Mangaluru: The International Association of Lowland Technology organised a two day seminar hand in hand with National Institute of Technology Karnataka on Lowland Technology in NIT-K campus. The 10^th international symposium on Lowland Technology brought in resource persons who are experts in the field and they have warned about the dangers of land reclamation from the sea.

“There are many places in the world where cities have been built on reclaimed land from the sea. Mumbai, Boston and Netherlands to some extent were built on low lying areas and a little percentage of these cities were built on reclaimed land”, said M R Madhav President of the International Association of Lowland Technology. 

“Kolkata’s Salt Lake City, Fort St. George of Chennai, many European and American cities too are built on tidal lands. Singapore’s airport is entirely built on such land. The countries using tidal land to build on may be in trouble based on rising sea level”, he added.

A paper presented by Sekhar M from the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru on the emerging issues in India concerned with Lowlands and Groundwater showed how change of water flow can happen because of alterations in the lowlands. The problem of water logging was also mentioned by Sekhar.

Japanese participants also played key role in presenting paper since Japan has the largest piece of reclaimed land in the whole world. Some studies revealed that 30 percent of Eastern coastal belt of India might submerge, not only if the local land is reclaimed from the sea but also due to the lands reclaimed elsewhere in the world.