Floating livelihood in south Asia will soon be a reality. India’s neighbour Maldives has signed an agreement with the Netherlands government to set up world’s first floating hotel, agriculture fields, residential homes and a golf course in middle of the Indian Ocean.
Updated on: Oct 01, 2010 11:38 PM IST
Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, Rotterdam (Netherlands)
Floating livelihood in south Asia will soon be a reality.
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India’s neighbour Maldives has signed an agreement with the Netherlands government to set up world’s first floating hotel, agriculture fields, residential homes and a golf course in middle of the Indian Ocean.
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“Both the governments (Netherlands and Maldives) have agreed,” said Koen Olthuis, creative director of Dutch Docklands, a company that has designed new floating concept for Maldvies, considered one of the most vulnerable nations to sea level rise because of climate change in the world.
“A formal announcement is expected next week”.
Apparently the world’s biggest on sea leisure and residential project is expected to start next year with construction of a hotel near the Maldivian capital city. These hotels will be part of a modern small township in middle of the sea having hotels and a 18 hole golf course.
Maldives like Netherlands does not have enough land available and much of it is below the sea level. So, Maldives had opted for using sea to provide people future livelihood. It has harped upon a unique technology using which Netherlands constructed first floating homes in its capital city of Amsterdam about a decade ago.
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There are over 1,000 fully furnished floating homes with garden and parking area in the Netherlands now. “Cost of floating home is comparable with a house on land as one does not have to pay much for water on which the house is built,” said Rutger De Graaf, director research and development with Deltasync, a company dealing with designing floating structures.
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There are over 1,000 fully furnished floating homes with garden and parking area in the Netherlands now. “Cost of floating home is comparable with a house on land as one does not have to pay much for water on which the house is built,” said Rutger De Graaf, director research and development with Deltasync, a company dealing with designing floating structures.
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But one has to pay for erecting permanent structure to tie the house to the sea ground. “It (the cost) is almost same as for building a basement in the house,” Olthuis said.
The only difference — the floating home can rise by up to six metres depending on the design with a gush of water but does not move sidways.
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Another advantage floating house has that it can be moved from one location to another, not so easy with homes on land.
Graaf says constructing a basic floating house in 200 square metre area can cost Euros 280,000 in Netherlands (Rs 16,80,00,00) but experts believe that the cost can come down with more use of technology and in countries where cost of construction is low like Maldives and India.
The first phase of construction will be completed by 2013 and entire project by 2017. The Netherland government has also agreed to a request from Maldivian government to have floating agriculture fields.
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.
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