UN Geneva - Multimedia Newsroom : UNEP - Press Conference: Marine Sand Watch Launch

[Other language spoken]

Thank you very much.

[Other language spoken]

My name is Alejandro Laguna and I am the head of Communication of the United Nations Environment Programme for Europe and Central Asia.

I'm going to start right away.

[Other language spoken]

From the creators of the sand and sustainability reports, we now have a new product.

We have a platform, the Marine Sand Watch.

You might be wondering why, and some of you might have already followed these sand reports that have been launched here in Geneva.

[Other language spoken]

Why is Geneva linked to sand and, and to the research around sand and, and everything that has to do with, with this very important resource?

And it's not because of Geneva's sandy beaches, although we do have the Geneva Plage.

It's because of of this team of the UNEP Grid Geneva team, they are the ones who started wondering what was going on with sand in our planet, in our oceans, and who started gathering the data, producing reports, and now they've taken things to to a new level.

The Marine Sand Watch has a very appropriate name.

Well, maybe sand clock would have been better because the sand clock is ticking and you should imagine a sand clock that is upside down because the sand is being pulled up from from the marine environment.

Sand and and other and other elements that they will talk to you about.

I'm not going to give you the figures, but you will soon realise that the pace at which sand extraction is happening across the world is very concerning and this pace is increasing.

I'm going to let our experts speak to you about that.

They will give you the figures.

They will also tell you what they have been up to in terms of interaction with the industry, with the dredging industry.

As you know, some of you who might not be familiar with sand, it's not just used to replenish beaches.

Most of the building that happens in our world, in our society needs sand.

It's the, if I'm not mistaken, the second most used resource, natural resource after water.

There we go.

So I'm, I'm going to give the floor to the first of our experts to Pascal Bellucci, the Director of GRID Geneva UNIP and, and he will give you a presentation so that you can briefly understand what we're launching today.

It's the first ever platform of this kind.

It does very interesting things and this team has used their natural intelligence to harness artificial intelligence and see what dredging vessels are doing across the world.

I'm going to give the floor now to Pascal and we will have time, of course, for questions also from those of you who are listening, watching online.

Thank you very much, Pascal, the floor is yours.

Many thanks, Alessandro.

Yeah, my instant watch the making the invisible visible because what we are withdrawing from the ocean, we, we couldn't see it before.

So we found a way to actually reveal these.

But before I go into the platform, I will do a demonstration of the platform.

But before I do so, just the context why we are so interested about sand.

Well there was an article published in Nature in 2020 that shows that the amount of man made building material is not exceeding the global living biomass.

So if you take the entire biomass of the dry vegetation, you the dry biomass of the vegetation of the world it is the built environment is now exceeding in weight and most of that is actually sand and gravels.

So we need sand, foreign infrastructure, so all the roads, the buildings are made of concrete bridges, the the dams for hydropower, the for the industry, for, you know, energy.

The sand is really everywhere.

Glass is made of sand, sheeps of computers are made of silica sand and so on.

But we also need sand in the environment because sand is what is protecting all shoreline from beach erosion, for protecting your aquifers.

Aquifers are actually made of sand and gravel.

That's where we pump the water.

The all delta sand is a subtract for biodiversity and fisheries.

So without sand it would not be all these services.

And so when we are taking a turn of sand to make concrete, that sand do not exist anymore.

And it's this cumulative impact that we have on the environment that makes sand so special.

We need to consider sand as a strategic material, not as a common material as we tend to to think about sand.

So we are extracting about 50 billion tonnes of sand and gravel per year in the world, not in the marine environment.

We'll see that increasingly we do so.

But 50 billion tonnes is already a very massive amount of material.

It's half of the entire stuff that are extracted from mining area.

So it's a tremendous volume now from the marine environment.

We, I with the marine sandwich, we see that we are extracting between 4:00 and 8:00 tonnes of sediments that are moved or extracted from the oceans.

And that amounts triggered 3 resolutions that we are talking about in the United Nations.

We have the first one, 2019 was a mineral resource governance.

It was asking For more information about this issue of sand.

Then at the IUCN World Conservation Congress, they had a motion for the urgent Global Management of marine and coastal sand resources.

And in 2022 there was the UNIA resolution.

So UNIA stands for United Nation Environmental Assembly.

It's all the ministries of the environment and they've been requested requesting this resolution that we bring more scientific, technical and policy knowledge with regard to sand.

And that's what we do.

So sand can be extracted from static environment like queries.

In this case, it's it's actually much better for the environment or by crunching rocks when it's taken out of dynamic environment like you can take it from beaches or from rivers or now, which was talking about the marine environment.

Sand plays a dynamic role.

It's part of the ecosystem.

And that's why it is very important to be very careful when we take sand from those dynamic settings.

So look at this boat, It looks like a giant vacuum cleaner and that's what it does.

It's basically sterilising the bottom of the sea by extracting sand and crunching all the mineral microorganisms that are feeding fishes.

So it has impact on biodiversity and fisheries.

Here's the types of impacts.

You see the in #7 here's you see the tract of the vessel where all the sun is removed and crunched.

Then we have the well microorganisms are trenched, then everything that is too small is being released so that create these plumes changing the turbidity of the water and everything that is too coarse is dumped on top of other organisms.

So it also adds to the noise.

And if it's done too close from the shore, it can create coastal erosion.

So this is all this impact that we're talking about these shallow sea mining.

Now we can how we monitor that every single vessels are emitting a signal called AIS for automatic identification system.

It's for security reasons.

And using this signal we know which vessels is moving and how it is moving.

So if we if you have a boat that is moving like this back and forth, this is the way that dredger are moving and we can identify this pattern as being dredging.

If if they are fishing, they would move differently.

They are cargo, they would be to go straight and so on.

So with the signal, we know the name of the vessels, its volume, we know where it's been and so on.

And with that we can see where sand is being extracted or moved.

We can see where it's dumped to other places or where it is offloaded.

We also make some of these amount of sediment that are being shifted by 200 nautic miles from the shore.

And so we know three times if there is an increase or decrease in the inside exploitation.

So human are moving or extracting 4 to 8 billion tonnes of sediment per year from the marine environment.

That's the result of our platform and 6 billion tonnes in average.

So is the equivalent of a wall of 10 metre **** by 10 metre wide or around planet Earth every year or two kilogramme per day per person for the 8 billion humans we are, or more than 1,000,000 trucks per day.

So just give you an idea what is 6 billion tonnes because it's so big now.

So half of the sediment is coming from the coastal environment is being moved or extracted.

So if we look at the total amount that is coming from rivers is 10 to 16 billion tonnes.

These are already being reduced because we have built dam that prevents sediment from flowing to the coastal environment.

We also take sand directly from rivers, meaning there are less and less sediments getting to the coastline and that has an issue in terms of replenishing or coastline or river or or beaches.

So and our platform can see a lot of stuff where we don't see yet everything.

There was recently a World Bank a report saying that 3.8 billion U.S.

dollars of impact because of coastal degradation and that was 5.3% of the GDP of those W African countries.

And in Vietnam, the Mekong River is over extracted and leading to land erosion.

And again, this is not all registered.

So now we'll show you the platform itself.

So you can access it by UNAP grid dot chapter slash marine sand watch in one word and you Click to the map and you access the platform itself.

You will see a lot of functionalities that can be there, but one of the easiest way to get in is this story map.

When you click introducing marine sandwich, it will allow you to actually we go we go through this platform automatically.

So it's the platform running behind.

We can see how the platform can be moved.

We we can zoom in particular places and we see where things are being we see where sand is extracted, we see where sand is being placed in harbour.

So here we see the boat, we see the oh, sorry, we don't see the platform.

I can't see there the images.

[Other language spoken]

Sorry, I didn't see that it was not online and I don't know why.

So Oh yes, I know why you have to exit that one.

So again, so the platform thanks.

So if you go to the link that you received in the press release, you go to this little map and here you will access the platform itself.

Now it is online.

Sorry about that.

We the best way you can have all these kind of layers of information.

It's an interactive platform where you can zoom, pan and change different layers.

But I'm just going to use the story map that we built for introducing the the platform.

So you'll see how the platform can move.

We can zoom in specific area where we see things being extracted.

We can move in location where the boats are offloading the sand and we see the the piles of sand and the trucks here.

Oh, why not?

I think you have a false connection.

[Other language spoken]

So yes, we can zoom in places where the boats are uploading sand.

We see the boat, we see the pile of sand and the trucks and moving a bit birds view with over Europe, but it's available worldwide.

If you click in 200 naughty miles zone from the shore, you can see the number of vessels, the number of operators or the amount of sand being dredged.

And you see that this is increasing over time and this is available worldwide.

So you can move and go to any different countries and you will see you can click and and have the same kind of statistics appearing.

So what we use sand for, we can see where in in the kind of orange shade where the sand is extracted from the marine environment.

And here you see the type of infrastructures that are being built.

So they are extending doing land reclamation of a sea for new harbours.

For example, in the Maldives we see that they are making artificial islands.

So we see those dots that show that they were doing beach nourishment.

So new land is being created.

Same in Sri Lanka and you see where they've been taking sand and where it's, it's moving here, where to create maybe new harbour facilities.

[Other language spoken]

We see the drainage, maintenance of channels and dredging of of shore and so on and so forth.

So Singapore has expanded territory as well.

We see all the this territory here is new, made of sand coming from neighbouring countries, new beaches, artificial beaches.

Beach nourishment is also a big stuff in for example, all the coast from the East Coast of the US North Seas, tremendous activity in the North Sea.

Here we can see in the platform and look, it's not PowerPoint, it's really the platform live.

So you can see it moving.

Beach nourishment again.

And of course the the Panama channels need to be cleaned.

So that's dredging, that's maintenance dredging.

But what we can observe is worldwide is the amount of sand that is being taken by country and at at specific location, as you've seen, and that allows us to have this estimated that we didn't have before that Over to you, Arno and Arno has been designing the platform.

It's the brain behind the the methodology has been working in this industry.

Arnov and the album.

[Other language spoken]

So the the marine sandwich is is first and foremost.

Sorry, could could you introduce yourself?

[Other language spoken]

So my name is Arnavan Developer and I'm the Cent Industry and Data Analytics Officer for Unipro Geneva.

And going back to the platform.

So the platform is first and foremost a capacity building tool to provide data and transparency to all stakeholders.

It is it's still a very hard task for many countries to monitor their exclusive economical zone and we we hope that this platform is going to make a real difference for those countries.

And in this respect, UNEP also invites all stakeholders to the table to discuss better policies, environmental standards and best practises.

In the next few months, we will be adding additional data to go from 2012 all the way up to 2023 in the middle.

Long term, our ambition is to provide near real life data so that you can see near real time when vessels are dumping, when vessels are judging, when vessels are just transporting material, where the material is going.

And we will then bring annual updates of the amount of marine sand extracted all over the world.

[Other language spoken]

Thank you very much to both of you.

I think we can now open the floor for questions.

I see some questions already online, but I, I don't know if anyone here in the room would like to ask any question first.

[Other language spoken]

I don't see the order of the question, sorry, from the colleagues online.

I'm going to start giving the floor to Antonio Obroto from FA.

Thank you very much.

So my question is, given this new data, which are the seas and oceans most affected by these extraction activities?

And do you have data of which countries are the ones that extract more sand in the in the seabed?

And I also have a geometric question because you said that with all the sand that is extracted in one year, we can build a wall.

This wall you mean is a circumference wall like around the equator or is a sprayed wall that can cover the whole planet?

[Other language spoken]

Yes, I think for the this.

[Other language spoken]

Thanks for the question.

The second question I will leave I know.

And so the first one.

So yes, it's 10 by 10 metres all around the equator, 10 by 10 metres.

It's big enough to already give a a scale of the amount of sand that is muvo extracted sediments that are muvo extracted from the ocean.

And regarding most affected places, I know sure I the the real hotspots when we talk, I think mainly East Asia.

So the the coast along along China is is definitely one of the more dredged areas, the South China Sea, the Gulf and the North Sea.

In addition, you can add the East Coast of the United States.

I think these are the the oceans and seas with the highest intensity of dredging.

But what is equally important as what we can see is what we cannot see.

There are regions which are undergoing, as we speak, very **** intensities of dredging such as certain regions in, in and around Southeast Asia, which currently cannot be tracked yet because the these countries have not implemented policies that require judging all judging vessels to emit AIS signals.

And so we do applaud to all countries that force their industry to emit these AIS signals because this is how you can track and better monitor what is happening off your coastlines.

[Other language spoken]

Thank you very much.

We'll take another question from Jeremy Launch Radio France.

Yes, thank you for giving me the opportunity to to ask a question.

I'd like to ask the question in French if that's OK, because I think that Mister Petuzzi is French speaking.

Just in case in precision the.

[Other language spoken]

New a party of the last an anterior de si San crot milia de tonne on esteem.

The the motor, the the the volume, the sub the disposition CL continue comes up delta Jamaican River Las supposing problem, particularly Delta.

Thank you very much.

[Other language spoken]

Could you clarify for me whether these marine dredging activities are allowed?

Are these legal activities or are they regulated in any way?

And could you say has the 6 billion increased a lot over time?

Is, is a bigger portion of global sand coming from the marine environment?

And maybe if you could just say a word on the impact on, on, on food chains in the oceans.

You mentioned the crunching of, of microscopic creatures, but what does this mean for fish, for marine mammals and so on?

[Other language spoken]

Many thanks for for your questions.

The first one on illegal sand mining, we're talking here about very big vessels that are extremely expensive and and not at the end of everybody.

So it's actually legal to take sand from the Mayan environment.

The question is, are they doing things in the concessions that are provided to them or is there some activities that is done outside some concessions?

So now with our data, if our countries want to, if some countries want to monitor, if the activities are done according to what has been agreed with the operators, they can check that other and we can go back in time to 2012.

So it's possible for 2012 to 2019, we're going to process 2020 and 23 and hopefully in the future go to near real time.

So there we would be able to help countries to make sure that the sand activity, extract, dredging activities are operating within the concessions that were provided to the companies.

Regarding the so illegal sun mining is more something that is happening from informal sector for example on the beach or in shallow rivers.

But we do have as well in shallow marine environment.

Extractions now be legal or illegal?

It will depends on the regulations of each countries.

In some countries you do have policies that prevents that from happening.

In other countries it is accepted.

So it will depend from the context.

Your second question and 3rd, I might get lost.

Can you repeat the other questions you had?

Sorry.

Yeah, just the scale of it, the six billion is that is that big increase from before, is that sustainable?

And then finally on the bigger ecosystem impact of marine dredging, yes, it's not sustainable.

The amount, the amount of sand that we are withdrawing from the environment is considerable and has large impact.

So like we've done for other natural resources like timber, we have cut more forest and trees are reproducing themselves.

The same with fishes, we are overfishing and taking more fish than they reproduce themselves.

Imagine that sand is produced by very slow geological time scale erosion from glaciers, rivers and waves.

And it takes a lot of time to transform rocks into sand.

And we are withdrawing 50 billion as a whole in the terrestrial environment and 4 to 8 billion from the marine environment.

And where we are extracting it, we are extracting in a very specific area.

So globally we estimate from 10 to 16 billion tonnes of sand coming from the world's major rivers.

But locally where we extract sand, we are extracting it faster than you can replenish itself.

So this is not sustainable.

It could be done systematically if it's done with proper environmental impact assessment that established the amount of sand that could be withdrawn and in some location it is done.

Now the impact on the on the fishes tremendous.

There are the fact that you are removing all the, the bottom of the sea and it's changing.

There is no more life there.

The life needs to come back.

So you need to allow time to come back.

If you don't take all the sands, if you leave like 50-60 centimetres of sand, life can come back.

But if you are taking all the sand to the bare rock, then you it's a different statues and the life may not recover.

The impact is also about the turbidity because as I say, the small particles that are rejected at the end of the boat is changing the water turbidity and also has impact on biodiversity and fisheries.

[Other language spoken]

So I, I, I think what what Pascal said on the environmental impact assessment is is is one of those key points.

So although that much of the judging being performed around the world is is most definitely legal, especially the the the dredging that we are tracking here through this platform, many countries do not yet provide the framework for companies to bring to the full their best practises.

So environmental impact assessments could definitely be strengthened and be adapted to the marine environment in in most parts of the world.

Thank you very much.

[Other language spoken]

Michel Langran, I'm not sure you work for Geneva Solutions.

[Other language spoken]

Yes, exactly.

[Other language spoken]

My, my question is regarding just this you mentioned in your press release about small scale artisanal sand mining.

I'm just wondering if if you have plans to, to monitor, monitor that as well, if it, if it's possible given the that you, you're the system that you're using to, to do that with, with bigger vessels.

[Other language spoken]

Yes, Many thanks.

We, we have very **** ambitions and very low resources, but we are planning to do more.

[Other language spoken]

We will be discussing on next Thursday, this Thursday and the next one on Friday.

There will be the global consultation from member States and with them we're going to discuss the opportunity of creating a global sand observatory.

So not only for marine environment but also for terrestrial environment.

Of course, it will be more challenging.

Extraction of sand in rivers are done with small boats, they don't emit the AIS signal.

So we will need to find other types of technologies, remote sensing drones, looking at life cycle analysis to make derivations of statistics to understand if we can see how much area has been built, how many roads have been built, so we can deduct the amount of sand being used.

So there are different ways of doing that, but it will not be as easy.

Well, not that this one has been very easy because we had to train an artificial intelligence and it's been 2 years of research put into that.

But looking at river sand extraction or or terrestrial sand extraction would be challenging.

But this is definitely also in our targets.

That's what we want to do to really assess the sand globally.

So that's why we want to create a global sand observatory that will include marine sand watch will be one of the components looking at the marine sand, but we will have terrestrial sand monitoring, impact monitoring, also looking at different policies.

And what are the solutions as well?

Because it's not the purpose is not only to bring problems here, it's to look at potential solutions for reducing the footprint of humans on the environment, especially with regard to extraction of sense.

Thank you very much.

Maya plans from the UN brief.

Yes, thank you for taking.

[Other language spoken]

My question, my question is regarding how well what will be the benefits of this platform for stakeholders.

Stakeholders are mostly regulatory bodies, we think countries, legislators I understand or who else.

And and the second part of my question is how will you ensure that there is adoption of using this platform by the stakeholders?

So I will start and then I hand out to to, I know the the 1st for us, the clients, the first client we think about for the UN is the Member States.

So making sure that the countries can have an appropriate monitoring of their marine environments.

There are very limited amount of countries and who can name few that are equipped to this monitoring.

Most countries do not have any capacity for monitoring the dredging activities in their own water.

So that tool will allow them and if a country want to ask us what's going on in their international in their maritime water, we can tell them in the exclusive economic zone or in their territorial water.

So that's that's the first client, but the other one is all this restoration conservation organisation want to know what would be the impact on biodiversity if boats are operating in no take area or in protected areas.

You know that at the last biodiversity cup, there was a decision to to in Montreal, there was the decision to protect 30% of oceans.

So all these shallow sea mining is also very important to monitor because if we want to protect, we cannot operate and destroy the bottom of the sea.

So that would be the kind of tools that can be useful for for monitoring if protected area are really well protected.

But I know I'll leave you for the industry because you know how you could could be used sure.

So as you, as you will notice, you can also access this, this platform and transparency creates some form of accountability, but it also provides the ability to to talk about best practises where before we couldn't really make comparison between how judging works are being executed in the North East versus how they are being executed in in Southeast Asia.

And what we see is that practises in different parts of the world are very different.

And so this platform enables all stakeholders to come together and, and to exchange information on how to do things better.

Many country stakeholders have already told me that they are more than happy to provide their best practises to other countries.

So I think the whole dialogue will will, will create some sort of accountability, but will also create an increased awareness on how things can be done better.

[Other language spoken]

And yes, Pedrero from Jean France Price.

Yes, good afternoon, everybody.

If he of a concrete man with your case only big he he did expose it to ground slot the Navier extractor Merci be the extractor.

Oh, you can go first.

So yeah, for the for the different countries and fleet.

I will let the different but the extraction strategic the capacity the system approval society, the Vampira Lao if we consider become strategic SC not integrated with infrastructure who's echoed electric La Lazarian demonstrations personal the the the audience who's available Panosola I was he said you said the Cilicia le Verde etcetera, etcetera offered to not sociated de pon de subcom material the construction see whole.

On university.

The volume, the disposition and extraction.

I, I will respond in English if, if that's fine.

But so in, in addition to, to what Pascal said on, on why this so important to be a strategic resources.

Very few countries know the reserves of sand and of marine sand that they have available.

And in the light of sea level rising or sea level rise, it's it's extremely important that countries take stock of the amount of usable sand that they have offshore to shore up their coastlines.

And so far, as far as we know, very few countries, amongst which Pascal said Belgium, do know the amount of sand they have offshore.

And if we do not know of centuries offshore, we might come to some very awkward surprises when when, when times come to shore up our coast.

I think there are several countries around the world in, in different regions that already consider sand as a strategic resource.

That's definitely true for many of the countries around the North Sea, but also increasingly in in the Southeast Asian region.

We highly urge also countries along the West Coast of Africa to to take stock of, of of their sense reserves and the bigger also.

[Other language spoken]

I think when when we're talking about fleets, dredging fleets than the four countries that come to mind are are China followed by the Netherlands, followed by the United States, followed by Belgium.

I think if we look at the vessel, the flag of the vessels, these are the, the, the four big countries.

[Other language spoken]

So from what you said, the, the sand clock takes a different speed for different countries.

It's, it's becoming, I mean, some countries have less sand and less available sand, although most of them probably don't even know the sand that they have left.

[Other language spoken]

I believe Emma Farge from Reuters has another question.

[Other language spoken]

I just wanted to know exactly how the AI came into this.

You can see where the ships are from their signals emitted on AIS.

But how is artificial intelligence helping with this monitoring?

[Other language spoken]

So they we are talking about big data here.

If you're looking at AIS signal, they're emitted every few minutes worldwide by all the vessels, so being fishing vessels, cargo and all kinds of vessels and the one dredging sand.

So amongst these big data, we have to identify those that are dredging sand.

So if you have to do it manually from 2012 to now, and especially if you want to go real time, we need to be able to identify vessels in a very quick way.

So we have trained the AI with trained sample material to see how the boats are moving.

And now we can ask the artificial intelligence, please find the same types of movements everywhere in the planet.

And that is speeding the the capacity for us to process this big data.

And that will it's also enabling us to look at different ways that boats are moving.

So different types of activities when they are extracting sand, where they are offloading sand, where they nourishing the beach and so on and so forth.

So we can differentiate the types of activities in a much better way.

[Other language spoken]

So it's a very visual pattern that these vessels take on when they are dredging sand Maya plants has another question from the UN brief.

[Other language spoken]

Yes, the question is the follow up regarding how do you going to how are you going to ensure adoption of the platform?

I see the platform here now I have logged in and despite the beautiful the graphics and all, but I've always wonder we create all these platforms, are they being used and how are you going to ensure that they are being used?

Is there a plan in place to to make sure a communications plan that will help country members and all other NGOs and other interested in the issue be able to use it?

Because also it's only in English right now.

There is not another language.

It's not available in any other language.

Yes, thank you for the question.

The the question of languages, we can work on that.

So it's something we can easily translate.

Actually the the the platforms, the navigation tools already in the six UN languages.

I didn't show it, but the the text.

So you can swap languages for the navigation, but not yet for the the text that I put on the story map.

But this is something that could be done in the next few weeks.

So language is fine, but the question of the who's going to use it?

Well, first of all, it's to shed light on something that nobody knew.

Nobody knew how much sand was taken out of the oceans.

And that's the the answer that we want to.

The aim for us with this platform is to answer that question.

We are estimating now with our practise, but we are still not seeing everything.

[Other language spoken]

We are identifying sediments, but sediments are not sand.

They have been sand are sediment, but not all sediments are sand.

So we have sealed, we have other types of material with this sediment.

So we would like to get all the algorithms to improve them so that we can really know how much sand is being extracted.

We need to calibrate things.

There are still a lot of work to do now who's going to use that?

We, the day after tomorrow, I will be in a meeting consultation with member States and the global consultation on the resolution 12, which talks about the environmental aspect of minerals and and metals and sand is part of that discussion.

And we will give that tool to the countries if there's interest for them for monitoring who's extracting sand in their waters.

And I assume that a lot of countries are interested because they they need to know it's their resources, they need to manage it for the long term.

So I hope the countries will be the one that will be using this platform for monitoring their waters.

Now we also want to use that to discuss, to initiate discussion with the industry.

We've been discussing with them already before last May, we showed them the platform where we were and they were surprised that we could monitor all what they were doing.

And they today they are doing a press release as well, are showing that they want to publish a report on best practises.

So I think it's a step in the right direction.

We want to move further to standards and to rules and regulations.

In UNEP will canvas the United Nation Environmental Assembly next May and it's March 2024.

I hope there will be discussion there to move forward to better manage these cinnamon Rain resources so that we can have that on a long term protection agencies like WWFIUCN are also very interested in this question of sand.

[Other language spoken]

So I hope also those NGOs and governmental agencies like IUCN will be using these for monitoring their protected areas and and the impact on biodiversity, for example, that once you have a platform like that, scientists could also use this.

For example, we could work with our partners Global Fishing Watch to see if where we've been extracting sand, there's a decrease in fishing practises.

For example, we could look at climates impact on if sediments being disturbed where we extracting sand, it might release CO2.

So there are different things we can do with this platform on top of monitoring the, the extraction of sand.

I, I believe journalists could also use this platform when they write their stories.

We've been referring to the, the impact of, of the platform, the potential impact.

And I wanted to, I wanted you to elaborate a bit more on something you have just mentioned.

You mentioned how the industry, the dredging industry has released the best practises document today.

I wanted to ask you, is this in any way or do you think it is in any way linked to the work that you were doing and to the platform itself?

[Other language spoken]

Is there, do you have an impact in other words, in what the industry is, is doing?

Thank you, Alejandro.

I think, I think we, we certainly have and, and, and not just with the platform, but also with our 2022 sentence sustainability report, which was widely picked up both by the industry, as by many of the portal authorities and, and governments.

So in that sense, their, their, their press release is, is a response to our 2022 report.

And we therefore very, very much welcome the fact that they, they are willing to share their best practises in, in, in a report.

And I think this, I mean this is for us the dream is having at one hand a platform where we can see how vessels are judging around the world.

And now we have a document from the industry which outlines how they see themselves, that best practises are executed.

So we can, we can really now compare best practise with what we see on the platform.

And, and that opens and that discussion with countries on, OK, if these are the best practises for the industry and we see on the platform that in your country, in your specific country, these best practises are not followed.

How can we create a policy framework together that that would enable those best, best practises to be used in that country too?

Or even could the ambition of those best practises be increased?

Now I'm going to give the floor again to Antonio Brotto from FS Spanish News Agency.

[Other language spoken]

Alejandro, can you please repeat the countries whose flats are more present in the dredging vessels?

And I also have a question regarding the the activities that this platform has identified also like building artificial islands or claiming territory for for seaports.

My question is, are these activities legal according to international?

No, sorry, the sun broke up.

You, you were asking if these activities were legal and then it broke up.

Yes, if they if they are legal according to international law and if they are not, could this platform have political applications?

[Other language spoken]

So the international waters are very not very well defended so that we are moving to better in protection of the **** seas.

But that's an issue in international waters.

There are very limited rules that are applies in for that, but there are things where we can do.

It is illegal to create artificial land and to claim it in international waters.

So that's and that has been done so in this case, but we cannot use our platform because people who are doing illegal things, they switch off the AIS.

So you won't be able to see that.

However, you can see that with remote sensing, so satellite imagery.

We see artificial islands being created in in international waters and that could be used in, in court, international courts for pleas between countries.

So our platforms will work only if the AIS is switched on and it's more for estimating the volumes and where it's been dredged for monitoring illegal activities.

We need to find other tools.

As I said, also the fisherman when they go in no take area, they switch off the AIS signal, which is illegal to do, but they do.

Now there are we can, you know, boats that are switching off their AIS, we can find their names and we can give that to insurance company for example, that and say, well, do you really want to ensure people who are doing bad practises and maybe they lose their insurance?

And that's probably the quickest way to get rid of those kind of activities.

If if you regularly switch off your AIS, there must be an issue with that.

But indeed our platform, if you switch off the AIS, we cannot monitor what they are doing.

So we will need to switch to remote sensing satellite sensors, which we can actually that's maybe the next development.

But there it depends if there is a request from member states to do this kind of monitoring or not.

For the time being your mandate was to established.

What was the legal size of it?

What was legally extracted from the ocean?

Maybe you want add something on?

[Other language spoken]

It seems we don't have any more questions online.

I don't know if anyone else would like to to ask.

[Other language spoken]

It's been a long press conference.

Thank you very much to all of you, to those of you here physically and those of you online.

Congratulations to the Uni Grid team.

You've already produced 2 reports so far, 3/3 plus you are now launching this new platform.

So you've done a lot of work already and and yet it seems there's so much to do that it's just the beginning.

Just another grain, a very important one, but another grain of sand in this fight to protect our ecosystems and a very important resource.

We're going to bring this press conference to an end, but the sand clock keeps ticking.

Thank you very much.

[Other language spoken]

UNEP - Press Conference: Marine Sand Watch Launch - 05 September2023