Digging into sand: New territories in the making

沙子无处不在：它被用来制造玻璃、混凝土、沥青和计算机芯片，但它的贸易在环境法律和政策中是看不见的。组成这一贸易的网络尚不清楚，从海底和河床大量开采沙子的影响也没有得到充分研究。开采的规模是巨大的。除了水，地球上使用的最多的原材料是沙子和砾石。开采沙子的速度是最快的，因此世界每年消耗的沙子比世界河流携带的泥沙多两倍。其中很大一部分用于生产水泥，用于为快速发展的城市制造混凝土。全球混凝土行业价值700亿美元(GB 540亿)，而且没有放缓的迹象：2011年至2013年，中国使用的混凝土比美国整个20世纪的混凝土还要多。随着海平面上升进一步侵蚀海岸线，气候变化将加剧采砂的影响。尽管这种贸易的规模及其对沿海生态的负面影响，但与土地掠夺等其他资源掠夺相比，采砂受到的学术和维权人士的关注要少得多。没有关于采砂的全球数据，科学界和工业界在管理采砂对环境的影响方面的合作或协调也很有限。此外，还缺乏有关开采和贸易条件的国际法。采沙的规模与全球监测、公众意识和行动之间的差异意味着，这是一个需要深入研究的重大新兴问题。该研究方案的核心智力目标是通过调查其如何和在哪里发生及其对生态和生计的影响的特定地理位置，使抓沙及其相关问题变得可见。这项研究“跟踪沙子”，从供应世界上最大的沙子进口国新加坡的亚太地区的采矿点开始。它考虑了如何将不同的材料、社会关系、技术和话语结合在一起，使沙子成为可以开采和交易的资源。推动这项研究的研究目标旨在通过构建采砂的政治生态；通过新的经验知识建立证据基础；分析围绕采砂和贸易的不同法律安排，为理论辩论、活动工作和政策做出贡献。研究的一个关键成果将是一个在线数据库和绘图工具，以可视化和跟踪合法和非法开采沙子的地点，并追踪沙子如何从采矿点通过全球商品链流动。根据我在东南亚从事研究和开发工作14年的经验，我将该地区的关键采砂热点(包括柬埔寨、印度尼西亚、马来西亚和越南)作为我通过混合方法生成数据的起点。这项研究是围绕着与公民社会联合制作的。与各研究地点的当地组织合作将更好地定位这项研究，以产生可用于加强环境治理的定性和定量信息。为了帮助克服获取障碍，将通过我和博士后研究助理、国内研究助理、公民科学技术以及收集地理参考数据来收集数据。在协调方法的指导下，这个集合将从多个有利位置探测提取模式，以使隐藏的东西变得可见。一系列论文将提交给顶级期刊，以研究资源掠夺、资源地理学和环境正义。四个被研究国家的政策简报和一份简短的综合报告将向政策影响者通报主要结论。

Sand is all around us: it is used to make glass, concrete, asphalt, and computer chips, and yet its trade is invisible in environmental laws and policy. The networks comprising the trade are unknown, and the impacts of the vast extraction of sand from the ocean floor and riverbeds are under-researched. The scale of extraction is immense. After water, the highest volume of raw material used on earth is sand and gravel. Sand is mined at the fastest rates of extraction such that the annual world consumption of sand exceeds the amount of sediment carried by the world's rivers by two-fold. Much of this extraction is for the production of cement used to make concrete for rapidly growing cities. The global industry is valued at US$70 billion-dollars (£54 billion) and shows no signs of slowing: between 2011 and 2013 China used more concrete than the US did in the entire 20th century. The impacts of sand mining will be accentuated by climate change as rising sea levels further erode coastlines. In spite of the scale of the trade and its negative impacts on coastal ecologies, sand mining has received far less academic and activist attention than other resource grabs, like land grabbing. There is no global data on sand mining and there is limited collaboration or coordination between the scientific community and industry in regard to managing the environmental impacts of sand mining. There is also an associated dearth of international law governing the conditions of extraction and trade. The discrepancy between the magnitude of sand mining and global monitoring, public awareness, and action means that this is a major emerging issue that needs in-depth research.The core intellectual aim of this programme of research is to make sand grabbing and its associated issues visible through an investigation of its particular geographies of how and where it takes place and its effects on ecologies and livelihoods. This research 'follows the sand', starting with extraction points in the Asia Pacific that supply the world's largest importer of sand, Singapore. It considers the ways that different materials, social relations, technologies, and discourses have to be pulled together to make sand a resource that can be extracted and traded. The research objectives driving this study are designed to contribute to theoretical debates, activist work, and policy by constructing a political ecology of sand extraction; building the evidence base through new empirical knowledge; and analysing the different legal arrangements surrounding the mining and trade of sand.A key output of the research will be an online database and mapping tool to visualize and track where sand is being mined, both legally and illegally, and to trace how sand moves from extraction points through global commodity chains. Building on my 14 years' experience in Southeast Asia as a researcher and development practitioner, I take key sand mining hotspots in the region, inclusive of Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Vietnam, as my starting points for generating data via mixed methods. The research is built around co-production with civil society. Collaboration with local organizations across the study sites will better position this research to produce qualitative and quantitative information that can be used to enhance environmental governance. To help overcome barriers to access, data will be collected through grounded research by myself and Post-doctoral Research Assistants, in-country Research Assistants, citizen science techniques, and by collecting geo-referenced data. Guided by a coordinated methodology, this assemblage will probe patterns of extraction from multiple vantage points to make what is hidden visible. A series of papers will be submitted to top-tier journals for studies of resource grabs, resource geographies, and environmental justice. Policy briefs for each of the four studied countries and a short synthesis report will inform policy-influencers of key findings.