好英语网为什么世界正面临沙子短缺危机？
A South African entrepreneur shot dead in September. Two Indian villagers killed in a gun battle in August. A Mexican environmental activist murdered in June.
2019年9月，一名南非企业家被枪杀。8月，两名印度村民在一场枪战中丧生。再往前的6月，一名墨西哥环保活动人士被人杀害。
Though separated by thousands of miles, these killings share an unlikely cause. They are some of the latest casualties in a growing wave of violence sparked by the struggle for one of the 21st Century’s most important, but least appreciated, commodities: ordinary sand.
三个凶案现场虽然彼此相隔数千英里，但都有一个叫人难以相信的共同原因：争夺21世纪最重要但却最不被看重的一种商品，即人们眼中再普通不过的沙子。沙子争夺战引发的暴力浪潮正愈演愈烈，而上述仅是其中最新的四名受害者而已。
Trivial though it may seem, sand is a critical ingredient of our lives. It is the primary raw material that modern cities are made from. The concrete used to construct shopping malls, offices, and apartment blocks, along with the asphalt we use to build roads connecting them, are largely just sand and gravel glued together. The glass in every window, windshield, and smart phone screen is made of melted-down sand. And even the silicon chips inside our phones and computers – along with virtually every other piece of electronic equipment in your home – are made from sand.
沙子看似卑微不足道，但在我们当今的生活中却不可或缺。沙子是建设现代城市的主要原料。我们用来建造购物中心、办公室大楼和公寓楼房的混凝土，以及用来修建道路连接这些商业住宅大楼所使用的沥青，大部分都是用沙子和砂砾搅拌粘接而成。每扇窗户、每个挡风玻璃和智能手机屏幕，其玻璃都是用沙子烧融后制成。甚至我们的手机和电脑里的硅晶片，以及我们家中几乎其他所有电子设备，都用了沙子为原料。
And where is the problem with that, you might ask? Our planet is covered in it. Huge deserts from the Sahara to Arizona have billowing dunes of the stuff. Beaches on coastlines around the world are lined with sand. We can even buy bags of it at our local hardware shop for a fistful of small change.
你或许要问，尽管沙子是重要原料，但有何理由要为沙子争夺得你死我活？我们的星球到处都是沙子。从撒哈拉沙漠到亚利桑那州的大沙漠都有绵延不尽的沙丘。世界各地海岸线上的海滩也都是沙子。我们甚至只需花少少钱就可以在我们附近的五金店买到几袋沙子。
But believe it or not, the world is facing a shortage of sand. How can we possibly be running low on a substance found in virtually every country on earth and that seems essentially limitless?
但信不信由你，今天全球正面临着沙子短缺的危机。既然地球上几乎每个国家都有这种物质，而这种物质似乎又取之不尽用之不竭，但这一自然资源又怎么会快要耗尽呢？
Sand, however, is the most-consumed natural resource on the planet besides water. People use some 50 billion tonnes of “aggregate” – the industry term for sand and gravel, which tend to be found together – every year. That’s more than enough to blanket the entire United Kingdom.
因为除了水之外，沙子是地球上人类消耗最多的自然资源。人们每年要使用500亿吨的“骨料”（工业术语，沙子和砾石混合的通称）。这500亿吨的量足以覆盖整个英国。
The problem lies in the type of sand we are using. Desert sand is largely useless to us. The overwhelming bulk of the sand we harvest goes to make concrete, and for that purpose, desert sand grains are the wrong shape. Eroded by wind rather than water, they are too smooth and rounded to lock together to form stable concrete.
而问题在于工业使用的沙子是有选择的。沙漠中的沙子虽然取之不尽，但对我们基本上没用。人类开采的沙子绝大多数用来制造混凝土。用于此目的，沙漠中沙粒的形状不符合要求。沙漠的沙是经风而不是水的侵蚀而形成，因此形状太光滑、太圆润，无法粘接在一起形成稳定的混凝土。
The sand we need is the more angular stuff found in the beds, banks, and floodplains of rivers, as well as in lakes and on the seashore. The demand for that material is so intense that around the world, riverbeds and beaches are being stripped bare, and farmlands and forests torn up to get at the precious grains. And in a growing number of countries, criminal gangs have moved in to the trade, spawning an often lethal black market in sand.
我们需要的沙子是在河床、河岸、河漫滩、湖泊和海岸上开采的比较粗燥的沙子。对这种沙子材料的需求量非常巨大，以至于全世界的河床和海滩的沙都被开采一空，甚至为开采这种珍贵的建材不惜破坏农田和森林。在越来越多的国家，犯罪团伙开始涉猎盗采沙子行业，催生出一个往往会闹出人命的沙子黑市。
“The issue of sand comes as a surprise to many, but it shouldn’t,” says Pascal Peduzzi, a researcher with the United Nations Environment Programme. “We cannot extract 50 billion tonnes per year of any material without leading to massive impacts on the planet and thus on people’s lives.”
联合国环境规划署（United Nations Environment Programme）研究员帕斯卡尔·佩度日（Pascal Peduzzi）认为，“很多人对出现沙荒感到意外，但不应该为此大惊小怪。不论任何物质，我们不可能每年开采500亿吨而不会导致对地球和人们生活的巨大影响。”
The main driver of this crisis is breakneck urbanisation. Every year there are more and more people on the planet, with an ever growing number of them moving from the rural countryside into cities, especially in the developing world. Across Asia, Africa, and Latin America, cities are expanding at a pace and on a scale far greater than any time in human history.
造成沙荒供应危机的主要原因是全球城市化发展太快。全球人口每年都在增长，而且从农村迁往城市生活的人口也在每年增长，特别是在发展中国家。在亚洲、非洲和拉丁美洲，城市正在以人类历史上前所未有的速度和规模大幅扩张。
The number of people living in urban areas has more than quadrupled since 1950 to some 4.2 billion today, and the United Nations predicts another 2.5 billion will join them in the next three decades. That’s the equivalent of adding eight cities the size of New York every single year.
从1950年代至今，全球生活在城市地区的人口已增长了三倍多，现约为42亿人。联合国预测，在未来30年里，还将有25亿人进入城市，这相当于每年增加8个纽约大小的城市。
Creating buildings to house all those people, along with the roads to knit them together, requires prodigious quantities of sand. In India, the amount of construction sand used annually has more than tripled since 2000, and is still rising fast. China alone has likely used more sand this decade than the United States did in the entire 20th Century. There is so much demand for certain types of construction sand that Dubai, which sits on the edge of an enormous desert, imports sand from Australia. That’s right: exporters in Australia are literally selling sand to Arabs.
要建造容纳所有新增城市人口的楼房建筑，以及连接楼房的交通道路，需要大量的建筑用沙子。在印度，建筑用沙量自2000年以来每年增长两倍多，而且仍在快速增长。仅中国一个国家在这十年里使用的沙子就可能比美国在整个20世纪使用的沙子还要多。对某些类型的建筑用沙的需求如此之大，以至于坐落在巨大沙漠边缘的迪拜（Dubai）要从澳大利亚进口沙子。没错，澳大利亚出口的沙子是卖给沙漠国家的阿拉伯人。
But sand isn’t only used for buildings and infrastructure – increasingly, it is also used to manufacture the very land beneath their feet. From California to Hong Kong, ever-larger and more powerful dredging ships vacuum up millions of tonnes of sand from the sea floor each year, piling it up in coastal areas to create land where there was none before. Dubai’s palm-tree shaped islands are perhaps the most famous artificial land masses that have been built from scratch in recent years, but they have plenty of company.
不过沙子不仅用于建筑和基础设施，也越来越多地用于填海造地。从加利福尼亚到香港，体型越来越大、马力越来越强的挖沙船每年从海底吸走数以百万吨计的沙子，堆填在海岸地区，人工建造出新的陆地。迪拜棕榈树形状的岛屿可能是近年来从无到有建造的最著名的人造陆地，而全球同样的填海人造陆地还很多。
Lagos, the largest city in Nigeria, is adding a 2,400-acre (9.7 sq km) urban extension to its Atlantic shoreline. China, the fourth-largest nation on Earth in terms of naturally occurring land, has added hundreds of miles to its coast, and built entire islands to host luxury resorts.
尼日利亚第一大城市拉各斯（Lagos）正在大西洋海岸地区填海，以增加2400英亩（9.7平方公里）的城市土地。拥有的天然土地面积在世界上排名第四大的中国，也填海增加了数百英里长的海岸线，盖了好几座岛屿做豪华度假村。
This new real estate is valuable, but it often incurs steep costs. Ocean dredging has damaged coral reefs in Kenya, the Persian Gulf and Florida. It tears up marine habitat and muddies waters with sand plumes that can affect aquatic life far from the original site. Fishermen in Malaysia and Cambodia have seen their livelihoods decimated by dredging.
这种新造的人工地产可带来巨大利润，但常常要付出高昂的环境生态代价。在海底挖沙已经破坏了肯尼亚、波斯湾和美国佛罗里达的珊瑚礁。而且还破坏了海洋生物的栖息地。使用吸沙管抽沙使水域变得浑浊，会危害到离开原栖息地的海洋生物。马来西亚和柬埔寨的渔民发现他们的生计被海洋挖沙所破坏。
And then there’s Singapore, a world leader in land reclamation. To create more space for its nearly six million residents, the jam-packed city-state has built out its territory with an additional 50 sq miles (130 sq km) of land over the past 40 years, almost all of it with sand imported from other countries. The collateral environmental damage has been so extreme that neighbouring Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Cambodia have all restricted exports of sand to Singapore.
还有新加坡，这个国家填海造地世界领先。为了给近600万国民创造更多的空间，这个高人口密度的城市国家在过去40年里填海新增加了50平方英里（130平方公里）的土地，而填海的沙子都是从其他国家进口。因此造成的环境破坏非常之严重，以至于印度尼西亚、马来西亚、越南和柬埔寨等邻国现在均限制向新加坡出口沙子供其填海。
All told, according to a Dutch research group, human beings since 1985 have added 5,237 sq miles (13,563 sq km) of artificial land to the world’s coasts – an area about as big as the nation of Jamaica. Most of it built with gargantuan amounts of sand.
根据荷兰一个研究小组的报告，自1985年以来，人类总共为世界海岸增加了5237平方英里（13563平方公里）的新生人工土地，其面积相当于牙买加的整个国土。这些人造土地大部分是用大量的沙子填海而来。
Mining sand to use in concrete and other industrial purposes is, if anything, even more destructive. Sand for construction is most often mined from rivers. It’s easy to pull the grains up with suction pumps or even buckets, and easy to transport once you’ve got a full boatload. But dredging a riverbed can destroy the habitat occupied by bottom-dwelling organisms. The churned-up sediment can cloud the water, suffocating fish and blocking the sunlight that sustains underwater vegetation.
开采沙子用于混凝土和其他工业用途更具破坏性。用于建筑的沙子通常采用河沙，需要从河流中开采。用吸沙机甚至是水桶把沙子从河中抽上来是轻而易举之事，而且船装满了沙子后，运输也很容易。但挖掘河床会破坏水底栖息生物的栖息地。搅碎的沉积物会使河水变得浑浊，既使鱼类受到窒息，也会阻挡水下植被生长所需的阳光。
River sand mining is also contributing to the slow-motion disappearance of Vietnam’s Mekong Delta. The area is home to 20 million people and source of half of all the country’s food and much of the rice that feeds the rest of South East Asia. Climate-change-induced sea level rise is one reason the delta is losing the equivalent of one and a half football fields of land every day. But another, researchers believe, is that people are robbing the delta of its sand.
河沙开采正在导致越南湄公河三角洲（Mekong Delta）的缓慢消失。湄公河三角洲是2000万人口的家园，为越南粮仓，是该国一半稻米的产区，东南亚其他地区的大部分大米也产自这里。但現在因为气候变化，海平面上升，湄公河三角洲每天要流失相当于一个半足球场面积的土地。但研究人员认为，土地流失的另一个原因是人们在湄公河三角洲掠夺性地开采河沙。
For centuries, the delta has been replenished by sediment carried down from the mountains of Central Asia by the Mekong River. But in recent years, in each of the several countries along its course, miners have begun pulling huge quantities of sand from the riverbed. According to a 2013 study by three French researchers, some 50 million tonnes of sand were extracted in 2011 alone – enough to cover the city of Denver two inches deep. Meanwhile, five major dams have been built in recent years on the Mekong and another 12 are slated for construction in Laos and Cambodia. The dams further diminish the flow of sediment to the delta.
数百上千年以来，发源于中国青海崇山峻岭中的湄公河崩腾而下带来的泥沙在流入南海时形成三角洲冲积平原。但近年来，在湄公河流经的几个国家都开始从河床大规模挖沙。根据三名法国研究人员2013年的一项研究，仅在2011年这些国家在湄公河就开采了约5000万吨的沙子，这些沙子足够覆满整个美国丹佛市达2英寸深。而同时不幸的是，近年来湄公河上已经修建了五座大型水坝，老挝和柬埔寨还计划再建12座水坝。大坝的建设进一步减少了流向三角洲的泥沙。
In other words, while natural erosion of the delta continues, its natural replenishment does not. Researchers with the Greater Mekong Programme at the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) believe that at this rate, nearly half the delta will be wiped out by the end of this century.
换言之，湄公河三角洲的土壤仍在遭受自然侵蚀而流失，但其泥沙的自然补给却没有继续。世界自然基金会大湄公河项目的研究人员认为，按照这个速度，到本世纪末，湄公河三角洲将近一半的土地将会消失。
To make matters worse, dredging the Mekong and other waterways in Cambodia and Laos is causing river banks to collapse, dragging down crop fields and even houses. Farmers in Myanmar say the same thing is happening along the Ayeyarwady River.
而更坏的是，在柬埔寨和老挝两国的湄公河和其他河流开采沙子，甚至导致河岸坍塌，农田和房屋被河流吞噬。缅甸农民表示，伊洛瓦底江（Ayeyarwady River）沿岸也发生了同样的事情。
Sand extraction from rivers has also caused untold millions of dollars in damage to infrastructure around the world. The stirred-up sediment clogs water supply equipment. And removing all that material from river banks leaves the foundations of bridges exposed and unsupported. In Ghana, sand miners have dug up so much ground that they have dangerously exposed the foundations of hillside buildings, which are at risk of collapse. That’s not just a theoretical risk. Sand mining caused a bridge to collapse in Taiwan in 2000, and another the following year in Portugal just as a bus was passing over it, killing 70 people.
此外，从河流中开采沙子也给世界各地的基础设施造成了数百上千万美元的损失。开采时搅起的沉淀物堵塞了供水设备。将河岸的砂石开采一空，桥梁的地基就会暴露在外，得不到支撑。在加纳，采砂工人挖动了太多的地面，以至于山坡上建筑物的地基暴露于外，使得楼房有倒塌的危险。这不仅仅是理论上的风险，事实上确有这样的危险发生。2000年，台湾的一座桥梁因采沙而垮塌。第二年葡萄牙发生类似因挖沙造成的桥梁垮塌事件，当时一辆公共汽车刚好从这座桥梁上驶过，结果造成70人死亡。
Demand for high-purity silica sands, which are used to make glass as well as high-tech products like solar panels and computer chips, is also soaring. America’s surging fracking industry also needs the extra-durable high-purity grains. The result: acres of farmlands and forests in rural Wisconsin, which happens to have a lot of those precious sands, are being torn up.
人类对高纯度硅砂的需求也在飙升。硅砂被用于制造玻璃以及太阳能电池板和电脑芯片等高科技产品。美国蓬勃发展的水力压裂开采页岩气行业也需要强度很高的高纯度硅砂。其后果是美国威斯康辛州农村地区的大片农田和森林被毁坏，因为这些地方不幸恰好有很多珍贵的硅砂储量。
The competition for sand has grown so intense that in many places criminal gangs have gotten into the trade, digging grains up by the megatonne to sell on the black market. In parts of Latin America and Africa, according to human rights groups, children are forced to work as virtual slaves in sand mines. The gangs get away with all this the same way organised crime does everywhere – by paying off corrupt police and government officials to leave them alone. And, when they deem it necessary, by assaulting and even killing those who get in their way.
因此争夺沙子开采的竞争变得非常激烈，以至于在许多地方，黑社会犯罪团伙逐利而来也加入争夺，开采成百万顿的沙子在黑市上出售。根据人权组织的说法，在拉丁美洲和非洲的部分地区，儿童被迫在沙场里充当奴隶劳工。这些黑社会团伙就像其他地方的有组织犯罪一样，通过贿赂腐败的警察和政府官员来为他们的非法经营开路。当他们认为有必要时，就会攻击甚至杀害那些挡路的倒霉鬼。
José Luis Álvarez Flores, an environmental activist in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas who campaigned against illegal sand mining in a local river, was shot dead in June. A note threatening his family and other activists was reportedly found with his body. Two months later, police in Rajasthan, India, were shot at when they tried to stop a convoy of tractors carrying illegally mined sand. The ensuing gun battle left two miners dead and two police officers hospitalised. And early this year, a sand miner in South Africa was shot seven times in a dispute with another group of miners.
墨西哥南部恰帕斯州（Chiapas）的一名环保活动家何塞·路易斯（José Luis Álvarez Flores）因反对在当地一条河流中非法开采沙子，2019年6月被人枪杀。据报道说，他的尸体被发现时，其身旁还有一张威胁他的家人和其他活动人士的纸条。两个月后，印度拉贾斯坦邦（Rajasthan）警方试图阻止一辆装载非法开采的沙子的拖拉机车队时遭到枪击。随后的枪战导致两名采砂工死亡，两名警察入院治疗。今年早些时候，南非一名采砂工人在与另一组采砂工发生争执时被人开了七枪。
Those are only the latest casualties. Violence over the sand trade in recent years has taken lives in Kenya, Gambia, and Indonesia. In India, “sand mafias”, as the local press calls them, have injured hundreds and killed dozens of people. The victims include an 81-year-old teacher and a 22-year-old activist who were separately hacked to death, a journalist burned to death, and at least three police officers run over by sand trucks.
上述仅为最新的伤亡事件。近年在肯尼亚、冈比亚和印度尼西亚，争夺沙子贸易的暴力活动已夺去了许多人的生命。被印度媒体称之为“沙子黑手党”的犯罪团伙已造成数百人受伤和数十人死亡。遇难者包括一名81岁的教师和一名22岁的活动人士，他们分别被砍死，另有一名记者被烧死，至少三名警察被运沙车碾死。
Awareness of the damage caused by our addiction to sand is growing. A number of scientists are working on ways to replace sand in concrete with other materials, including fly ash, the material left over by coal-fired power stations; shredded plastic; and even crushed oil palm shells and rice husks. Others are developing concrete that requires less sand, while researchers are also looking at more effective ways to grind down and recycle concrete.
现在人们已逐渐意识到工业建设依赖沙子危害很大。许多科学家正在研究用其他材料代替混凝土中沙子的作用，比如以煤电厂留下的粉煤灰、塑料碎片、甚至碾碎的油棕壳和稻壳来代替。其他一些公司正在研究开发少用沙子的混凝土，同时研究人员也在寻找更有效的方法来磨碎和回收混凝土。
In many Western countries, river sand mining has already been largely phased out. Getting the rest of the world to follow suit will be tough, though. “Preventing or reducing likely damage to rivers will require the construction industry to be weaned off river sourced aggregate,” says a recent report on the global sand industry by WWF. “This type of societal shift is similar to that required to address climate change, and will necessitate changes in the way that sand and river are perceived, and cities are designed and constructed.”
现在许多西方国家已基本禁止河沙开采。不过，很难让世界其他国家效仿。世界自然基金会最近发布的一份关于全球沙产业的报告称：“为了防止或减少对河流可能造成的破坏，建筑行业必须停止使用来自于河流的骨料。这种类型的社会转变与应对气候变化所需的社会转变相似，这将迫使人们改变对沙子和河流的认知，改变城市的设计和建设方式。”
Mette Bendixen, a coastal geographer at the University of Colorado, is one of a growing number of academics calling for the United Nations and the World Trade Organization, to do more to limit the damage caused by sand mining. “We should have a monitoring programme,” says Bendixen. “More management is needed because right now it’s not being managed at all.”
越来越多的学者呼吁联合国和世界贸易组织采取更多措施限制采砂造成的破坏，美国科罗拉多大学海岸地理学家梅特·本迪克森（Mette Bendixen）是其中一员。他说：“我们应该有一个监控计划，需要更多的管理。因为目前根本没有对沙子开采进行管理。”
At present, no one even knows exactly how much sand is being pulled out of the earth, nor where, nor under what conditions. Much of it is undocumented. “We just know,” says Bendixen, “that the more people there are, the more sand we need.”
当下，甚至没有人确切地知道有多少沙子正从大地上开采挖走，也没有人知道在什么地方，在什么环境下被开采出来。因为大部分都是无证开采，无案可查。本迪克森说：“我们唯一知道的是，地球上的人越多，我们需要的沙子就越多。”