Translated material
Tulip in the ocean
The Dutch are starting to drain the North Sea again
The Netherlands is planning to create a giant "geographical monument" to its national flower. The country is actively discussing a proposal to wash an artificial tulip-shaped island in the North Sea near the Dutch coast. This 10,000-hectare island could be used for a variety of purposes, but most likely residential buildings will be built on it. In addition, as Reuters reports, the “tulip” will somehow protect the Netherlands from the onslaught of the sea, which constantly threatens to flood the country.The Dutch have been fighting the North Sea for centuries. Since the 14th century, the Netherlands has gradually reclaimed its land from the salt water, building protective dams and draining the lowlands. Now a significant part of the kingdom's territory lies below sea level, but people are not too worried about this. Local authorities constantly monitor the condition of the dams that fence off the country from the sea.
But now the fight with the North Sea is almost over. The last major drainage project was Project Delta, which ran from 1950 to 1997. As a result, the southwest of the country was reliably protected from flooding. Now the Netherlands seems to have decided to take up the construction of the islands. The motivation remains the same: the country desperately lacks free land - on an area of 41.5 thousand square meters. km live 16.5 million people. The population density in the kingdom is one of the highest in the Old World. “In the Netherlands, people live on each other’s heads,” Reuters quotes Christian Democrat Joop Atsma, who actively advocates the construction of new artificial islands.
Of course, the Dutch are quite capable of handling such an ambitious project. They have plenty of experience - after all, specialists from this country not only drained their own territories, but also created artificial land in other countries. Most likely there will be money for the “sea tulip”. The fact is that the cost of land in the Netherlands is very high, and therefore 10 thousand new hectares, according to Joop Atsma, will cost about 10 billion euros. And in this case, the costs of reclamation of the island will be reimbursed.
The only opponents of the expansion of the territory of the Netherlands remain activists of environmental movements. In their opinion, the “tulip” island could damage the fragile and vulnerable marine ecosystem, interfere with the migration of migratory birds and impede navigation. Lisa van der Veen of the North Sea Trust said it would make more sense to strengthen existing defenses rather than build a new island.
No matter how indignant environmentalists may be, they will have to admit: in recent decades, artificial islands have appeared more and more often, especially where people do not have enough “natural” land. In the end, now that the technology for pouring artificial earth has already been well developed, creating new islands requires only solid funding. For example, in populous Hong Kong, Macau and Singapore, where millions of people huddle in a tiny territory, almost entire archipelagos are being built. So, in order to build a new airport for international flights in Hong Kong, in the 90s of the last century, a giant runway had to be built on the site of two small real islands. In Japan, in the same way, territories were taken away from the Pacific Ocean for the construction of Kobe and Chubu airports. There is no shortage of territories in Arab oil-producing countries, but here artificial islands are built to attract tourists. Russia also could not escape this fashion. The first artificial island (more precisely, a small archipelago), similar in shape to the outlines of Russia, should appear off the Sochi coast in ten years.