Sand Mining Is Underrated Yet Imposes Great Threat On Climate Change.

By: Diana Yaa Opokua

The Ga West Municipal district road construction, thus,  John Teye to Amasaman Road, is an important infrastructure for great economic development, yet its construction process poses negative effects on the environment leading to climate change.

Although there are numerous factors contributing to climate change through construction, sand mining is an underrated factor that causes a threat to climate change. Roads, houses, boreholes construction, and the like depend heavily on sand, especially for filling purposes, a mixture of concrete, among others. 

The quality of mortar uses for such processes is dependent on it’s ability to bond and resist compression, and this also depends on sand. 

Therefore, the quest to mine the sand, trees, and vegetative covers is destroyed. Research shows that sand is the most consumed raw material after water, and it is an essential ingredient to our everyday lives. Also, the global use of sand is 10 times higher than that of cement, which means, in the case of construction, the world consumes roughly 40 to 50 million tons of sand on an annual basis. 

  A major scenario is the road construction of Amasaman, Accra, which has an increasing  rate at which sand is mined in Ghana since this particular road happens to be one of the largest highways in the country.

Aside the release of excess carbon dioxide,  other green house gases (GHG) like methane, ozone, nitrous oxide, chlorofluorocarbons and water vapor in the construction process, dust air which contains some amount of nutrients from various construction sites predominantly affects the Earth’s climate change by scattering and absorbing shortwave and long wave radiations which also directly affects the surface temperature.

One of the numerous dangers of emitted gases in after construction is volcanoes. 

Volcanoes affect the climate through the gases sand particles emit through into the atmosphere during eruption. The effect of these volcanoes gases and dust may then warm or cool the Earth’s surface, which is also dependent on how sunlight interacts with the volcanic material. 

 As studies show, new home construction in the US especially creates 50 million tons of embodied carbon emissions annually, which is equivalent to the emissions from 138 natural gas-fired power plants in Peru, Norway and Sweden. All these constructions are heavily dependent on the use of sand which in their effect on climate change.

 Sand mining although does not have immediate attention of people as one of the major factors in climate change, it plays a major role by emitting of various gases through sand dust during construction which also constitute to climate change.

REFERENCE 

 https://www.reuters.com/graphics/GLOBAL-ENVIRONMENT/SAND/ygdpzekyavw/

https://pa.linkedin.com/posts/chris-magwood-8a8a9738_the-hidden-climate-impact-of-residential-activity-7046594208035454976-NCnt