News about Nicaragua’s proposed canal to connect the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans is a lot like that old joke about the food in a Catskills mountain resort—it’s bad, and there’s such small portions of it. But despite clouds of questions about how the canal will be funded, the environmental and human impacts, and whether it will ever actually be finished, last week Nicaragua held a groundbreaking for the roads that will bring the machinery to build the port for the canal.
The idea of a canal that runs through Lake Nicaragua is older than the Panama Canal, dating back at least two centuries to Napoleon III, and perhaps even to the Spanish Conquistadors. But in the name of boosting the economy of one of the poorest nations in the Western Hemisphere, the idea has been dusted off by Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega and the canal looks more and more like it will finally become reality. The groundbreaking is the first step, with the first excavations set to follow in the second half of 2015.
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The project is currently being led by the Hong Kong-based HK Nicaragua Canal Development Investment Co Ltd. According to Reuters, HKND Group “is controlled by Wang Jing, a little-known Chinese telecom mogul well-connected to China’s political elite.”
Proposed routes for the Nicaragua canal in red, the Panama canal is in blue. The route started this year will follow the second red line from the top. Image: CIA
There’s already $200 million secured for the project, but the price of the canal has been put at $50 billion. Where’s the rest of the money coming from? HKND isn’t saying. At 172 miles long, Nicaragua’s canal would be three times longer than the Panama Canal. Despite that, the new canal is supposed to be done in just five years, compared to the latter’s 34-year-long construction. Again, it’s not clear how. Why is Wang, who as Vice News pointed out is a businessman “with no previous experience in infrastructural construction,” involved here?
“The canal has one enemy and that’s the lack of information,” the head of Nicaragua’s construction industry group, Benjamin Lanzas, told Reuters. “That lack of information has created a great deal of speculation, and that speculation, those expectations, have created a lot of doubt.”
One thing doesn’t seem to be in doubt, though: if this canal is built, it will carry a huge environmental price tag.
While the feasibility studies conducted by HKND Group have yet to be released to the public, more than 30 concerned groups from the area filed legal complaints with the Nicaraguan government in 2013. That group includes three indigenous peoples, and the Rama-Kriol government of the South Atlantic Autonomous Region, who argue that the canal concession to HKND Group violate their land rights.
The president of the Nicaraguan Academy of Sciences, Jorge A. Huete-Pérez, coauthored an editorial in Nature in February, outlining what’s at stake for Lake Nicaragua and the nature reserves that currently occupy land where the canal will go.
“In our view, this canal could create an environmental disaster in Nicaragua and beyond,” Huete-Pérez wrote. “The excavation of hundreds of kilometres from coast to coast, traversing Lake Nicaragua, the largest drinking-water reservoir in the region, will destroy around 400,000 hectares of rainforests and wetlands.”
A Nicaragua canal route proposed in 1899. Image: Wikipedia
To be more desirable than its Panamanian rival, which remains too small for the world’s largest ships and which is undergoing its own expansion project, Nicaragua’s canal will have to accommodate “ships of up to 400,000 tonnes.” This means the “proposed Nicaraguan waterway will be 27.6 meters deep, and the HKND has claimed that it may be an implausible 520 meters wide,” the editorial states. “Lake Nicaragua, however, has an average depth of only 15 meters.”
So there’s the problem of the dredging and what happens to all of that lake-bottom sludge. Then there’s the issue of using “the largest drinking water reservoir in the region” as the reservoir for the canal’s lock system, which we’re warned “would transform a free-flowing freshwater ecosystem into an artificial slack-water reservoir combined with salt water.”
As the water’s chemical composition changes, the oxygen levels in the water do also. Pollutants and construction put the fish of this unique biological zone at risk. Bilge water from ships traveling from all over the world will undoubtedly carry invasive species.
Then there’s the human cost, both for those living and those in the past. “Hundreds of villages will have to be evacuated and the indigenous inhabitants relocated. Archaeological sites along the route of the canal will be in danger too,” the editorial states, before warning about renewed strife in a region that has known plenty.
The goal is increasing Nicaragua’s economic growth by 10 percent, which is understandable. But the Panama Canal’s expansion will be done in 2016, allowing for bigger, faster ships, and doubling its cargo moving capacity. Is another canal really worth the cost?
As a private company, HKND isn’t obliged to release the findings of its studies, as the Nicaraguan government would’ve been if it had conducted them. According to a Nicaraguan presidential spokesman, feasibility reports won’t be ready until April at least. In the meantime, the same questions remain, save the question of when the groundbreaking is.
