Vanishing sands : losing beaches to mining / Orrin H. Pilkey, Norma J. Longo, William J. Neal, Nelson G. Rangel-Buitrago, Keith C. Pilkey, and Hannah L. Hayes.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Who's Mining the Shore? -- Sand: Earth's Most Remarkable Mineral Resource -- Singapore Sand Bandits: Sitting on Asia's Sandpile -- The Sands of Crime: Mafia, Sand Robbers, and Law Benders -- Sand Rivers to the Beach: Choked Flow -- Barbuda and Other Islands: Lessons from the Caribbean -- A Summoner's Thirteen Tales: South America's Coastal Sand Mining -- A Different Kind of Sand Mining: Legal but Destructive -- Africa Sands: Desert Abundance-Coastal Dearth -- Beach Mining: Truths and Solutions.

"In a time of accelerating sea level rise and increasingly intensifying storms, the world's sandy beaches and dunes have never been more crucial to protecting coastal environments. Yet, in order to meet the demands of large-scale construction projects, sand mining is stripping beaches and dunes, destroying environments, and exploiting labor in the process. The authors of Vanishing Sands track the devastating impact of legal and illegal sand mining over the past twenty years, ranging from Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean to South America and the eastern United States. They show how sand mining has reached crisis levels: beach, dune, and river ecosystems are in danger of being lost forever, while organized crime groups use deadly force to protect their illegal mining operations. Calling for immediate and widespread resistance to sand mining, the authors demonstrate that its cessation is paramount for saving beaches, dunes, and associated environments, plus lives and tourism economies everywhere"-- Provided by publisher.