There is an old saying in the Netherlands: “God made the world, but the Dutch made the Netherlands.” And while this may sound arrogant, there is actually a great deal of truth to it. For centuries, the Dutch have been reclaiming land from the ocean — so much so, that the Netherlands of today was approximately 60% underwater 1000 years ago.
In this tradition of reclaiming land to make room for an expanding population, the Dutch parliament has approved a plan to construct a tulip-shaped Island off the coast of the country that will be larger than 247,000 acres in size.
Other countries have already instigated such ambitious “land reclaiming” programs, with the most notable example being the island known as “The Palm” off the coast of Dubai. But while The Palm is a playground for the world’s wealthiest jet-setters (the rich of the rich), The Tulip will be used for a much more practical purpose — making room for the Netherlands’ increasing population and expanding agricultural development.
Of course, a project of this size requires the displacement of hundreds of millions of meters of sand and ocean, prompting environmentalist to raise concerns about the long-term ecological effects of tampering with Mother Nature in this way. And in fact, there is no way to be sure that altering the coastline of the Netherlands in this way would not have some sort of detrimental effect on environment.
But the Dutch have a long history of filling in bays and inlets to reclaim land. The country’s famous network of canals and dikes are a magnificent example of natural engineering, and has proven to be (mostly) environmentally friendly, or at least of minimal impact.
But the new Tulip project is on a far greater scale than anything seen before, even in the Netherlands. Experts predict the proposed island project could take the better part of a decade to complete, and while the total cost of the project has not been revealed, it will clearly be in the billions of dollars.
Critics say that creating the island is a colossal waste of money, and that the Netherlands government would be far better off investing in vertical farming and other progressive agricultural methods than reclaiming such a huge amount of land from the sea.
Besides the potential waste of money, ecologists worry that situating the huge tulip shaped island directly off the coast of the Netherlands will have a tremendous, and negative, impact on the native sea life and coral of the region.
Because a land reclamation project of this magnitude has not been attempted before, the best experts can do is make educated guesses about the effects of creating the island. We will likely only know the true impact of the project many years after it is completed.
Related Business Directory Categories:
