Government still determined to destroy native woodland

 The Victorian Government is still keen to go ahead with the wholesale destruction of native vegetation and wildlife on the eastern side of Westernport despite calls from the United Nations to

limit the extent of sand extraction.

The United Nations Environment Programme has called for urgent action to avert a "sand crisis," as global demand has surged to 50 billion tonnes a year amid population growth and urbanisation.

In a report released on Tuesday, the U.N said “Sand is the most exploited natural resource in the world after water, but its use is largely ungoverned, meaning we are consuming it faster than it can be replaced by geological processes that take hundreds of thousands of years,” It said “the needs and expectations of our societies cannot be met without improved governance of sand resources, "and also called for a reduction in demand by reusing sand from recycled materials like concrete and mining tailings instead of using naturally occurring sand. So far, the Government and bureaucrats seem to have ignored details in the environmental report on Westernport prepared by Professor Maurice Shapiro in the 1970’’s and the Regional Sand Extraction Strategy Lang Lang to Grantville in 1996.

Sheila Aggarwal-Khan, director of the Economy Division of UNEP said, "If we act now, it is still possible to avoid a sand crisis."

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