Valuing Sand: From Overlooked Resource to a Strategic Asset for Biodiversity and the Energy Transition

The clean energy transition is accelerating global demand not only for critical minerals but also for aggregates—mainly sand, gravel, and crushed rock—collectively referred to as sand, the world’s most extracted solid material. While critical minerals often dominate climate–biodiversity discussions, sand resources represent an annual demand exceeding 50 billion tonnes. These resources are fundamental to infrastructure development, particularly for decarbonization initiatives, including renewable energy installations and coastal protection measures. Yet the values of sand to biodiversity and ecosystem services, as well as the biodiversity impacts, dependencies, and governance gaps associated with sand extraction, remain largely unrecognized.

Poorly regulated sand extraction in dynamic, biodiversity-rich systems disrupts sediment flows, degrades ecosystems, and amplifies climate and livelihood vulnerabilities, with impacts spreading far beyond the mining site and compounding other pressures such as dams, sea-level rise, and land-use change. As renewable-energy expansion increases demand, emerging sand scarcity and ecosystem degradation pose material risks to infrastructure and resilience, underscoring the need to govern sand as a strategic resource with biodiversity considerations integrated across its lifecycle.

Drawing on emerging findings from UNEP’s Sand & Sustainability forthcoming 2026 report, this presentation highlights the critical yet overlooked role of sand in shaping a nature-positive energy transition. The report convened over 20 international experts across sectors to expand understanding of sand’s value to biodiversity and to put forward actionable recommendations. A new decision-support tool will accompany the report, enabling governments across jurisdictions to better align resource management, climate objectives, and biodiversity conservation.

This presentation will synthesize global evidence on the biodiversity impacts and risks associated with sand extraction, introduce valuation approaches that capture sand’s contribution to ecosystem functioning, and outline governance innovations. It will also highlight nature-positive opportunities such as secondary and recycled aggregates and standards-based, landscape-scale restoration.

Positioning sand within the broader minerals agenda reveals a critical gap in current climate policy: without recognizing sand’s strategic value, the material foundation of the energy transition risks undermining global biodiversity targets. Reframing sand as both a critical enabler of clean energy and a keystone of biodiversity-rich landscapes offers pathways to reconcile material demand with nature-positive outcomes.