“Geoengineering” is a relatively little-known concept, but something that we do surprisingly often. Simply put, it happens whenever humans purposefully or accidentally reshape the environment of the world, its geography. It happens whenever we redirect rivers, or drain swamps. However, some examples are a bit more dramatic than others.

The Dutch have been practicing geoengineering for almost a thousand years now. Since the 1100s, they have been not only protecting their notoriously low altitude nation from rising water but also claiming land from the ocean itself, in a sort of sick and twisted revenge for the flooding. Enormous tracts of land in the Netherlands were once seabed- most of Amsterdam was once completely underwater, until the sea was beaten back by the ingenious Dutch and their remarkable machines.

These tracts of land reclaimed from the sea are known as “polders”, and the Dutch have been making them for a long, long time- the first recorded example dates from the Roman times, and they’ve only been improving on the technique ever since. Estimations vary and records have been lost, but as much as 27 percent of the entire land area of the Netherlands may have been, at one point or another, completely underwater.

To this day, the largest man-made island is the entire province of Flevoland, which was dragged out of the sea in the 1950s and 60s after a series of terrible floods only a few generations ago, but is now home to more people than the state of Wyoming.

Beating back the relentless, storm-driven sea and prying land from its clammy wet fingers is impressive on its own, but that isn’t quite enough. Like the Netherlands, the United Arab Emirates may soon be driven by necessity to completely change their geography and even geology. But whereas the problem in the Netherlands was an excess of water, the UAE has the opposite dilemma: they need more rain.

In the average year, the UAE receives less than 5 inches of rain, which just isn’t enough to support their rapidly growing population and soaring standard of living. Water shortages are a serious threat, and the government has already been looking into less than orthodox methods, such as cloud seeding. However, in recent years they have turned towards a much more permanent- and impressive- solution. They want to build a mountain.

water cycle. They can trap moist air in front of them, forcing it to rise

higher and higher to try and go over the top of the mountain. As the air rises,

it cools, and the moisture inside it condenses and falls as rain. It’s simple

enough, which is why the UAE is considering building an enormous artificial

mountain behind Dubai to try and encourage rainfall in and around the city.

This project would, of course, be ludicrously expensive, but if any country can pull it off, it’s the United Arab Emirates.