Mar 21, 2011

Man Made Islands?


What's next for this world if sea levels continue to rise and beach front upon beach front continues to disappear? The concept of land reclamation could aid in this particular issue. Take for example the man made Palm Islands. The Palm Islands are located off the coast of the United Arab Emirates in the Persian Gulf and will add 520 kilometres of beaches to the city of Dubai. They were created by Dutch land reclamation specialists Jan De Nul and Van Oord. The Dutch are considered to be ingenious when it comes to preventative measures concerning the impacts of rising sea levels. The Netherlands have been battling their natural enemy, water, for years and have become experts in this area over time. Because of their constant quest for dry feet, this has allowed them to remain at the forefront of water preventative initiatives and technology. These initiatives have enabled the Dutch the ability to transfer their expertise and to provide a framework to regions in need. Some examples include: Dubai's Palm Island, New Orleans' upgraded dykes and Australia's water recycling plants. Currently, Dutch companies are focusing efforts on projects on delta areas in five countries: Mozambique, Egypt, Indonesia, Bangladesh and Vietnam. This accumulated knowledge, technology and expertise of the Dutch in the next century are going to be increasingly valuable. Since the world is already changing at such an accelerated pace, I wonder if the future of development is going to be aimed at reconciling the loss of land and communities in the form of creating entirely new land? Is the aim going to be at constructing new land so that those communities removed from flooded regions will have a place to live instead of relocating them to a different region? If relocation is the goal then the initiatives to come are going to increase crowding among non-crowded regions and slowly these areas will become more and more concentrated until the carrying capacity is far beyond its limit. In this case, the region will be unable to provide sufficient resources to the people within it and will be unable to ensure the survival of anyone.  At this point, the creation of new islands seems to be more effective in ensuring the survival of human kind and the rate in which our population is growing than the tactic of relocation.


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