Making new land
But what impact are these mammoth projects having on the biodiversity
and stability of these coastlines? Mark Rowe investigates
King Canute, famously, wasn’t seeking to keep the tide at bay but merely to demonstrate that it was impossible for man to do such a thing. More recently, engineers, sometimes funded by rulers with limitless pockets and equally unrestricted ambition, have sought to prove the old Danish king of England wrong.
Across the world, vast marine construction projects have reclaimed land from the sea, sometimes inspired by the need for more living space in crowded countries or to grow crops; at others, it seems, simply to satisfy the vast egos of well-heeled rulers keen to accommodate luxury hotels and golf courses. The results are often functional but are just as likely to be little more than dramatic vanity projects. The roles have been reversed: in many parts of the world, coastal erosion is a genuine concern; this, however, would appear to be a case of humanity biting back, eating into the sea.
Transforming Dubai
The first of Dubai’s islands, the Palm Jumeirah, sucked up five million cubic metres of rock and 91 million cubic metres of sand. This has been followed by the World – 300 islands in eight archipelagos that form the shape of the countries of the globe – which has been bedevilled by delays, with just one island (Greenland) inhabited. Dubai’s historical coastline stretched for just 65 kilometres from Sharjah to Abu Dhabi; if you include the coastline of its new and planned islands, then this extends to an extraordinary 1,000 kilometres.
These projects may be driven by vanity, but there is also an underlying element of hard economics. ‘There’s a very strong economic driver. A waterfront apartment in Saudi Arabia will be worth ten times as much as one that is a block behind it,’ says Professor Chris Fleming, a retired consultant for Halcrow and visiting professor at the University of Plymouth.
‘I often look at the schemes in the Gulf and they seem reminiscent of the Victorian age, when we rolled out railways across the country and everything seemed possible,’ says Dominic Reeve, professor of coastal dynamics at the University of Plymouth. Better technical knowledge, ever more powerful dredgers, and satellites that provide real-time and historical data of weather and wave patterns have all made land reclamation more feasible. ‘Such schemes can be completed in much more realistic timeframes. Near-shore reclamation could have been done in earlier times, but would have taken much longer. The scale of the machines means more schemes are viable.’
Yet such projects are rarely straightforward, and often come with a sizeable environmental price tag attached. They involve sea-bed dredging on a phenomenal scale, the reclamation of wetlands, deforestation and the relocation of vast amounts of sand, all of which causes significant disturbance to marine and other habitats.
Island expansion
Singapore has fuelled its great leap forward from post-war colonial outpost to 21st-century island city-state off the back of reclaimed land, and major projects there have included Marine Parade in the 1970s for new housing, and Changi airport.
Over the past 30 years, Singapore has expanded from 580 to 680 square kilometres. Today, in Chinatown, you’ll find Telok Ayer Street – in Malay, the name means ‘watery bay’ – which was originally built on the shoreline, with a temple to the sea goddess Ma Zu, who drew genuflecting sailors in search of safe passage. It now stands nearly 500 metres inland. By 2030, another 50 square kilometres is set to be added, by which time Singapore will have expanded by a quarter from its original size, making it roughly the same size as New York City.
Land reclamation projects, Reeve suggests, are like many great Victorian inventions: they can make you gasp in wonder while simultaneously feeling unsettled about the wider impacts. ‘Some of these projects really are quite awe-inspiring,’ says Fleming. ‘You look at the engineering and thought that goes behind them – you’re not just throwing a lump of soil at something and making it into a shape. Some of them are designed to be viewed from the air – they can be great spectacles.’
But according to critics of these projects, we’re quite right to feel unsettled by them. In particular, there are concerns about their potentially widespread environmental impacts.Many of Singapore’s original 60 offshore islands and reefs have been reclaimed, and coastal ecosystems reduced dramatically. Since 1986, most coral reefs in Singapore have lost up to 65 per cent of their live coral cover. Mangrove forest cover has been reduced from an estimated 13 per cent of the total land area in the 1820s to only 0.5 per cent today.
Fleming, who acknowledges that environmental damage does take place, was involved in mediating a dispute at the International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea between Malaysia and Singapore in 2003. Malaysia complained that Singapore’s land reclamation was polluting and disturbing the marine environment, disrupting shipping and reducing the catch for fishermen in the Straits of Johor, which separate the two countries. ‘If you’re building land-reclamation schemes on such a size, then you can have a significant impact on waves and tides. In such cases, you’re dredging every square inch of the seabed that is available,’ he says.
Methods of containing such sediment include giant ‘submerged curtains’, although the cost of these and differing local environmental laws means that such methods aren’t always applied. ‘A major issue is that you are redistributing an awful lot of sediment,’ says Reeve. ‘Inevitably, the finer bits are going to be carried further away from the site by waves and tides. You’re not just dealing with biological impacts, you may be altering tidal flows, water levels and water quality.’
Strictly for the birds
Conservationists are increasingly anxious about the impact of land reclamation projects on a variety of natural phenomena, with bird migrations being of particular concern. Specialist birds reliant on intertidal mudflats to support their long-distance migrations along the eastern Asian flyway have been particularly affected, with up to 40 species entirely reliant on the mudflats, including the spoonbill sandpiper, spotted greenshank, great knot and far-eastern curlew, all of which are now on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of critically endangered species.
‘One of the main environmental problems in Asia has been the very rapid reclamation of intertidal habitats and mudflats,’ says Mike Crosby, senior conservation officer at Birdlife International. ‘Elsewhere in the world, this has tended to happen at a relatively slow, steady rate, so habitats can be replaced. But it’s happening so rapidly in Asia that there’s no opportunity for birds to adapt. There’s a net loss of habitat taking place.’
The bar-tailed godwit – which makes the longest known non-stop flight of any bird, and sometimes stops over in South Korea during its migration between New Zealand and its breeding ground in the Arctic – uses up all of its fat reserves during its migrations. ‘Unless they find rich tidal flats, they’re unlikely to survive,’ says Crosby. ‘These are species-threatening activities, enough to make the difference between surviving and not surviving.’
Crosby points to even larger reclamation schemes across Asia and warns that ‘there’s a challenge to everyone to make the case for environmental protection. There are legal checks and balances and environmental impact assessments, but they are not always as rigorous as you would want. It’s important to appreciate that these are not wastelands that are being reclaimed. A lot of intertidal habitats provide coastal protection against flooding and are spawning grounds for fish.’
The IUCN has also documented the impact on rare marine species, such as the critically endangered Indo-Pacific humpback dolphin, which is found in the eastern Taiwan Strait. Barely 100 individuals have been counted, living almost exclusively along a small stretch of coastal water off western Taiwan. ‘Given the number of development projects that are under way or proposed, and the fact that only minimal
or no conservation measures are in place to reduce the probable impacts of the various threats – including land reclamation – a continuing decline in the subpopulation is projected,’ says an IUCN spokesman. ‘Besides the physical removal of habitat, associated activities, such as pile-driving, can cause disturbance or even direct harm to the dolphins.’
Biodiversity benefits
Yet land reclamation can also benefit wildlife and anticipate changes in climate and habitat, according to Fleming. ‘Environmentalists always ask the question of how much damage a project will cause and what measures are in place to retain the status quo, or create equivalent habitat,’ he says. ‘A big failing of that lobby is that it never looks at how the environment is evolving. We know climate change is happening and sea levels are rising, but very rarely do people say that while the environment may change, the project may result in greater biodiversity.’
One example of reclamation benefiting wildlife can be found at Oostvaardersplassen, a huge Dutch polder (an area of low-lying reclaimed land enclosed by dykes) constructed in 1968 and covering 15,000 hectares. Now home to konik horses and Heck cattle, the land now resembles that existed in the region before human disturbance, according to the IUCN. ‘The Netherlands has a history of reclamation,’ says Henk Simons, chief biodiversity expert for the IUCN’s Netherlands committee. ‘The plan was to build agricultural land at Oostvaardersplassen, but it has actually led to new nature with high biodiversity – it’s the area where the sea eagle has been reintroduced to the Netherlands.’
The Dutch government is also supporting plans to reclaim land and build an industrial area near Rotterdam, and the IUCN is satisfied that legal requirements to match any wildlife loss with an equivalent gain elsewhere will be met. ‘Land reclamation – particularly if it’s well planned – can have a positive impact on nature,’ says Simons. ‘It’s not a one-sided issue; it depends on how it’s planned. ‘The other side of the coin is what happens when it isn’t well planned – and there are many places in the world where that is the case. Tidal areas are ecologically very dynamic and vulnerable. You can easily destroy biodiversity.’
Saemangeum land reclamation, South Korea
The conversion of the natural wetlands of Saemangeum on South Korea’s southwest coast into an artificial landscape – a project that continues today – represents one of the most catastrophic examples of how land reclamation can affect wildlife.
The Saemangeum estuarine system was among the most important and productive intertidal wetlands in East Asia. According to Birds Korea, it supported 500,000 waders and 28 waterbird species in internationally important concentrations, along with the livelihoods of 20,000 people.
The industrialised vision for Saemangeum includes a city, a ring road and a new airport. The seawall was closed in 2006, prompting repeated mass die-offs of benthic life (which the birds eat) as developers flooded, then drained, then reflooded much of the 40,100-hectare area.
Numbers of great knot have fallen there and at two adjacent wetlands by 77 per cent. The fortunes of the spoon-billed sandpiper have similarly dipped since the expansion. Birds Korea believes that the latter bird – whose numbers at Saemangeum have dropped from 250 in 1999 to just four last year – will disappear locally within another year or two.
The government says that the natural intertidal wetland will be dammed and dyked to create artificial wetlands, but according to Nial Moores, director of Birds Korea, these attempts amount to little more than greenwashing. ‘There is no evidence to suggest that, as a nation, South Korea has either the experience or the mechanisms to create, restore or even maintain viable wetland wildlife habitat,’ he says.
Moores believes that planned dredging and damming of South Korea’s major rivers and tidal power plants won’t simply increase pressure on wildlife, but trigger a major ‘ecological regime shift’ from fisheries to algal blooms.
July 2011
King Canute, famously, wasn’t seeking to keep the tide at bay but merely to demonstrate that it was impossible for man to do such a thing. More recently, engineers, sometimes funded by rulers with limitless pockets and equally unrestricted ambition, have sought to prove the old Danish king of England wrong.
Across the world, vast marine construction projects have reclaimed land from the sea, sometimes inspired by the need for more living space in crowded countries or to grow crops; at others, it seems, simply to satisfy the vast egos of well-heeled rulers keen to accommodate luxury hotels and golf courses. The results are often functional but are just as likely to be little more than dramatic vanity projects. The roles have been reversed: in many parts of the world, coastal erosion is a genuine concern; this, however, would appear to be a case of humanity biting back, eating into the sea.
Transforming Dubai
The first of Dubai’s islands, the Palm Jumeirah, sucked up five million cubic metres of rock and 91 million cubic metres of sand. This has been followed by the World – 300 islands in eight archipelagos that form the shape of the countries of the globe – which has been bedevilled by delays, with just one island (Greenland) inhabited. Dubai’s historical coastline stretched for just 65 kilometres from Sharjah to Abu Dhabi; if you include the coastline of its new and planned islands, then this extends to an extraordinary 1,000 kilometres.
These projects may be driven by vanity, but there is also an underlying element of hard economics. ‘There’s a very strong economic driver. A waterfront apartment in Saudi Arabia will be worth ten times as much as one that is a block behind it,’ says Professor Chris Fleming, a retired consultant for Halcrow and visiting professor at the University of Plymouth.
‘I often look at the schemes in the Gulf and they seem reminiscent of the Victorian age, when we rolled out railways across the country and everything seemed possible,’ says Dominic Reeve, professor of coastal dynamics at the University of Plymouth. Better technical knowledge, ever more powerful dredgers, and satellites that provide real-time and historical data of weather and wave patterns have all made land reclamation more feasible. ‘Such schemes can be completed in much more realistic timeframes. Near-shore reclamation could have been done in earlier times, but would have taken much longer. The scale of the machines means more schemes are viable.’
Yet such projects are rarely straightforward, and often come with a sizeable environmental price tag attached. They involve sea-bed dredging on a phenomenal scale, the reclamation of wetlands, deforestation and the relocation of vast amounts of sand, all of which causes significant disturbance to marine and other habitats.
Island expansion
Singapore has fuelled its great leap forward from post-war colonial outpost to 21st-century island city-state off the back of reclaimed land, and major projects there have included Marine Parade in the 1970s for new housing, and Changi airport.
Over the past 30 years, Singapore has expanded from 580 to 680 square kilometres. Today, in Chinatown, you’ll find Telok Ayer Street – in Malay, the name means ‘watery bay’ – which was originally built on the shoreline, with a temple to the sea goddess Ma Zu, who drew genuflecting sailors in search of safe passage. It now stands nearly 500 metres inland. By 2030, another 50 square kilometres is set to be added, by which time Singapore will have expanded by a quarter from its original size, making it roughly the same size as New York City.
Land reclamation projects, Reeve suggests, are like many great Victorian inventions: they can make you gasp in wonder while simultaneously feeling unsettled about the wider impacts. ‘Some of these projects really are quite awe-inspiring,’ says Fleming. ‘You look at the engineering and thought that goes behind them – you’re not just throwing a lump of soil at something and making it into a shape. Some of them are designed to be viewed from the air – they can be great spectacles.’
But according to critics of these projects, we’re quite right to feel unsettled by them. In particular, there are concerns about their potentially widespread environmental impacts.Many of Singapore’s original 60 offshore islands and reefs have been reclaimed, and coastal ecosystems reduced dramatically. Since 1986, most coral reefs in Singapore have lost up to 65 per cent of their live coral cover. Mangrove forest cover has been reduced from an estimated 13 per cent of the total land area in the 1820s to only 0.5 per cent today.
Fleming, who acknowledges that environmental damage does take place, was involved in mediating a dispute at the International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea between Malaysia and Singapore in 2003. Malaysia complained that Singapore’s land reclamation was polluting and disturbing the marine environment, disrupting shipping and reducing the catch for fishermen in the Straits of Johor, which separate the two countries. ‘If you’re building land-reclamation schemes on such a size, then you can have a significant impact on waves and tides. In such cases, you’re dredging every square inch of the seabed that is available,’ he says.
Methods of containing such sediment include giant ‘submerged curtains’, although the cost of these and differing local environmental laws means that such methods aren’t always applied. ‘A major issue is that you are redistributing an awful lot of sediment,’ says Reeve. ‘Inevitably, the finer bits are going to be carried further away from the site by waves and tides. You’re not just dealing with biological impacts, you may be altering tidal flows, water levels and water quality.’
Strictly for the birds
Conservationists are increasingly anxious about the impact of land reclamation projects on a variety of natural phenomena, with bird migrations being of particular concern. Specialist birds reliant on intertidal mudflats to support their long-distance migrations along the eastern Asian flyway have been particularly affected, with up to 40 species entirely reliant on the mudflats, including the spoonbill sandpiper, spotted greenshank, great knot and far-eastern curlew, all of which are now on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of critically endangered species.
‘One of the main environmental problems in Asia has been the very rapid reclamation of intertidal habitats and mudflats,’ says Mike Crosby, senior conservation officer at Birdlife International. ‘Elsewhere in the world, this has tended to happen at a relatively slow, steady rate, so habitats can be replaced. But it’s happening so rapidly in Asia that there’s no opportunity for birds to adapt. There’s a net loss of habitat taking place.’
The bar-tailed godwit – which makes the longest known non-stop flight of any bird, and sometimes stops over in South Korea during its migration between New Zealand and its breeding ground in the Arctic – uses up all of its fat reserves during its migrations. ‘Unless they find rich tidal flats, they’re unlikely to survive,’ says Crosby. ‘These are species-threatening activities, enough to make the difference between surviving and not surviving.’
Crosby points to even larger reclamation schemes across Asia and warns that ‘there’s a challenge to everyone to make the case for environmental protection. There are legal checks and balances and environmental impact assessments, but they are not always as rigorous as you would want. It’s important to appreciate that these are not wastelands that are being reclaimed. A lot of intertidal habitats provide coastal protection against flooding and are spawning grounds for fish.’
The IUCN has also documented the impact on rare marine species, such as the critically endangered Indo-Pacific humpback dolphin, which is found in the eastern Taiwan Strait. Barely 100 individuals have been counted, living almost exclusively along a small stretch of coastal water off western Taiwan. ‘Given the number of development projects that are under way or proposed, and the fact that only minimal
or no conservation measures are in place to reduce the probable impacts of the various threats – including land reclamation – a continuing decline in the subpopulation is projected,’ says an IUCN spokesman. ‘Besides the physical removal of habitat, associated activities, such as pile-driving, can cause disturbance or even direct harm to the dolphins.’
Biodiversity benefits
Yet land reclamation can also benefit wildlife and anticipate changes in climate and habitat, according to Fleming. ‘Environmentalists always ask the question of how much damage a project will cause and what measures are in place to retain the status quo, or create equivalent habitat,’ he says. ‘A big failing of that lobby is that it never looks at how the environment is evolving. We know climate change is happening and sea levels are rising, but very rarely do people say that while the environment may change, the project may result in greater biodiversity.’
One example of reclamation benefiting wildlife can be found at Oostvaardersplassen, a huge Dutch polder (an area of low-lying reclaimed land enclosed by dykes) constructed in 1968 and covering 15,000 hectares. Now home to konik horses and Heck cattle, the land now resembles that existed in the region before human disturbance, according to the IUCN. ‘The Netherlands has a history of reclamation,’ says Henk Simons, chief biodiversity expert for the IUCN’s Netherlands committee. ‘The plan was to build agricultural land at Oostvaardersplassen, but it has actually led to new nature with high biodiversity – it’s the area where the sea eagle has been reintroduced to the Netherlands.’
The Dutch government is also supporting plans to reclaim land and build an industrial area near Rotterdam, and the IUCN is satisfied that legal requirements to match any wildlife loss with an equivalent gain elsewhere will be met. ‘Land reclamation – particularly if it’s well planned – can have a positive impact on nature,’ says Simons. ‘It’s not a one-sided issue; it depends on how it’s planned. ‘The other side of the coin is what happens when it isn’t well planned – and there are many places in the world where that is the case. Tidal areas are ecologically very dynamic and vulnerable. You can easily destroy biodiversity.’
Saemangeum land reclamation, South Korea
The conversion of the natural wetlands of Saemangeum on South Korea’s southwest coast into an artificial landscape – a project that continues today – represents one of the most catastrophic examples of how land reclamation can affect wildlife.
The Saemangeum estuarine system was among the most important and productive intertidal wetlands in East Asia. According to Birds Korea, it supported 500,000 waders and 28 waterbird species in internationally important concentrations, along with the livelihoods of 20,000 people.
The industrialised vision for Saemangeum includes a city, a ring road and a new airport. The seawall was closed in 2006, prompting repeated mass die-offs of benthic life (which the birds eat) as developers flooded, then drained, then reflooded much of the 40,100-hectare area.
Numbers of great knot have fallen there and at two adjacent wetlands by 77 per cent. The fortunes of the spoon-billed sandpiper have similarly dipped since the expansion. Birds Korea believes that the latter bird – whose numbers at Saemangeum have dropped from 250 in 1999 to just four last year – will disappear locally within another year or two.
The government says that the natural intertidal wetland will be dammed and dyked to create artificial wetlands, but according to Nial Moores, director of Birds Korea, these attempts amount to little more than greenwashing. ‘There is no evidence to suggest that, as a nation, South Korea has either the experience or the mechanisms to create, restore or even maintain viable wetland wildlife habitat,’ he says.
Moores believes that planned dredging and damming of South Korea’s major rivers and tidal power plants won’t simply increase pressure on wildlife, but trigger a major ‘ecological regime shift’ from fisheries to algal blooms.
July 2011
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