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Event

'The World in a Grain: Story of the Most Important and Overlooked Commodity in the World'

Event Date:

September 6, 2018 | 10:00 AM EDT

ADDRESS:

Wilson Center
1300 Pennsylvania, Avenue NW

Washington, DC 20004

Participant:
Land reclamation works are on-going at this area of Tuas, Singapore's westernmost area where a new massive container port—the world's largest in the next 30 years—is being built. The port authority is using materials dredged from the nearby seabed and earth excavated from tunneling work on a subway line to cut use of sand by about 70 per cent in the building of this pier—which will be one of four eventually. Singapore has been short of sand for its sizeable and continual land reclamation and construction…
English

Project

The Deadly Global War for Sand

Concrete. Glass. Silicon. Our civilization is built on the most important yet most overlooked...

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Land reclamation works are on-going at this area of Tuas, Singapore's westernmost area where a new massive container port—the world's largest in the next 30 years—is being built. The port authority is using materials dredged from the nearby seabed and earth excavated from tunneling work on a subway line to cut use of sand by about 70 per cent in the building of this pier—which will be one of four eventually. Singapore has been short of sand for its sizeable and continual land reclamation and construction…
Land reclamation works are on-going at this area of Tuas, Singapore's westernmost area where a new massive container port—the world's largest in the next 30 years—is being built. The port authority is using materials dredged from the nearby seabed and earth excavated from tunneling work on a subway line to cut use of sand by about 70 per cent in the building of this pier—which will be one of four eventually. Singapore has been short of sand for its sizeable and continual land reclamation and construction work, having bought sand from its neighboring Southeast Asian countries for decades. Image by Sim Chi Yin. Singapore, 2017.

The Wilson Center China Environment Forum (CEF) and Environmental Change and Security Program (ECSP) host Pulitzer Center grantee Vince Beiser on Thursday, September 6, 2018, to discuss his recent book, The World in a Grain: The Story of Sand and How It Transformed Civilization, and highlight China's central role in the sand story.

One of the world's most used natural resource is sand, and it's running out. China is the home to the world's largest sand mine and world's top producer and consumer of construction sand. 

Beiser culminated years of reporting on the diminishing natural resource into his book, which included work from his Pulitzer Center-supported project "The Deadly Global War for Sand."

Beiser is set to discuss the importance of this natural resource, and the impact it makes not only to the enviroment but to the people who extract it, use it and sell it.

Beiser is an award-winning journalist based in Los Angeles. He has exposed conditions in California's harshest prisons, trained with troops bound for Iraq, ridden with first responders to disasters in Haiti and Nepal, and hunted down other stories from around the world for publications including Wired, The Los Angeles Times Magazine, Harper's, The Atlantic, The Village Voice, The New Republic, The Nation, Mother Jones, Playboy, Rolling Stone and The New York Times.

CEF brings together US, Chinese and other environmetal policy experts to address environmental, and sustainable development issues in China. ECSP explores the interconnection between population, natural resource management, human development and international security and their links to conflict, human insecurity and foreign policy. ECSP and CEF are both a part of the Global Sustainability and Resilience Program at the Wilson Center.

Space is limited for this event—remember to reserve your seat today!

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