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Thursday, September 29th, 2016

The Conservation Crisis No One Is Talking About

Author:     John R. Platt
Source:     takepart
Publication Date:     Sep 21, 2016
 Link: The Conservation Crisis No One Is Talking About
Stephan:   Do you think much about sand? I mean other than thinking about going to the beach to hang out? Probably not. Few people do. But the world is headed to a major sand crisis, an environmental catastrophe that is occurring almost invisibly. The media doesn't even seem to know about it, and you certainly won't hear any politician talking about it. But it is going to affect your life big time -- another self-inflicted wound. Here's the story, and I will bet not even many of my readers will read it. That's how invisible it is.
A loader dumps sand into magnetized black sand mining equipment along the shore of San Vicente, Ilocos Sur province, in the northern Philippines. Credit: Erik De Castro/Reuters

A loader dumps sand into magnetized black sand mining equipment along the shore of San Vicente, Ilocos Sur province, in the northern Philippines.
Credit: Erik De Castro/Reuters

Beaches around the world are disappearing.

No, the cause isn’t sea-level rise, at least not this time. It’s a little-known but enormous industry called sand mining, which every year sucks up billions of tons of sand from beaches, ocean floors, and rivers to make everything from concrete to microchips to toothpaste.
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In the process, conservationists warn, the sand mining industry is damaging ecosystems, changing coastal water flows, and making beaches and communities less resilient to storm surges and floods as climate change accelerates.

“Sand is actually the second-most-used natural resource on Earth, behind water,” said Claire Le Guern Lytle, general director of the Santa Aguila Foundation, which was founded in 2009 to focus on coastal preservation. “It’s a finite resource, and it’s depleting […]

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