haha.XD
was watching shijienameda yesterday.
and the host went to dubai and oh gosh. their hotel room is like bigger than my house?
but super ex cause the price per night is about 5000 sing dollars.
and their country were reclaiming land and forming new islands
so i was curious and i decided to find out online if
reclaiming land= expansion of sea territory
the reason was that i sort of heard this somewhere before,
but i wasnt very sure so i went to google it.
below is teh news.
BUT. heh. i just realised its 2003. :O
read this if you are bored and since its june holidays
(realised its abit the longXD) SO I CUT IT FOR U.
and highlighted some points.
The shifting sands of time - and Singapore
By Bill Guerin
JAKARTA - In a region with some of the most ubiquitous white-sand beaches in the world, there is an unlikely sand war in Southeast Asia, fueled to a major extent by the steadily growing island of Singapore and the suspiciously shrinking Indonesian island of Riau, and complicated by the politics of Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore.
For most of history, Singapore had hills - not big ones, but hills. Today, it is virtually flat, the hills having been dumped into the sea to make the island bigger. The Housing Development Board (HDB) pioneered such projects in the early 1960s with the aim of creating more land in the land-scarce republic to cater for housing, industry, infrastructure and recreation needs.
Riau, 800km northwest of the Indonesian capital Jakarta, is the main source of sand used to support Singapore's construction sector and coastal reclamation projects. Land reclamation costs an estimated S$15 per square meter, though the reclaimed land is then sold at, currently, about S$850 (US$484) per square meter.
Marine ecosystems and habitats have been damaged irreparably from the uncontrolled sand extraction, which has also led to the disappearance of a number of small islets in the province. It is only in the last two years, though, that Singapore's aggressive expansion of its coastal territory and its land reclamation policy have sparked problems with neighbors Indonesia and Malaysia. The issue has evolved into a two-pronged maritime border dispute.
Nipah Island, one of 83 border islands serving as points of reference for Indonesia's sea borders, is at the center of Singapore's current dispute with Jakarta. Nipah lies dead in front of the main reclamation work and is now almost submerged. Minister of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Rokhmin Dahuri points out that if the island sinks completely the international boundary between Indonesia and Singapore will change - to Singapore's advantage.
Though the two countries have an existing agreement on marine territory, they have not yet settled their continental coastlines and economic exclusive zones (EEZs). The Convention on the Law of the Sea states that marine territory is measured based on the coastal base line.(answer to my question) Jakarta is concerned that in the future, some Riau land could thus be claimed as Singapore's on the basis that if Singapore gets wider, its territorial line will also get wider.
Singapore, whose container port is Asia's second-busiest after Hong Kong (yay!XD)and is crucial to the island republic's economy, is also facing problems with Malaysia. Malaysia has said the reclamation work could obstruct ships headed for its US$1 billion state-of-the-art Tanjung Pelepas port in its southern state of Johor, just half an hour's sailing time from Singapore Port. In fact, Malaysians claim that the project was designed to obstruct shipping and sabotage the progress of the port, being promoted to rival Singapore's, and officials in Kuala Lumpur have criticized Singapore for allegedly ignoring their concerns. (what?!)
Feelings can run high. In Malaysia the opposition Islamist Parti Islam SeMalaysia (PAS) in its annual conference last year rallied party support against Singapore's land-reclamation project. PAS Johor state leader Mazlan Aliman told party members that Singapore's continuation of the reclamation work was a threat to his state and branded Malaysians who sell sand to Singapore for use in this project as traitors. =(
To add insult to injury, they said, Singapore reclamation works were using Indonesian sand to claim extra territory.
(this shows how NICE their characters are)
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