What If We Built Another Continent? Unveiled

What if We Built Another Continent?

The world map hasn’t always looked the way it does. And yet the main landmasses of Earth can seem like they’re set in stone. The continents are always shifting, though, and re-forming into new shapes. So, what if we gave them a helping hand?

This is Unveiled, and today we’re answering the extraordinary question; what if we built another continent?

Precise definitions on “what a continent is” do vary, but how we categorise them is partly linked to the layout of Earth’s tectonic plates. It’s not a like-for-like system, however. We generally hold Europe and Asia as standalone continents, for example, despite most of both of them occupying the “Eurasian Plate”... while some plates don’t actually boast a landmass at all, like the Pacific and Nazca Plates. Meanwhile, the idea of creating new continents has already been put forward based on tectonic boundaries; such as in 2017, when the continent “Zealandia” was proposed by geologists, due to the 1.89 million-square-mile plate mostly covered by ocean but which also comprises New Zealand and New Caledonia - which are also classified as part of Oceania. Elsewhere, Greenland is another area of particular interest, with its status as a potential continent sometimes raised.

But all of these examples effectively amount to re-dividing the land that’s already there. What would happen if we instead built a continent where once there was nothing? And why would we want to do that in the first place?

If a new continent translates as a whole new landmass, then naturally it’d signal a major increase in the Earth’s available living space. Opinions are divided on exactly how much of a concern overpopulation should be - with some claiming more humans means more environmental problems, while others see the clamour as wildly overexaggerated. Nevertheless, a new continent would mean more space - at least for a short while - and it would provide an opportunity to “custom-build” that space into whatever we wanted or needed; acres and acres of forest, perhaps… or one exceptionally vast and sprawling mega-city. And it has already been done before, albeit on a much smaller scale.

In 2001, construction began on Palm Jumeirah, the first of Dubai’s Palm Islands, which are artificial bits of land built to increase Dubai’s shoreline and tourist potential. Dubai is also home to The World, an artificial archipelago of islands made to resemble the world map. Those were constructed using land reclamation, which is the dredging up of sand from the seabed to re-position and re-purpose it above the water. Take the methods we’ve already seen used in places like Dubai and employ them on a much larger scale, then, and we have our hypothetical continent.

This surely is a purely hypothetical prospect, however. In terms of time, available resources and money, such an incredible project would require incredible sacrifices and finances. Palm Jumeirah alone cost a reported $12 billion to build, and it only covers an area of 2.2 square miles… so, to create a landmass equivalent in size to, say, the hotly-contested Zealandia, we’d be looking at upwards of $10 quadrillion (give or take), and that’s not accounting for all the additional sand needed to cover the depth of the ocean when building anywhere other than the shallow waters of the Persian Gulf. According to the CIA World Factbook, the total amount of money in the entire world is only estimated to be $80 trillion. So, anyone ever hoping to build themselves a continent would either need all of the money in the world many times over… or a lot of volunteers willing to work for free!

Another example of what has already been achieved, though, is Oil Rocks; a town off the coast of Azerbaijan built by the Soviet Union after World War Two. As opposed to the tourist opportunities of the Palm Islands, Oil Rocks was built for industry, to drill for oil, and was in fact the world’s first offshore oil platform. Its foundations include a number of shipwrecks sunk specifically for the purpose of building it. It’s a different approach to literally “creating new land”, but making platforms like this - artificial, floating structures - could be a simpler solution… though it’s perhaps difficult to imagine a bunch of rough rigs and bridges ever becoming anything more than a one-off structure, let alone an entire continent! That said, we have had a glimpse of what might happen through places like the Principality of Sealand, built on a decommissioned oil rig off the coast of the UK. Sealand has never been officially recognised as a country by the UN or any sovereign state, but that hasn’t stopped a dedicated group from campaigning for a status change. Again, though, it’s a giant jump from Sealand to a sea-continent!

Were it to ever happen, then a global organisation like the UN would be key. Even if it were affordable, the building of any new landmass of substantial size would have to be a worldwide effort - drawing on expertise from across the planet. In this way, “Project: New Continent” would work something like a supersized version of the International Space Station, with countries uniting toward a common goal. This unity would also dampen the threat of the new land sparking a war. To some extent we’ve already seen how the building of things like air bases in the ocean can trigger international tension so, if only some nations were involved in building a new continent, then we’d have also built an almighty divide and a major source of conflict. Ensure that the new land really is for everyone, though, and we’d sidestep a lot of the issues. From there, we’d only need to decide who should govern the place… Or whether every contributor should govern a small part of it. It’d be no small task, but a new continent would provide Earth with a unique opportunity to form a truly united and harmonious bloc.

But, what about everything else on the planet? In a best-case scenario, humans might cooperate to make the continent work, but what happens to the rest of our wildlife? And especially marine life? Perhaps more than anything else, the building of a new continent could prove an environmental disaster, with so many other species displaced thanks to humanity’s voracious need for more. The Palm Islands, small as they are, have already triggered some environmental issues - including reported increased seawater stagnation, which ruins ecosystems. Amplify problems like that to a continental scale, and we’d effectively be remodelling the natural world… swapping water for land, and causing immeasurable knock-on effects for Earth as we know it.

It’s perhaps fortunate that this is one venture that we really will never be able to afford, then. Making more space for ourselves usually results in eliminating space for wildlife; while a landmass on this scale would also breed some very complex political situations. It’s a purely hypothetical project that’s practically impossible to actually carry out, but if we did it would demand all of the people power, resources and management skills that we have - and then some! And that’s what would happen if we built another continent.