As sea levels rise, is land reclamation still a good idea?

As sea levels rise, is land reclamation still a good idea?

Subject: Environment

Section: Climate Change

Context: With coastal areas around the world threatened by rising sea levels and increasingly destructive storms, should we still be creating new land in our oceans?

Concept:

What is Land Reclamation?

• Land reclamation is the process of creating new land from the sea.
• The simplest method of land reclamation involves simply filling the area with large amounts of heavy rock and/or cement, then filling with clay and soil until the desired height is reached.
• Draining of submerged wetlands is often used to reclaim land for agricultural use.
• The first major land reclamations were carried out in the 1970s, when the Port of Rotterdam in the Netherlands was extended.

Need for Land Reclamation:

• As climate change contributes to rising sea levels, and the population continues to increase, it looks likely that land reclamation will be used more often as a way to get the land people need to live
• Demand for land has increased massively of rising populations, globalization, and climate change
• Landscape reclamation is being employed in various regions of the world to remedy contaminated and ruined areas like the deserted coal mining, crude oil exploration, conversion of wasteland, controlling gully and soil erosion and abandoned aquaculture etc
• Nearly 90% of that land was created in East Asia, most often to make way for industry and port facilities catering to the globalized economy

Impact of land reclamation

• Reclamation could cause permanent damage to maritime organisms and wildlife and their migration to uninfluenced areas lead to economic and medicinal habitat losses and other plant species.
• Changes in the river channel through channeling or dredging impact the water system by extending river length and river width that influences river flow dynamics and hydrology
• Significant resources are needed for maintaining the drainage system. This makes it not just ecologically but also economically impossible to sustain certain drained areas
• Vegetation clearance loosens the earth and makes it susceptible to erosion.