in talks with UNEP to improve dredging standards around the world.

• It will use Automatic Identification System signals from vessels and Artificial Intelligence to identify the operations of dredging vessels.

• The platform will track and monitor dredging activities of sand, clay, silt, gravel, and rock in the world’s marine environment, including hotspots like the North Sea, Southeast Asia, and the East Coast of the United States.

• One million lorries of sand a day are being extracted from the world’s oceans, posing a “significant” threat to marine life and coastal communities facing rising sea levels and storms, according to the first-ever global data platform to monitor the industry.

• The platform has estimated that between four and eight billion tonnes of sand are being dredged from the ocean floor every year. 

• Even more alarmingly, this number is expected to rise to 10 to 16 billion tonnes per year, which is the natural replenishment rate or the amount that rivers need to maintain coastal and marine ecosystem structure and function.

• The platform has identified “hotspots” including the North Sea, south-east Asia and the east coast of the United States as areas of concern. In many places where extraction is more intense, including parts of Asia, marine sand is being extracted well beyond the rate at which it is being replenished from rivers.

Impacts of Marine Sand Extraction

• Our entire society is built on sand, the floor of your building is probably concrete, the glass on the windows, the asphalt on roads is made of sand.

• The extraction of sand increases the turbidity of water. 

• It changes nutrient availability and causes noise pollution, thus  affecting marine organisms greatly.

• Not just benthic organisms, people living in coastal communities will also be severely affected by this magnitude of sand dredging, according to the UNEP.  

• Shallow sea mining for sand and gravel poses a threat to coastal communities in the face of rising sea levels and storms.

• Coastal or near-shore extraction can also affect the salinisation of aquifers and future tourist development.

Road Ahead

• Some countries like Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Cambodia have banned marine sand export in the last 20 years, while others lack any legislation and /or effective monitoring programmes.

• The UNEP had called for better monitoring of sand extraction and use in its 2022 Sand and Sustainability report. 

• It had also recommended to stop the sand extraction on beaches and the active beach-nearshore sand system for the purpose of mining sand as a resource and to establish an international standard on sand extraction in the marine environment.