In the delicate balancing act between human development and protecting the fragile natural world, sand is weighing down the scales on the human side.
A group of international scientists in this week's journal One Earth are calling for balancing those scales to better identify the significant damage sand extraction across the world heaps upon marine biodiversity. The first step: acknowledging sand and gravel (discussed as sand in this publication) – the world's most extracted solid materials by mass – are a threat hiding in plain sight.
"Sand is a critical resource that shapes the built and natural worlds," said senior author Jianguo "Jack" Liu , Michigan State University Rachel Carson Chair in Sustainability. "Extracting sand is a complex global challenge. Systems approaches such as the metacoupling framework are essential to untangle the complexity. They can help reveal the hidden cascading impacts not only on the sand extraction sites but also other places such as sand transport routes and sites using sand for construction."
Sand is the literal foundation of human development across the globe, a key ingredient of concrete, asphalt, glass, and electronics. It is relatively cheap and easily extracted.
Unlike critical minerals or deep-sea mining — both of which have attracted significant scrutiny—sand extraction in marine environments remains largely overlooked, despite sand and sediment dredging being the second most widespread human activity in coastal areas after fishing, and its supply is often taken for granted.
Sand mining across the world is being linked to coastal erosion, habitat destruction, the spread of invasive species and impacts on fisheries. Extracting sand can harm marine life by clouding water and riling sediment that can smother seagrasses and coral. Disrupting spans of ocean sand can fragment habitat, change the patterns of waves and other issues that can throw marine life into disarray.
"This resource is often seen as an inert, abundant material, but in reality, it is an essential resource that shapes coastal and marine ecosystems, protects shorelines, and sustains ecosystems and livelihoods," said lead author Aurora Torres, a researcher at Spain's University of Alicante. "Since sand extraction is closely linked to coastal erosion, climate adaptation, and biodiversity loss, integrating it into broader environmental policies—such as marine protected areas, blue carbon strategies, climate resilience plans, and strategic natural resource management—is crucial to ensuring it is not treated as an isolated issue."
Torres and Liu first brought the issues of sand to light in 2017 in the Science paper A looming tragedy of the sand commons . In the One Earth commentary, the two, former and current members of MSU's Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability, call for sand to be elevated to the attention levels of fishing, aquaculture and tourism in the scale of global attention and action.
"Ultimately, the key to action is making sand extraction visible—through stronger data, improved governance, and direct links to pressing environmental and economic concerns. The more evident and tangible its impacts become, the harder it will be to ignore the need for responsible management," Torres said, adding sand extraction near fragile populated coastlines can spur action as climate change exacerbates threats to human life.
"Reducing Sand Mining's Growing Toll on Marine Biodiversity" is also written by Jean-Baptiste Jouffray, Vera Van Lancker and Arnaud Vander Velpen. The work was supported by the National Science Foundation, Michigan AgBioResearch, the Generalitat Valenciana, and the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation.
