你可能从未听闻的全球环境危机

From Cambodia to California industrial-scale sand mining is causing wildlife to die local trade to wither and bridges to collapse. And booming urbanisation means the demand for this increasingly valuable resource is unlikely to let up

从柬埔寨到加里福利亚的工业砂开采正在导致野生动物死亡，当地贸易紧缩和桥梁坍塌。日益繁荣的城市化意味着对这种日加贵重的资源的需求不太可能停止。

Times are good for Fey Wei Dong. A genial middle-aged businessman based near Shanghai China Fey says he is raking in the equivalent of ￡180000 a year from trading in the humblest of commodities: sand.

时代益于冯卫东，一个来自中国上海附近的和善的中年商人。冯说他一年可从沙这种粗劣商品交易中敛利180000英镑。

Fey often works in a fishing village on Poyang Lake China’s biggest freshwater lake and a haven for millions of migratory birds and several endangered species. The village is little more than a tiny collection of ramshackle houses and battered wooden docks. It is dwarfed by a flotilla anchored just offshore of colossal dredges and barges hulking metal flatboats with cranes jutting from their decks. Fey comes here regularly to buy boatloads of raw sand dredged from Poyang’s bottom. He ships it 300 miles down the Yangtze River and resells it to builders in booming Shanghai who need it to make concrete.

冯经常去鄱阳湖边的一个渔村，鄱阳湖是中国最大的淡水湖和成千上万的候鸟以及许多濒危物种的天堂。这个村很小更像是破败的房屋和破木码头的小聚集地。和停在岸边的巨大船只相比，村庄显得特别渺小，那里停靠着巨型的采砂船和驳船以及装有起重机的笨重金属平底船。冯定期的来这里买成船的从鄱阳湖底开采的原沙。沿江向下船运300英里然后转售给在繁荣的上海需要沙来造混凝土的建筑商们。

The demand is voracious. The global urbanisation boom is devouring colossal amounts of sand – the key ingredient of concrete and asphalt. Shanghai China’s financial centre has exploded in the last 20 years. The city has added 7 million new residents since 2000 raising its population to more than 23 million. In the last decade Shanghai has built more high-rises than there are in all of New York City as well as countless miles of roads and other infrastructure. “My sand helped build Shanghai Pudong airport” Fey brags.

需求旺盛的今天。全球城市化急速发展正在吞食海量的沙——这种沥青和混凝土的关键原料。中国的金融中心上海在近二十年中爆发式发展。这个城市从2000年以来增加了七百万居民，达到如今的二千三百多万。在过去十年上海建造的高楼比整个纽约市还多，以及无法度量长度的路和其他基础设施。冯自诩：“由我的沙子建造的上海浦东机场。”

Hundreds of dredgers may be on the lake on any given day some the size of tipped-over apartment buildings. The biggest can haul in as much as 10000 tonnes of sand an hour. A recent study estimates that 236m cubic metres of sand are taken out of the lake annually. That makes Poyang the biggest sand mine on the planet far bigger than the three largest sand mines in the US combined. “I couldn’t believe it when we did the calculations” says David Shankman a University of Alabama geographer and one of the study’s authors.

任何一天，都有数以百计的采砂船在湖上作业，一些的如横放的公寓楼一样大小。最大的一小时能采集10000吨沙。最近研究估计每年有236兆立方米被挖出湖。这就使鄱阳湖成为世界上最大的采砂场，远比美国3大沙场合起来还大。亚拉巴马大学的地理学家以及该研究的作者之一的戴维山克曼说：“在统计的时候我都不敢相信。“

All that dredging researchers believe is a key reason why the lake’s water level has dropped dramatically in recent years. So much sand has been scooped out says Shankman – 30 times more than the amount that flows in from tributary rivers – that the lake’s outflow channel has been drastically deepened and widened nearly doubling the amount of water that flows into the Yangtze. The lower water levels are translating into declines in water quality and supply to surrounding wetlands. It could be ruinous for the area’s inhabitants both animal and human.

采掘研究学者都认为上述情况是近年湖水面线显著下降重要原因。山克曼说30倍于支流沙量流入的量被开采，导致湖流出通道被大幅度的加深和加宽接近2倍于流入长江的径流量。低水面线导致周围湿地的水质和水供应日益下降。这可能对生存于该地区的动物和人造成毁灭性的影响。