Digging into sand: New territories in the making

沙子就在我们身边：它被用来制造玻璃，混凝土，沥青和电脑芯片，但它的贸易在环境法律和政策中是看不见的。构成这种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，地球上使用量最大的原材料是沙子和砾石。沙子是以最快的开采速度开采的，因此世界每年消耗的沙子超过世界河流携带的沉积物数量的两倍。大部分开采用于生产水泥，用于为快速发展的城市制造混凝土。全球混凝土行业的价值为700亿美元（540亿英镑），并且没有显示出放缓的迹象：2011年至2013年期间，中国使用的混凝土比美国在整个世纪使用的混凝土还要多。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。尽管贸易规模巨大，对沿海生态造成负面影响，但与其他资源掠夺（如土地掠夺）相比，采砂受到的学术和活动家关注要少得多。没有关于采砂的全球数据，科学界和工业界在管理采砂的环境影响方面的合作或协调有限。与此相关的是，缺乏关于开采和贸易条件的国际法。采砂的规模与全球监测、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。该研究计划的核心知识目标是通过调查其特定地理位置的方式和地点及其对生态和生计的影响，使采砂及其相关问题变得可见。这项研究“跟踪沙子”，从亚太地区的提取点开始，这些提取点供应世界上最大的沙子进口国新加坡。它考虑了不同的材料，社会关系，技术和话语必须被拉到一起，使沙子成为一种可以提取和交易的资源。推动这项研究的研究目标是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，并分析围绕沙子开采和贸易的不同法律的安排。研究的一个关键成果将是一个在线数据库和绘图工具，以可视化和跟踪沙子的开采地点，无论是合法的还是非法的，并追踪沙子如何从开采点通过全球商品链转移。基于我在东南亚作为研究人员和开发实践者的14年经验，我将该地区的主要采砂热点，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。这项研究是围绕与民间社会的共同制作进行的。与整个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。为了帮助克服访问的障碍，数据将通过我和博士后研究助理，国内研究助理，公民科学技术和收集地理参考数据的基础研究来收集。在协调方法的指导下，这个集合将从多个Vantage位置探索提取模式，使隐藏的东西可见。一系列论文将提交给顶级期刊，用于研究资源掠夺，资源地理和环境正义。四个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调查结果。

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.