From Nautil.us, November 8:
Violent gangsterism and illegal operations dominate sand mining in the global south.
Last week, two mafia groups in northeast India exchanged gunfire—and torched a half dozen earthmover machines—in a war over a natural resource. They weren’t battling over diamonds or oil: The groups were both trying to get their hands on sand.
Sometimes called “the new gold,” sand is the second most exploited natural resource in the world after fresh water. The world uses about 50 billion tons each year—twice the amount created annually in nature—and demand continues to grow. At the current rate, experts say we will run out of sand by 2050.
That’s because sand goes into nearly everything people build: cement, concrete, roads, glass, and even the silicon chips in our laptops and phones. “Without sand, there’s no modern civilization,” says Vince Beiser, author of The World in a Grain: The Story of Sand and How It Transformed Civilization. “Our cities are literally built out of sand: Every apartment, every office tower, every shopping mall, every road is made with sand.”
Hundreds of people have reportedly died in conflicts over sand.
The intensity of demand, coupled with weak regulation, has made sand mining an easy target for mafias, especially in Cambodia, Kenya, Nigeria, and India. Almost all sand mining operations in these countries are illegal, says Arpita Bisht, a researcher at The International Institute of Social Studies, in The Netherlands, where she studies resource extraction. India likely has the highest incidence of mafia violence and illegality related to sand extraction, she says, though it’s challenging to quantify because of the lack of government tracking and reporting. Journalists who report on sand mafia activity often put their lives at risk: In one of the most extreme cases, a journalist was burnt to death in 2019 for his consistent reporting on sand mafia activity in northern India.
“There’s not nearly enough corporate responsibility around it,” says Bisht. The lack of oversight is partly due to the fact that, unlike other mining resources such as oil or coal, sand is relatively easy to access, and because the biggest consumers are rapidly developing countries with weak environmental policies and enforcement. For example, less than 4 percent of the 80 million tons of sand that Singapore imported from Cambodia between 2009 and 2019 was documented.
Sand might seem like an inexhaustible resource—after all, our deserts are full of it. But desert sand is too fine to be used in construction materials. Though some of the sand used by industry comes from oceans, estuaries, and beaches, most of it derives from riverbeds. Sometimes miners will simply park a barge in the middle of a river and use a giant tube to suck up the sand like a straw and deposit it on their boats. But these sand straws often suck up plants and creatures living in the river, as well, and destroy their habitats. The churning of the river water can prevent sunlight from reaching aquatic plants that need it or even choke resident fish, and the depression of riverbeds can cause erosion and kill vegetation along riverbanks and floodplains....
....MUCH MORE
Previously:
Some of the early action
Aug. 2014
"Sand: The Hot New Investment Opportunity" (SLCA)
April 2012
What the Frack? U.S. Silica Up 24% since Feb. 1 IPO (SLCA)
May 2012
Commodities: "Midwest Sees a Sand Rush"
Jan. 2013
More Natural Gas Needed For Frack Sand Suppliers
April 2014
State of Sand, 2014
June 2014
What the Frac: "The Past Year’s Hottest IPO Is… " (EMES; SLCA)
Commodities: The Next Big Thing Is Sand
We too have experienced the allure of sand.
Usually at the beach but on the blog as well.
Today in Sand: Valuing One Of The Planet's Most Important Resources
"Inside the deadly world of India’s sand mining mafia"Sand, more interesting than one might suspect.
The World Is Running Out of Sand (Elon Musk to the rescue!)
Sand Wars - China and developing countries need tens of billions tons of sand for urbanization and economic growth
The link that starts this piece goes to Sand Wars: Beijing’s Hidden Ambition in the South China Sea a 22 page PDF, hosted at the College of William & Mary.
What's New In Sand: Breakthrough!!
Looking back, it was a bit obsessive:
We were on the story from the publicly traded get-go (almost), going back to April 2012's "What the Frack? U.S. Silica Up 24% since Feb. 1 IPO (SLCA)". Followed by "Commodities: "Midwest Sees a Sand Rush"". In 2013 growth was so good that a little Ouroboros turnabout was fair play, "More Natural Gas Needed For Frack Sand Suppliers"
By 2014 they were fine, strapping businesses:
"Sand: The Hot New Investment Opportunity" (SLCA)
State of Sand, 2014
What the Frac: "The Past Year’s Hottest IPO Is… " (EMES; SLCA)
From MoneyBeat:
The hottest initial public offering from 2013 isn’t a cloud technology stock, or a biotech company with a promising cancer drug.Having concluded that oil and gas were just a passing fad, this is what we were posting the month Emerge came public:
The company behind the top-performing IPO in the past 18 months digs sand.
Through Friday, sand-mining company Emerge Energy Services LP has rallied 462% since its debut on May 8, 2013, for the biggest share-price gain since its IPO among companies that went public last year, according to Dealogic....
The Internet of Things: Huggies App Sends You a Tweet Whenever Your Kid Pees...
The Ethics of Torturing Robots
British Psychologists Bashing British Psychiatrists
I so wish I were kidding.By January of this year we knew it was ending:
What the Frack: "Good Times Run Out for Sand Producers"with, maybe a bit of forced jollity in March:
Basic Materials: What's New In the Sand Business? (SLCA; EMES)But there was nothing new, it's sand.
