Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

IT House, September 6 (Xinhua)-- the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) warned today that humans have mined large amounts of sand from the bottom of the sea, which has a serious impact on marine ecology and coastal communities.

According to a new global data platform from UNEP, humans extract an average of 6 billion tons of sand from the marine environment each year. This equates to more than 1 million trucks of sand being used every day to make concrete and glass, to build new artificial beaches, or to replenish eroded coastlines. This rate of exploitation is unsustainable, and just like deforestation and overfishing, people use sand resources faster than they replenish them.

According to IT House, concrete is the second most used substance in the world after water, and sand is the main component of this ubiquitous building material. Glass and semiconductor chips are also made of silica sand, and there are many artificial coastlines around the world, such as new islands or landfill wetlands to expand urban areas.

The endless demand for sand comes at a cost, and as sea levels rise, shrinking the coastline, some communities rely on sand mined from the nearby seafloor to replenish beaches. UNEP warns that there may be less sand available for coastal defense in the future.

Removing sand from the ocean floor to collect sand will also destroy marine life, and if too much is exploited, "life may not be restored," Pascal Peduzzi, director of the United Nations Environment Environment Analysis Center GRID-Geneva, said at a news conference today. In addition, there are also problems such as noise pollution and changes in water turbidity, which are harmful to marine life.

To monitor global sand mining, the United Nations Environment Programme has developed a data platform called Marine Sand Watch, which uses artificial intelligence and a ship tracking system called automatic Identification system (AIS) to identify sand dredgers and map sand mining around the world. The United Nations Environment Programme passed a resolution last year to entrust GRID-Geneva with a better understanding of sand extraction to support global policy.

The east coasts of China and the United States are the densest sand mining areas, according to new data. This could pose a risk to the renewable energy ambitions of both countries, as moving sand dunes affect offshore wind turbines.

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