Quicksand future
Imports alone will not be enough. India should also popularise alternatives such as C&D waste and m-sand to reduce the ecological cost of sand mining
SAND IS the new oil, and the world is witnessing a mad scramble for it. Sand, along with gravel, are already the most extracted minerals—accounting for 6985 per cent of the minerals mined every year, says the United Nations Environment Programme (unep). Its international trade has also witnessed a six-fold increase in the past two decades, as per the UN Comtrade database.
This overbearing demand for sand has triggered an ecological crisis. Says a 2014 unep report “Sand, rarer than on thinks”, “The volume (of sand) being extracted is having a major impact on rivers, deltas and coastal and marine ecosystems, results in loss of land through river or coastal erosion, lowering of the water table and decreases in the amount of sediment supply.” The report adds that the global sand extraction in 2012 (22.2 billlion tonnes) was higher than the yearly amount of sediments carried by all rivers in the world. The ecological cost of this flourishing trade has triggered widespread protests, especially in the exporting countries.
Immediately after mrm Ramayia imported sand to the Chidambaranar port in Tuticorin, Malaysian media reported the country’s Minister of Natural Resources and Environment saying the company did not have the required permissions. The minister later changed his stance. Ramayia is the first foreign company to trade with Malaysia after the country lifted its 19-year-old ban on sand exports in 2016, a decision that has led to discontent among environmental activists in Malaysia.
Singapore, a major sand importer, has used the mineral to increase its land area by over 20 per cent since 1965. The island country has over the years imported more than 72 million tonnes of sand from Cambodia. This prompted Cambodia to impose a
permanent ban on exports to Singapore last year. Similarly, Indonesia banned sand exports in 2007 after the country lost around 24 islands due to excessive exports to Singapore.
Vietnam is also facing a crisis due to sand exports. In 2017, Pham Van Bac, director, Vietnam’s Department of Construction Materials, Ministry of Construction, warned that the country will run out of sand by 2020 at the current rate of demand.
Despite the ecological cost, the global demand for sand is expected to grow on the back of the construction industry. According to US-based research firm Persistence Market Research, the global construction aggregates (which includes sand) market is estimated to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 6.1 per cent between 2017 and 2025. It adds that within the aggregates market, sand will be most profitable due to the depletion of natural sources.
Going by the current trend, most countries will impose a ban on sand exports in the near future. This is the reason India should develop better regulations and find alternatives to sand. The country, in 2016, amended the Environmental Impact Assessment Notification, 2006, and then released the Sustainable Sand Mining Management Guidelines to “restore and maintain ecology of river”. The report says districts should be made responsible for mapping sand mining potential, along with the implementing and monitoring of the guidelines. The district survey reports are yet to be finalised in most states and the country still does not have credible data on sand mining.
THE ALTERNATIVES
India is also looking at several alternatives to sand, but their use remains limited despite the potential. One of the alternatives is recycled Construction and Demolition waste (C&D waste). India generates 2530 million tonnes every year, but currently processes just 5 per cent of it, as per the Guidelines on Environmental Management of Construction & Demolition Wastes released by the Central Pollution Control Board in March 2017. The guidelines add that the C&D waste accounts for 25-30 per cent of the total solid waste generated and can be used for “paving blocks, lower layers of road pavements, colony and rural roads” (see ‘Beyond sand’).
The Ministry of Urban Development (moud) in a circular issued on June 28, 2012, had asked states to set up C&D waste recycling facilities in all cities with a population of over 1 million, but the country today has only three plants—two in Delhi and one in Ahmedabad—with a combined capacity of 2,700 tonnes per day. “Cities have not been able to put in place collection and recycling systems as mandated by the 2016 C&D waste rules under the Environment Protection Act,” says Avikal Somvanshi, programme manager, Sustainable Cities Programme of Delhi-based non-profit Centre for Science and Environment. He adds that the unavailability of city-wise C&D generation data and land crunch are adding to the problem. While India is still struggling, Singapore has already started recycling 98 per cent of its C&D waste. Even the UK recycles a third of its C&D waste, as per a 2014 report by the country’s Mineral Production Association.
Another option, which is already being used extensively in Karnataka, is manufactured sand (m-sand). It is produced by the crushing of rocks and quarry stones to a required size of 150 microns. India has 178 m-sand units—of which 164 are in Karnataka alone—that produce 32 million tonnes a year, as per the Sand Mining Framework released by the Ministry of Mines in March 2018. It adds that m-sand is economically feasible, cheaper and is superior as compared to river sand in many of the urban centres in India such as Bengaluru. While m-sand has advantages, experts question its longterm practicality. “It is made from crushing stones. So as its demand increases, its environmental impact too will increase,” says Chennai-based builder L Venkatesan.
The Centre is also exploring the idea of extracting sand from the overburden of coal mines, which is the area above the coal seam that needs to be removed to carry out mining. Studies conducted by the Central Institute of Mining and Fuel Research, Dhanbad show that processing of overburden yield 60-65 per cent sand. The Western Coalfields Limited, a subsidiary of Coal India, has proposed to set up a sand segregation plant of 200 cubic metres per day capacity near Nagpur and “has committed to supply sand at one-fourth of the market price to nit Nagpur” for low-cost housing projects. “This option is implementable in all coal bearing states,” says the Guidelines on Environmental Management of Construction & Demolition Wastes. The Centre is also working on capitalising the silting on major dams.
India can rely on sand imports till the time it is viable, but it needs to upscale the production of sand alternatives. After all, 70 per cent of the buildings that the country would require by 2030 are yet to be built, estimates a 2010 report by McKinsey, a global management firm. This will surely put tremendous stress on the already scarce resource.