A U.N. report on Tuesday called for urgent action to avert a "sand crisis," including a ban on beach extraction as demand surges to 50 billion tonnes a year amid population growth and urbanisation.

Sand is the most exploited natural resource in the world after water, but its use is largely ungoverned, meaning we are consuming it faster than it can be replaced by geological processes that take hundreds of thousands of years, the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) report says. read more

Global consumption for use in glass, concrete and construction materials has tripled over two decades to reach 50 billion tonnes a year, or about 17 kilogrammes per person each day, it said, harming rivers and coastlines and even wiping out small islands.

Sheila Aggarwal-Khan, director of the Economy Division at UNEP said in the report's foreword. "If we act now, it is still possible to avoid a sand crisis."

https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/sand-crisis-looms-world-population-surges-un-warns-2022-04-26/?utm_source=reddit.com

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