Although land reclamation literally means the reclaiming of land from water, in a broad sense it has a lot of scopes. This is a scientific way to reclaim the sea, river, canal, or any submerged land and make it suitable for human use, especially for agriculture. But what is it, why is it done, what is the need for it, what is the plan to recover the submerged land of our country? Today, we will discuss all this.
What is submerged-land reclamation?
This is basically a special kind of scientific process. In this process, a shallow part of land is recovered from any submerged area and to be made usable. Basically irrigation or drainage methods are used in this process, where landfill is also used in many cases. Not only due to natural causes, land can be submerged due to calamity, or man-made causes also and is made useful through this method.
Why is land reclamation done?
More than half of the land on earth is submerged underwater. As the number of people is increasing day by day, so is our grasp of science and technology. People are racing towards new ways to meet the demand for additional needs. The soil in a shallow part of a river, canal, or sea is fertile and the technical ability to rescue it from the water and use it for one’s own purposes has become easy. So things like land reclamation are happening regularly.
How is this huge task accomplished?
There are two basic ideas to pull off this task. One is to irrigate the water from the inside with a dam around it. The other is to raise the height of reclaimed land to the normal level by filling the land in with stones, cement, and clay. The second method is a more effective and popular one. To put it simply, this is the creation of new land.
Some successful examples
The method of reclaiming land is not old. In 1970 Nederlands was the first to carry out land reclamation work on a large scale during the expansion of one of their ports. Then in 1975 Singapore undertook and completed a huge land reclamation project. They reclaimed 4 crore cubic meters of land from the sea to expand the Changi Airport in the western part of the country. In addition, Hong Kong, Japan, China, United Arab Emirates, and other countries have a record of making submerged land suitable.
Bangladesh’s position on the recovery of submerged land
As the height of average sea level rises, Bangladesh is one of the countries most at risk in the world. Besides this, approximately 20,000 acres of land has been lost due to river erosion or other natural calamities until now. So in this case, the reclamation of submerged land can be a good option. Bangladesh has taken on many projects in the past and has plans to take more in the future. According to Banglapedia, Meghna River Dam 1 and Meghna River Dam 2 are two such projects. The first large tract of land was reclaimed by building a dam in the Meghna river flowing between Noakhali and Ramgati. Then it extended to the Bay of Bengal. According to the Bangladesh government, more than 1,000 square kilometers of land has been reclaimed this way. Bangladesh has a special agreement with the Netherlands to explore the possibilities, plans, and various aspects of the application of this technology in the country.
One of the most promising aspects of Bangladesh can be if the right amount of land is reclaimed by using the right technology. According to the information received from the Minister of Water Resources, Bangladesh has plans to recover 10,000 sq.ft. of land in the next 20 years this way. Hopefully, this plan will be a success because then it will be good for the entire country.
