Threatened ecosystem

Did you know that Bahrain coral reefs are the home of the Arabian Gulf’s most ‎biodiverse marine systems. Yet, Bahrain has lost untold acres of mangroves to unplanned ‎coastal development, and the resulting sedimentation has stressed coral reefs. Pollution ‎from cities and oil spills remain as constant threats.‎ Thus, since the Gulf War, the oil slicks adversely affected the fishing industry, and marine biologists remained uncertain about the longterm ecological impact of the pollution.

Bahrain needs to introduce stricter rules on dredging sand from the seabed. Current ‎policies threaten to destroy marine wildlife, including entire ecosystems, if no action is ‎taken. Studies show that around 2.5 million tones of sand is taken from Bahrain’s waters ‎every year for use in construction and land reclamation. What make it even worse is that ‎part of that is actually discharged back again into the sea causing harmful conditions to ‎marine life.‎

With the increase in construction material prices, dredging marine sand from Bahrain’s ‎shallow regional waters is a satisfying solution for the increasing demand of the ‎construction sector, and provides the requirements of reclamation operations in the ‎shallow coastal areas to build new ports and causeways.‎

Tubli Bay, located near the northeast corner of the island, supports the last remaining ‎mangroves in Bahrain, is an important nursery ground for commercially important ‎shrimps and over 45 species of birds utilize the abundant food resources. The bay has ‎more than halved in size since 1950s due to alterations to the coastline. Over the past 50 ‎years it has gone from measuring 24 sq km in size to just 10 sq km today. Only recently ‎Tubli Bay was finally announced a marine reservation protected by law.‎

Fasht Al-Athem, another major coral reef located near the east cost of the island is in ‎jeopardy due to further construction development. If not directly affected, the alteration ‎of its surrounding ecosystems will allow it just few more years before marine life will ‎start to degrade.‎

Bahrain needs to reconsider about new locations for development by focusing on using ‎geographic information system (GIS) and remote sensing techniques. Also introducing of ‎cleaner production techniques and alternatives that have less impact on the marine ‎ecosystems. It is of major significance to undertake detailed Environmental Impact ‎Assessments (EIA) especially over operations that are planned in environmentally ‎sensitive areas, such as shallow coastal ecosystems.‎

It goes without saying that artificial structures will never be a substitute for what is being ‎destroyed. Furthermore, the enormity of the dredge-and-fill is radically altering the ‎marine life, causing widespread mortality in neighboring ecosystems. Thus, even if corals ‎should settle on the breakwaters at some later stage, the natural dynamics of the system ‎would be irreplaceably altered.‎

Bahrain surrounding coral reefs offers excellent drift diving and some of the most prolific ‎marine life in the Gulf. Rays, moray eels, crayfish, trigger fish, clown fish, turtles, and ‎sturgeon fish inhabit the reefs while mackerel, cobia, whale-sharks, dugongs, tuna and ‎barracuda cruise above. It is even said that Bahrain coral reefs are endowed with the most ‎Indo-Pacific fish species typically found in the Red Sea, Maldives and Great Barrier ‎Reef. Fed by a cool upwelling from the surrounding depths.‎

Worldwide Building Boom

Building booms are becoming common lately. The earth’s surface is being processed, ordered, stacked, shipped, registered and reconfigured into “architecture” elsewhere. Materials, mineral wealth, reserves. Even in unexpected places, global blindspots, like China’s northwest desert province or the small island of Bahrain are all becoming similar to lower Manhattan, with skyscrapers rising almost in front of one’s eyes.

Many cities around the world were only considered as major trading stops are now starting to flourish with economic activity doubling every year. Cities are becoming the commercial trade capital of a wider region; a shopper’s paradise with huge bazaars everywhere. Nothing but multi-storey buildings full of small offices representing every possible manufacturer or distributor of consumer goods.

While the world focuses on Beijing and Shanghai as the new centers of building construction, Russia’s capital, Moscow, is undergoing a transformation unmatched since the massive overhaul of the Stalin era. The building boom has overtaken huge swathes of the where over 50 million square feet of housing were added. Public officials have spoken of building 38 high-rises of up to 45 stories in the next several years, with 22 more expected by 2015 as part of a program known as the New Ring of Moscow. The planned series of towers and modern infrastructure promise an infusion of high-tech energy whose vertical extension will resemble Kuala Lumpur and Shanghai more than a European metropolis. Then there’s the “Moscow-City” district, a sector northwest of the city center that has been designated as the future administrative and financial nucleus.

Bahrain, meanwhile, in forecasting the end of the oil economy, is setting itself up, through yet another building boom, to become a tourist attraction and offshore financial services hub. To do so, though, Bahrain – a very small kingdom – has turned to “innovative offshore developments and land reclamation projects.”

London now looks forward to “31 major new developments… all £100bn worth of them, including the 2012 Lea Valley Olympic Park.” That equates to “400,000 new homes, around 8m square feet of new offices (four Empire State Buildings’ worth),” as well as “so many secret, or simply obscure, developments” that the New London Architecture centre (aka NLA) was at least partially created to help make sense of it all.

Brief questions: where is all this material coming from? In case of Bahrain; you can only build so much architecture before you start to carve quite deeply into the land. So: where are the negative spaces of these building booms? For every skyscraper, is there a corresponding hole, quarry, or mine being dug or deepened somewhere?

The land reclimation projects of Bahrain, the New Ring of Moscow, New London Architecture – all rearrangements, transformations of the void, ever-deepening holes as we strip-mine the face of the planet.