《经济学人》：海湾地区填海创造奇迹人工岛？

原文标题：

Land reclamation in the Gulf
Cities in the sea
Artificial islands are costly and often bad for the environment

Look on my works
They are expensive, often bad for the environment, and may end up underwater

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Acentury ago the site of Bahrain’s land-registration bureau was not on land. Like a good bit of the country, it has been reclaimed from the sea. Bahrain’s eagerness for such projects is easy to understand: its natural land area is just 665 square kilometres (257 square miles), over half the size of Greater London. The south is mostly desert, good for oilfields, military bases and little else.

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Since the 1960s Bahrain has added more than 11% to its land area through reclamation, says Mohammed Al Khalifa, the head of the property regulator. It may soon add much more. Last year Bahrain said it would build five new cities on reclaimed land. “We’re surrounded by shallow waters, so it doesn’t take much to do reclamation—it’s like a bathtub.”

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The plan is still aspirational, with officials yet to secure funding or draw up blueprints. If it comes to pass, it will expand the country by more than half its current size. Yet land-reclamation projects, in Bahrain and elsewhere in the Gulf, come with a slate of environmental and economic concerns—and perhaps even existential ones.

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If Bahrain has built out of necessity, other Gulf states do it out of choice. Palm Jumeirah, a collection of islands shaped like a palm tree, is one of Dubai’s most iconic features. Abu Dhabi dredged the coastline to create attractions like Yas Island, home to theme parks and fancy hotels. Saudi Arabia has plenty of empty land; yet it still wants to build something called the Oxagon, an eight-sided floating industrial city in the Red Sea.

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Developers say they try not to harm the environment. But scientists and locals worry. Fishermen in Bahrain say land-reclamation has damaged their livelihoods by depleting fish stocks, forcing them to work farther out at sea. This annoys neighbouring Qatar, which regularly detains Bahraini boats that sail into its waters.

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A study found land-reclamation projects shrank the number of mangroves in Tubli Bay, off Bahrain’s east coast. Using satellite imagery, another group of researchers concluded that the Palm increased average water temperatures by 7.5°C over 19 years, which is bad for reefs and hurts some marine life.

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These schemes can also be bad for investors: buying property on an artificial island is the ultimate off-plan sale. When the first residents of the Palm moved into their villas, they discovered the properties occupied less land than promised: developers had to squeeze in more of them to recoup building costs.

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At least they were built. Dubai has a second palm-shaped archipelago near the main port, 19km south-west of its better-known cousin. Workers started construction in 2002, but the financial crisis of 2008 put a stop to it. Two decades on, the second Palm remains a featureless expanse of sand.

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Then there is The World, the sort of project you would conceive if you read Percy Shelley’s poem “Ozymandias” as a how-to guide. Nakheel, the developer, spent billions to create 300 islands in the rough shape of the world map. Then the financial crisis hit. Today there is a glitzy resort around “Tierra del Fuego”, and a beach club in “Lebanon”, but most of The World is as barren as the moon.

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Climate change menaces the Gulf’s artificial lands, just as it does all waterfront property. The Palm was designed to handle a 50cm rise in sea levels. Researchers at the University of Tehran have estimated that Gulf waters could rise 84cm by the end of the century.

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No one has ever recorded a cyclone in the Persian Gulf. But a study published in Nature Climate Change in 2015 concluded that they are no longer inconceivable. Last year Cyclone Shaheen made landfall in Oman, the first of its kind to do so in at least a century. What man raised from the sea, the sea may take back.

（恭喜读完，本篇英语词汇量669左右）
原文出自：2022年6月11日《经济学人》Middle East & Africa版块

精读笔记来源于：自由英语之路

本文翻译整理：Irene

本文编辑校对: Irene
仅供个人英语学习交流使用。

【补充资料】（来自于网络）
Palm Jumeirah 朱美拉棕榈岛：耗资140亿美元打造的全球首个棕榈叶形状岛屿——迪拜“朱美拉棕榈岛”，在14000多名工人历经5年夜以继日的苦干加巧干后，第一阶段建设即将完工，首批4000位岛民有望2006年11月份入住这个号称“世界第八大奇迹”的人工岛。建成后的棕榈岛将成为“世界第八大奇迹”，而创造这一奇迹的是亲自控制公司建设该岛的迪拜王子谢赫·穆罕默德·本·拉希德·阿勒马克图姆。当初王子建“世界第八大奇迹”的初衷，是因为尽管迪拜拥有石油可以致富，但该国却没有可持续发展的产业，在这种情况下，王子想到了建设这个世界第一大人工岛，好跟新加坡和香港竞争成为世界商业港中心，与拉斯维加斯竞争成为“世界休闲之都”。

Yas亚斯岛，在阿布扎比，位于北纬24°30′，东经54°36′，占地面积约25平方公里。距离阿联酋首都30分钟车程，亚斯岛是新兴的娱乐休闲胜地，也是“国有艺术”亚斯码头赛车场的所在地，举办一年一度的阿布扎比方程式赛车。岛上还矗立着阿布扎比最大、阿联酋第二大的亚斯购物中心。亚斯购物中心为游客、国际宾客及本地居民提供缤纷多彩的娱乐与购物体验。

OXAGON：2021年11月16日，沙特阿拉伯王储兼 NEOM 公司董事会主席穆罕默德·本·萨勒曼（Mohammed bin Salman）正式宣布建立 OXAGON。该项目基于 NEOM 重新定义人类未来生活和工作方式的战略规则的基础上而建立。独特的八角形建筑设计最大限度地减少了对环境的影响，并提高了土地使用率。其余部分未被占用以保护95% 的自然环境。这座城市的最大特点是具有世界上最大规模的漂浮建筑结构。

The World：这个梗出自日本漫画《JOJO奇妙冒险》第三部中的大反派迪奥·布兰度的替身——”世界“。替身能力：世界（the World），名字出自塔罗牌的“世界”，时间停止，在使用“时间停止”能力时喊出的招式名，这个梗被用到了很多的游戏作品中，每当游戏出现暂停情况，就会被人们拿出来调侃。这个梗还广泛用于当时间戛然而止的情况下的事物中。

Ozymandias奥齐曼迭斯：指古埃及王雷米西斯二世(Ram ses I,1292.-1225BC)，他在位67年，以“武功〞著称。他在自己位于尼罗河上古都底比斯的陵墓上建造了巨大的狮身人面斯芬克斯石像，并刻铭文于其上"我就是奥齐曼迭斯，万王之王.……。〞想借此永久炫耀自己的业绩与权威。对古埃及统治者这种不可一世的奢狂，雪莱给予了毫不留情的讽刺与抨击，并借此表达了对当时英国忠政的愤懑和蔑视。

【重点句子】（3个）

Yet land-reclamation projects, in Bahrain and elsewhere in the Gulf, come with a slate of environmental and economic concerns—and perhaps even existential ones.
然而，巴林和海湾其他地方的填海造地项目带来了一系列环境和经济问题，甚至带来事关人类存亡的问题。

Climate change menaces the Gulf’s artificial lands, just as it does all waterfront property.
气候变化威胁着所有的海滨地产，也同样威胁着海湾地区的人造岛。

What man raised from the sea, the sea may take back.
人们从海上获得的一切，最终也将原原本本地还回去。

《经济学人》：海湾地区填海创造奇迹人工岛？