The World Archipelago in Dubai, a Preview of the Armageddon?

The World Archipelago in Dubai, a Preview of the Armageddon

Rumor has it that The World is coming to an end. Don’t worry, we’re not talking about the real world, but about the man-made archipelago in Dubai. The very bold project was conceived by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai, and its developer is Nakheel Properties.

Now there seems to be problems in paradise, and it all started with the world economic crisis sinking Dubai into a sea of debts and problems. This has put a temporary stop on the development of the aforementioned project, which is not encouraging news for anyone.

But there’s even more bad news. Some say that the islands in the World Archipelago are actually starting to sink back into the water. They have been created from sands taken from the emirate’s shallow coastal waters, and now erosion is making a lot of damage among the country-shaped islands. Or at least that’s what people say. There even is a company that ferries tourists to the archipelago and which now intends to withdraw from the contract it had signed with Nakheel, claiming that tourists are not visiting the islands as much as they used too, because of the erosion process.

Nakheel on the other hand insists that the islands are not going under, and that the only problem at the moment is the economic one. They admit that The World is currently in ‘a coma’, but they also assure us the project will eventually be completed. ‘Our periodical monitoring survey over the past three years didn’t observe any substantial erosion that requires sand nourishment’, they say.

So, in the current state of affairs, probably the best advice to follow would be not to buy a private island in this particular archipelago. At least not yet. We’ll just have to wait and see what will the future bring to The World.