Details

The Balance Island concept aims at using the shallow foreshore of the delta to create sustainable, soft solutions for today’s and tomorrow’s problems related to living in vulnerable and low lying deltas. The concept entails the creation of an island in the salinity gradient zone of a river mouth to reduce salt intrusion and provide land use benefits by providing (longer) accessibility to fresh water in the upstream area. The Balance Island was primarily designed as a solution for salt intrusion in the Haringvliet in the Netherlands. The present International feasibility study was initiated to further determine the feasibility of the Balance Island concept for other estuaries and delta. The Mekong Delta in Vietnam and the Ganges-Brahmaputra Delta in Bangladesh were selected in this feasibility study as the Balance Island concept could be beneficial as a building block for the strategies that were developed in the Mekong Delta plan (2013) and the Bangladesh Delta plan 2100 (underway).