Sand dredging is ‘sterilizing’ ocean floor, UN warns

GENEVA (Reuters) – Around 6 billion tonnes of sea sand is dug up every year, in a growing practice that a UN agency says is unsustainable and may irreversibly kill local marine life.

Sand is the most exploited natural resource in the world after water, but its extraction for use in industries such as construction is poorly regulated, which led the UN to approve a resolution last year to promote more sustainable mining.

Findings from the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) coincide with the launch of a new platform ‘Sea Sand Surveillance’ Backed by funding from the Swiss government which monitors dredging activities using marine tracking and artificial intelligence.

“The amount of sand that we are removing from the environment is considerable and has a huge impact,” UNEP’s Pascal Peduzzi told a news conference in Geneva.

Pointing to an image of a ship that he described as a “giant vacuum cleaner”, he said the ships were “basically sterilizing the seabed by extracting sand and grinding up all the microorganisms that feed the fish”.

In some cases, companies remove all the sand down to the bedrock, meaning “life may never recover,” Peduzzi added.

While globally the 6 billion mined is less than the sand deposited annually by the world’s rivers, in some areas removal is exceeding replacement rates, UNEP said.

The South China Sea, the North Sea and the east coast of the United States are among the areas where the most dredging has occurred, said Arnaud Vander Velpen, head of sand industry and data analysis at the University of Geneva.

China, the Netherlands, the United States and Belgium are among the most active countries in the sector, he said.

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