It's difficult to believe that sand — that seemingly innocuous little granule — could cause any trouble, let alone lead to murder.
And that's probably because we tend to take it for granted.
"Even though most people never even think about it, sand is all around you pretty much all the time," says US journalist Vince Beiser, who has written a book on sand and civilisation.
"No sand, no modern civilisation."
According to Beiser, the demand for sand is fuelling a sinister and dangerous black market organisation: a "sand mafia".
Sand has been used for construction since 7000 BCE, but its use ramped up at the turn of the 20th century.
"Once it was perfected — wham — it just took over the entire planet," Beiser tells RN's Saturday Extra.
Concrete, which is made out of sand and gravel, is now used to make our buildings, shopping malls and roads.
"When you are talking about quantities that large, sooner or later you're going to run into shortages, and that is in fact what is happening in a growing number of places around the world," he says.
University of Adelaide earth sciences professor Alan Collins says the problem of diminishing sand supplies is particularly significant in developing countries.
"There's certainly a lot of over-exploitation of sand, particularly in developing economies that are … digging it up very quickly," he says.
Beiser argues that in parts of the world, sand is becoming a very dangerous business.
In India, Beiser says, "they call them the sand mafia".
"They have literally murdered hundreds of people, including many journalists, including one that was burned to death recently. Another one was hacked to death with machetes," he says.
"But it's not only journalists. It's also environmental activists, police officers, government officials — and that's not counting all the ones who have been threatened, who've been beaten up, who've been chased off their land.
"It's astonishing when you start looking into it."
In 2017 the ABC's Foreign Correspondent travelled to India to chase the sand mafia, revealing that despite a near-blanket ban on unlicensed sand mining across India, it operates with near impunity.
Beiser says India is not alone. He cites a recent murder in South Africa related to rival gangs of sand miners fighting over sand, the murder of a Mexican environmental activist trying to stop sand mining in his village, and other sand-related killings in Kenya, Gambia and Indonesia.
"It's a worldwide phenomenon," Beiser says.
Beiser advocates tighter international laws on sand mining to curtail environmental damage.
Professor Collins also raises concerns about the significant ecological impact of sand trade and sand dredging.
"To get sand out of the rivers you just completely dredge the river and everything in it."
That includes sediment. And when a river is depleted of that, there can be dire consequences.
Beiser advocates tighter international laws on sand mining to curtail environmental damage.
"We have to simply use not only less sand but less everything," he says.
"We know that we are using too much fresh water, we're cutting down too many trees, we're taking too many fish out of the oceans, and now we've come to find out we're using too much sand.
"These are not separate problems. They are all symptoms of the same problem, which is that we are just consuming too much."
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-01-11/illegal-sand-trade-india-mafia-murders-vince-beiser/11779570
Who would've thought? All those high-rise buildings going up all over the world and we are running out of sand. Huh.
And it can't be mined from deserts where there is sand in abundance. It has to come from oceans and riverbeds.
Jeez...
