sand is not something that's easily found like you might think it is used to be that you'd have a sandy gravel deposit and you'd simply go and dig it up out of the ground so you'd have to make your roads bridges and buildings up but that type of material is all been taken away it's gone abuse it already. with the positive surface and exhausted we started dredging rivers for sand but this is lead to flooding. now we've turned to the oceans for sand. to satisfy our seemingly insatiable appetite for sand we've industrialized extracting it from beneath the waves. and the workhorse of the industry is a dredger. a giant tanker equipped with a suction arm capable of pumping huge quantities of sand to the surface. the right bessel in the right location can pump up to four hundred thousand cubic

metres of sand to the surface every single day. each dredger cost anywhere from twenty five million to two hundred million dollars. but the sand is free. so the thousands of tankers combing the world's oceans have every incentive to suck up as much sand as possible for their increasingly hungry clients. to buy is an astonishing example of this appetite within a few decades this fishing village has morphed into a mecca of modern architecture it's a sandbox for developers were no fantasies to grandiose. but do projects swallow up a lot of sand using huge volumes of sand and construction projects concrete and.

just making land as as juba has been doing with the with the artificially constructed islands. to landfills or even bigger consumers of sand than concrete. with a booming economy the emirate launched an investor's expansion project. the palm. after the year two thousand with the price of real estate soaring as a result of speculation developers bet that it would be cheaper to make land than to buy it. the self-proclaimed eighth wonder of the world cost over twelve billion dollars and devoured more than one hundred fifty million tons of sand dredged from coastline. with the giant palm still under construction to by flying high on the seemingly endless supply of money and sand embarked on an even more extravagant project. the world. the world is an island paradise would run president had opportunity can be found it is almost as

resort official archipelago of three hundred islands designed as a map of the world absorbed fourteen billion dollars and three times as much sand as the palm. the world. a place beyond imagination. today the world is a mirage the work site has been abandoned since the onset of the financial crisis in two thousand and eight. deserted island is now parked in the sun awaiting the uncertain day when millionaire buyers will again descend on to buy and restore its glory. to kill the corporation managing the palm in the world the crisis is more than financial overdevelopment is totally liquidated by his natural sand resources and you think we'll find of course dubai is on the edge of that there's a they've got old asylum they need like all the gulf states dubai has sand everywhere so why doesn't the emirates simply help itself to the desert. desert

sand is the wrong color end of sand for building a lot of fishel islands why because deserts and all the grains have been blown around by the wind is typically very round and very smooth if you want to use it to build an island they don't stick together you need sand that that is more angular rougher rougher age say that naturally sticks together. see sand is perfect for island building and construction but it's in limited supply sand is not a sustainable resource. although its own stocks are exhausted dubai is far from given up. the burj khalifa at the time of construction the world's tallest building was built with sand from half a world away. we have

a saying in english which is selling sand to the arabs which is obviously a joke. that that's actually come true in the case of the by. thirty five hundred australian companies exports into the arabian peninsula their profits of tripled in twenty years accounting for a five billion dollar jackpot. and australia is just one small part of a global trend that reliance on importing sand from other areas you see is this huge trade around the world moving from one another for different purposes such construction and land reclamation. singapore is another city at the heart of the sand wars. in thirty years the country known as the switzerland of asia has become one of the richest in the region during this time the population has more than doubled and the sixty three islands that make up the city state are bursting at the seams singapore is sort of lying on the import. saddened for its

very existence when the land mass is literally increased twenty percent over the last forty is and that's largely been reckon nation so literally pouring sound into the sea to create new land. singapore is already transformed one hundred thirty square kilometers of water into land and is planning to add another one hundred square kilometers by twenty thirty. having devoured all its own reserves its for ratios appetite is targeted at its neighbor supplies. one after another cambodia. malaysia and indonesia have each decided to ban trade with singapore but its addiction to sand is not easy to restrain. singapore is being accused of expanding its coastline with illegally dredged satins from neighboring states. suspicions of sand trafficking hang over singapore and the dozens of barges filled in the broom which imo daily and it's important prove that the city state has found an

alternative source but where does the saying come from. tommy guns beer. guns are. you going to hear very every day every week. this what is the visual so. i'm going to. sit in. your individual. little. north korean television company or your nice example. thanks to local traffic and networks singapore and dealers with false identities working for fictional companies continue to find supplies of sand in neighboring countries.

and the other come. but in the same system. which i think is it just it was the business of the state but this is this case. to flaunt the law with the tacit support of the government their most loyal client. the sun trading singapore's he usually have a political is a massive of ours we're concerned it's just a is build a. leader in the region particularly with the last global sun that's but their companies will brain imports of that country and should be its human rights violations environmental degradation and damage the livelihoods of local people. the effects of underwater dredging are far from but. much of the ocean floor is rocky or covered with only a thin layer of sand. built up over tens or even hundreds of thousands of years.

as you dredge up a set. of course all the the any walls and. on the sea floor they will all be dredged up as well and therefore whatever live in communities that they will just. sand is the primary link in the underwater food chain remove it and the survival of all species from the smallest to the largest is threatened. like many archipelagos many of indonesia's islands are literally made of sand and intense dredging has triggered a series of chain reactions. ninety two percent in the nation's fiscal challenges come from tension of the city because of mining activity is when this coral reef we lost fish. livelihood. everything loss of

fish habitat directly endangers the survival of thousands of indonesian families but that's only the first of sand dredging to adverse effects. if you have an oil made of sand it's only there because of conspiracy of natural processes wind waves water currents time of year and so if you start removing that. then you've upset the balance of the conspiracy and waves and currents will then start to move the rest of the sail. after the extraction of sand a combination of waves currents and gravity slowly fill in the back you. so the removal of underwater sand can have a very noticeable effect on nearby beaches and islands. and so by a combination of natural growth this is and human excavation. the oil and literally

disappear. one of the most stunning impacts of the sand trade was the disappearance of some of the islands off the coast of indonesia which have literally vanished. when we lose that sense. that we loose. our life. once an island disappears the international maritime boundary changes all is required to these become geopolitical issues as well as simply commercial and resource issues. twenty five indonesian islands have already disappeared. like coal and gas sand is now on the frontline of the world's hunger for raw materials. scarcity and dangers local communities and sets governments against each other. as demand builds the circle only becomes more vicious.

morocco's gentle climate has been welcoming tourists for years. but its famous beaches have also been attracting some strange four legged visitors a constant stream of men and doggies descend on the beaches seven days a week. in search of. sand. for men and the donkeys have taken so much sand that some beaches now look like the surface of the moon. rock has been experiencing a construction boom spurred on by a competitive real estate market. the builders are happy but they need plenty of sand legal and otherwise. that.

i wrote that i have i don't want to give you. are you know that i'm not going to bend an addendum going to the mat or not. do you have enough to know what kind of to yet know if you love so much loved by double got cut by back to back up to help oh yeah. look i do one thing yes i did was really i do what cigars right to their day but didn't come at you that you're not going out your head not them have them come we did a little bit about what a great of it oh i like them back i like that lap it's estimated that forty to forty five percent of the sand used in construction in morocco has been stolen mostly from its beaches. loaded onto trucks the sand is sold directly to unscrupulous developers but that's not where the problem ends. without proper treatment salty beach sand mixed with cement is highly corrosive make america's new

buildings ticking time bombs in danger of collapse. ironically the beach is meant to lure the tourists are being stripped bare to build hotels and condos that may turn out to be death traps. in mumbai a.v. enjoy. the position of being the financial capital of the country andrea also have a huge housing boom construction boom that's because of the influx of so many new people into the city. but the indian economy booming construction has to keep pace and like in so many other battlegrounds of the sand wars easy profits lead to

corrupt practices. the value of sand is such that it's a commercial commodity that is smuggled i mean the. the it's a big business is smuggling sam. the sand mafia is the most powerful criminal organization in india. and a lot of the people. who control of the sun mafia controls a lot of the construction the construction materials businesses in bombay as well as the constructions themselves. in addition to that they also control the administration through their political contacts so that just completes the whole value chain right from the extraction to construction the the profits in each bottle fed the administration and the police. under the eyes of corrupt authorities the sand arts ply their trade in broad daylight and more than eight

thousand drugs inside scattered across the coast and river banks of the subcontinent. for the mafia's beaches are easy prey because the sand is literally within arm's reach so they had even the most popular tourist sites the places where you expect to stretch out on the beach and worship the sun. the tentacles of the mafia's however are just adding to the pressures facing the world speeches. just two years ago there was a row of houses here. i think about a house though from about here all the way down to the condo and those houses there on the water the shoreline with going right past them so they ended up taking them

out of these houses here with their on the the front were row number two and i the fact that these houses won't be here and five here. we bought the house about two years ago hoping that we would be able to retire here but from here you could see how much sand we've lost underneath the house. because it was up to level with the cement but of course it went out into the ocean. so. the beach area was about the length of a football field and over the last two years the scart mint is underneath the houses so. the erosion on this part of the beach is much quicker than we anticipated or that is deemed to normal. globally between seventy five and

ninety percent of beaches are actually undergoing some sort of or a treat and that's only going to get worst. june just zero. with media trends constantly changing the listening post continues to analyze how the news is covered it's the most widely viewed sporting event on the planet as russia prepares to host the football world cup we'll bring you stories from on and off the field from afghanistan one o one east investigates why so few girls are in school despite billions of dollars of donations one year since the imposed blockade of. al-jazeera examines the political economic and human impact of the crisis unfold provoking documentaries witness brings world issues into focus for personal stories june on al-jazeera.

getting to the heart of the matter if not stuff i can do that such a supreme leader calls you today and says that's harsh towards would you accept facing realities what do you think reunification would look like there are two people. the peaceful reunification is the only option for prosperity of south korea hear their story on talk to al-jazeera thing as i want to buy now or you will ask about it but that's the ball is a ball not i see more listeners that this set says the last one and the other the other guys and the bunch is a bitch at the bottom in the first episode of a two part series al-jazeera investigates the world of performance enhancing drugs . sports during the industry.