The Awami League government, during its immediate previous term, was frantically looking for land to build a new airport. Wherever it chose to build that airport, it faced tough resistance from locals, and the government had to back out every time.
It is impossible to find a big piece of land to build a new airport in an extremely overpopulated country like ours. So our only alternative to build a new airport is to reclaim land from the sea and build the airport on that land. A high speed train may connect that airport with the capital.
Many airports around the world have been built on reclaimed lands. The Kansai International Airport in Japan is located on an artificial island in the middle of earthquake and typhoon prone Osaka Bay. The Incheon International Airport is the largest airport in South Korea. Officially opened in March 2001, this airport has been built on a reclaimed land in the Yellow Sea. Hong Kong International Airport is located on the island of Chek Lap Kok, which largely comprises land reclaimed for the construction of the airport itself. These are only a few examples.
To build the airport in the Bay of Bengal, we need sand to facilitate the reclamation process. Not only for airports, we can also reclaim land from the Bay to build cities and to replenish our fast-dwindling agricultural lands. We need more and more sand.
I remember hearing that Singapore gave our government, not the present government, a proposal to build another Chittagong city in the Bay, reclaiming land from it. Whatever happened to that proposal?
27% of the total land area of the Netherlands is reclaimed land. A large part of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, a part of Dublin in Ireland, the majority part of Helsinki city centre in Finland, Barceloneta of Barcelona, Spain are built on reclaimed lands. Again, these are only a few examples.
Singapore has reclaimed 20% of its original size from the sea. In its early years, Singapore cut down its hills to collect the fill material to use for filling the reclamation areas. From an environmental point of view, it was a great mistake.
In recent years, the country uses sea sand obtained from the seabed as the main source of fill material to be used for reclamation. It also imports the sea sand from its neighbouring countries, Malaysia and Indonesia.
To reclaim land from the Bay of Bengal, we do not need to import sand. The Himalayas give us 1.6 billion to 2 billion tons of sediment every year. The Ganges and Brahmaputra bring down this sediment for us from the Himalayas. The sediment transported by these rivers consists chiefly of medium to fine sand and silt.
In fact, Bangladesh was born of this sediment. About 250 million years ago, Earth’s land was a single super continent called Pangaea, which was surrounded by a large ocean. Around 200 million years ago, Pangaea began to gradually split up into different land masses known as plates. The plates started to move apart in different directions – their movements are known as the continental drift.
Close to 50 million years ago, the India plate slammed into the Eurasia plate due to the continental drift. As the two plates pushed up against each other, the land was pushed up, forming the Himalayas mountain range.
As another result of that collision, a part of the Indian plate in the east broke off and submerged in the sea. The Ganges and the Brahmaputra started flowing from the Himalayas towards that broken-off part to meet the sea while carrying billions of tons of sediment from the mountain.
They started pouring down this huge amount of sediment on that submerged land. As a result, about ten thousand years ago, a new land emerged from the womb of the sea. And this new land is our Bangladesh.
Bangladesh was not as big as it is now during its early days. Through the natural process of sedimentation, the country has been getting bigger in area along its coasts by 120sq-km a year on average, while its land is rising by 0.5mm a year on average.
We also lose land to the sea to the tune of 100 sq-km a year on average through erosion. About 3,000 years ago, Gopalganj was the seaport of the country.
Accretion of land along the Sathkhira, Bagerhat, and Khulna coasts has almost stopped due to the presence of the undersea canyon known as the “Swatch of No-Ground” stretching from a few kilometres off these coasts to Sri Lanka. The average depth of this canyon is 200 fathoms. All the sediment brought to these coasts by the rivers is devoured by this canyon.
Along our other coasts, we can get more land, besides the natural process, through reclamation using the enormous amounts of sand we get from the Himalayas. The sea is shallow at Kuakata.
I have been told by some fishermen that a big shoal is forming about 30km off Kuakata beach. Can’t we reclaim land from the Bay between that shoal and the coast by using our sand, instead of thinking of exporting sand to Singapore or to any other country for a few bucks? We desperately need more and more land for our ever-increasing population.
Our friendly neighbour has been withdrawing water in the upstream which is causing the silting of many of our rivers. Their river-linking project will make the situation worse for our rivers. The reclamation of lands from the Bay will serve us through two purposes: It will give us more land, and, at the same time, will keep our rivers navigable.