UN warns on the effects of sand dredging to the ocean floor and marine life

The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) warned on Tuesday about the impact that sand dredging has on the ocean floor and marine life.

Furthermore, UNEP’s Centre for Analytics, GRID-Geneva, has developed a new data platform, called Marine Sand Watch, which aims at tracking and monitoring dredging activities in marine environments around the world.

The platform revealed that four to eight billion tons of sand are extracted annually from the ocean floor. Pascal Peduzzi, head of GRID-Geneva, characteristically stated how this six-billion-ton yearly average is the equivalent of one million dump tracks per day.

Sand is the second most used natural resource on the planet, and it is estimated by the platform that about fifty billion tons of it, along with gravel, are used by humans each year.

However, the volume of dredging stated above is reaching the world’s replenishment capacity of ten to sixteen billion tons per year.

It is worth noting that data analyzed by the platform for the years between 2012-2019 also show that volumes of materials dredged are increasing.

Peduzzi said that the scale of environmental impact caused by dredging is also increasing and is starting to have alarming effects on the environment. He also said that the analyzed data show an urgent need for better marine sand resources management.

Finally, regulatory frameworks and practices vary widely across the world, with some countries having no legislation at all, while others have banned marine sand exports altogether within the last twenty years.