Many Nicaraguans back the canal project, and preliminary work has already begun \u2014 even before the completion of an environmental impact assessment. But other Nicaraguans, as well as local and international scientists, say the canal would be an environmental catastrophe, threatening a host of ecosystems across the country. They say it would also displace tens of thousands of Nicaraguans, including indigenous people whose territories the canal would cross.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The impacts would begin near Lopez\u2019s fishing spot, where a breakwater and giant port \u2014 capable of docking supertankers and immense cargo ships carrying 25,000 containers \u2014 are planned as the western terminus of the canal. The port infrastructure along Nicaragua\u2019s Pacific coast would threaten mangrove swamps and sea turtle nesting beaches. Then, passing through the remote, hilly coastal region where Lopez fished, the canal, carved to a depth of nearly 100 feet, would continue 16 miles through\u00a0agricultural land to Lake Nicaragua<\/a>, Central America\u2019s largest body of freshwater.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Scientists say the damage to Lake Nicaragua could be enormous. One third of the canal\u2019s total length would traverse the lake, whose average bottom of 40 feet would have to be dredged to nearly twice that depth. The digging in the lake and over the rest of the canal\u2019s proposed route would generate an almost unfathomable quantity of mud and dredging spoils \u2014 enough to cover the entire state of Connecticut with one foot of dirt. Silt would cloud the lake\u2019s water column, threatening indigenous fish and other species, scientists warn, and invasive species could make their way into the lake along the canal from the Pacific and the Caribbean.<\/p>\n\n\n\n From Lake Nicaragua, the canal would head east, slicing through remote wetlands, nature reserves, and forests, many of them now inaccessible by road. The canal and related infrastructure could easily be several miles wide, and roads and construction camps would open up large areas of wilderness inhabited by indigenous people, thousands of whom would have to relocate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On the Caribbean side, the traffic generated by supertankers and cargo ships could threaten sensitive marine ecosystems, including a 250-square-mile Colombian biosphere reserve<\/a> that includes the second-largest coral reef system in the Caribbean. And the canal would cut in two the so-called Mesoamerican Biological Corridor<\/a>, a loose network of reserves and other lands that stretches from southern Mexico to Panama and is used by animal species such as jaguars to traverse Central America.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIn our view, this canal would create an environmental disaster in Nicaragua and beyond,\u201d Jorge Huete-P\u00e9rez, a biology professor and foreign secretary of the Nicaraguan Academy of Sciences, wrote earlier this year in a joint commentary with a German colleague in Nature.<\/em><\/a> \u201cThe excavation of hundreds of kilometers from coast-to-coast will destroy around 400,000 hectares of rainforests and wetlands. The accompanying development could imperil surrounding ecosystems.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The scale of the canal is so grand, the price tag so high, the economics so uncertain, the background of Wang Jing so murky, and the potential environmental damage so extensive that many question whether the canal will ever be built. Some skeptics think that rather than building the canal, Wang Jing has set his sights on building nine \u201csub-projects\u201d that the Nicaraguan government has given him the exclusive right to develop in and around the canal zone. These projects include a major airport near the city of Rivas and a nearby free-trade zone that will resemble the one in Colon, Panama. Wang Jing also has the option of building major tourist resorts on four of nine sites that initially would be used for worker housing camps, including picturesque Ometepe Island<\/a> in Lake Nicaragua.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nevertheless, the canal project continues to move forward. Jing\u2019s company, the\u00a0Hong Kong Nicaragua Canal Development Group (HKND)<\/a>, in 2013 was granted a renewable 50-year concession to build and operate the canal.\u00a0The proposal<\/a>\u00a0\u2014\u00a0aggressively pushed by Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, whose son is the liaison to Jing \u2014 sailed through the National Assembly with scant debate and no bidding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt has more staying power than one might have expected,\u201d said Thomas Lovejoy, a U.S. ecologist at George Mason University who has worked extensively in South America and who has been conferring with Nicaraguan scientists on the canal project. \u201cThe way it has been handled by the Nicaraguan government is the opposite of transparent. It\u2019s as opaque as all those sediments that would be rendered in the lake. \u2026 It\u2019s a great example of how bad ideas never go away.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Victor Campos, director of the Humboldt Center<\/a>, a leading Nicaraguan environmental think tank based in Managua, raised similar concerns about the lack of transparency and the absence of a comprehensive environmental impact assessment and economic feasibility studies. \u201cWe have only partial and incomplete information, even though the proposed canal route would bring incredible consequences,\u201d Campos said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Many observers also question whether the canal project makes economic sense, given that the Panama Canal is now undergoing a $5.25 billion expansion that would enable it to accommodate more large ships \u2014 a key target market of the Nicaraguan venture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Among the many concerns of scientists and environmentalists is that HKND has commissioned its own environmental assessment, which they contend is being carried out in hurried fashion. Scientists say that the consulting firm doing the work, Environmental Resource Management (ERM)<\/a>, is a respected one, but it has been given little more than a year to carry out an environmental assessment that should take at least several years to complete. ERM\u2019s report on the canal is due later this month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At a meeting earlier this year with ERM in Miami, an international group of scientists pointedly questioned the firm\u2019s representatives, saying they still lacked basic knowledge on key questions, such as the currents in Lake Nicaragua and the composition of the lake bottom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI have been an outspoken critic,\u201d said meeting attendee Axel Meyer, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Konstanz in Germany and co-author of the Nature<\/em> commentary with Huete-P\u00e9rez. \u201cThe whole thing is backwards. They\u2019ve settled on a route. They\u2019ve started construction. Yet there is still no environmental impact assessment.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Di\u00e1logo Chino contacted HKND for comment for this article, but received no response.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To view the map full screen click\u00a0here<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n The greatest environmental concerns center on the canal\u2019s impact on Lake Nicaragua, which contains 40 endemic fish species, including a rare freshwater shark and 16 kinds of cichlids. The fate of the 3,170-square-mile lake was the main focus of a November meeting in Managua of 15 scientists<\/a>, including representatives of several academies of science from around the Americas. Researchers were concerned<\/a> that the lake dredging and the planned 25 daily crossings of huge ships would compromise the lake\u2019s water quality, as could potential fuel spills. The lake currently provides drinking water for some Nicaraguan towns, and if present trends of rising population growth and declining aquifers continue, more of the country \u2014 and perhaps other Central American nations \u2014 may be forced to tap the lake for water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Scientists at the Managua meeting raised questions about where the company will put the 5 billion cubic meters of dredged earth and lake bottom that canal\u2019s excavation work will create. In a December planning update, HKND said most of the earth will be transferred to 35 \u201cconfined disposal facilities\u201d along the three-mile-wide shoulders on either side of the land portion of the canal. One mound of dredged earth would be located in Lake Nicaragua itself, creating an artificial island, HKND says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But critics such as the Humboldt Center\u2019s Campos wonder about the viability of the dredging plan if the spoils turn out to be toxic. \u201cWhat could happen is that contaminants like mercury, arsenic, and heavy metals that lie beneath the lake bottom, which were put there by volcanic activity, will be brought to the surface by the digging. This could alter the natural composition of the water.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another major question is how much dredging will be necessary to keep the canal\u2019s channel across Lake Nicaragua open. If soft sediment keeps moving back into the channel, then frequent dredging could \u201creally wreak havoc with the food chain and the ability of species to survive,\u201d said Lovejoy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He and others also are concerned that the canal could open up a corridor for invasive species to travel from the Caribbean to the Pacific, or vice versa, and to bring alien species into Lake Nicaragua. The Panama Canal\u2019s configuration and elevation have created a freshwater barrier that has largely eliminated the invasive species problem there. But researchers say it is unclear if the Nicaraguan canal would be as effective a barrier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When the canal leaves the eastern side of Lake Nicaragua, it would pass through or near nature reserves and would likely cause major environmental and human upheaval in many remote regions of eastern Nicaragua, critics warn. The current canal route would follow the border between two adjoining nature preserves, Cerro Silva and Indio Maiz<\/a>. These highly biodiverse reserves total 2,600 square miles and include swamps, rain forests, and pristine Caribbean coastal mangroves. They harbor cat species such as jaguars, ocelots, and mountain lions, as well as numerous species of birds, including the harpy eagle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A little-developed river in eastern Nicaragua, the Punta Gorda, would also become part of the canal. And roads would spring up throughout the region, which would likely lead to settlers, forest clearing, poaching of wildlife, and loss of biodiversity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou have to have access for construction,\u201d said Meyer, who has worked in Nicaragua and other parts of Central America. \u201cThey have to have roads in some areas where there are no roads. How do you keep people from settling there? Of course roads are always the beginning. \u2026 It\u2019s just like in the Amazon or Africa. As soon as you have roads, people will come.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In addition, HKND is planning to create a 152-square-mile reservoir in eastern Nicaragua called Lake Atlanta, which would extend into both the Cerro Silva and Indio Maiz reserves. The lake would be used to store water to fill the locks planned for the canal\u2019s Caribbean side. But scientists warn that the reservoir would siphon off water from the San Juan and Punta Gorda river basins. Reduced water flows and added sediment from dredging could affect the morphology of the rivers and especially be felt on the heavily transited San Juan, part of which runs along the border with Costa Rica. Should rainfall patterns change as the climate warms, there may be insufficient water to fill the canal and its locks and also meet Nicaragua\u2019s water needs, scientists say.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The proposed canal would also run alongside the 166-square-mile San Miguelito wetlands, a biodiverse latticework of marshes and rivers on the eastern shore of Lake Nicaragua, recognized by the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands<\/a>. Ship traffic could affect the marshland\u2019s ecology and disturb the 80-plus species of birds that inhabit San Miguelito, a treasured destination for birdwatchers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The canal\u2019s impacts will almost certainly be felt beyond Nicaragua\u2019s borders. Ninety miles off the coast of Nicaragua is the Seaflower Biosphere Reserve<\/a>, a large marine reserve that boasts the Caribbean\u2019s second-largest coral reef network.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Changes in water quality, transparency, and temperature could cause the Seaflower ecosystem to \u201ccollapse,\u201d according to Francisco Arias Isaza, director of Invemar, an oceanographic research agency funded by the Colombian government. \u201cA new canal of the magnitude they are talking about would funnel huge cargo ships to the area, and that worries us,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Scientists worry not only about what the project could do to the environment, but what the environment could do to the canal. Nicaragua is the scene of frequent seismic and volcanic activity and is in the pathway of Caribbean hurricanes, factors that persuaded the U.S. government to bypass Nicaragua and instead select Panama, which is off the hurricane track, as the site of the famous waterway built early last century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cNicaragua has experienced at least four Class 4 or greater hurricanes since 1855,\u201d said Bob Stallard, a hydrology expert with the U.S. Geological Survey, who has studied the effect of storms on the Panama Canal for 30 years. \u201cThe cost of fixing damage [to the canal] could be as much as building the thing in the first place.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The last major storm to hit Nicaragua\u2019s Caribbean coast, Hurricane Mitch in 1998, killed 3,800 Nicaraguans and inflicted $1 billion in damage. The canal\u2019s planned Caribbean port, Punta Gorda, suffered major damage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For most Nicaraguans, environmental concerns about the canal run a distant second to the economic stimulus that President Daniel Ortega has promised the canal would deliver. He has described the project as a booster rocket that will launch Nicaragua toward economic prosperity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ernesto Salinas, a carpenter, lives in the small town of Tola near the canal\u2019s Pacific terminus. His pueblo is in the path of the canal and would have to be relocated. He thinks that overall the canal is a good idea because it will bring \u201cmore jobs, less poverty\u201d to his agricultural community, where plantains and beans are the money crops. \u201cBring it on,\u201d he said. His main concern is when and how much the developer will reimburse him for the 500-acre farm his family owns along the canal route.<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to Telemaco Talavera, a spokesman for the Nicaragua Interoceanic Canal Authority, the waterway and related \u201csub-projects\u201d will add 50 percent to the country\u2019s economic base and boost the economy\u2019s annual growth rate to twice the current 4 percent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Benjamin Lanzas, head of a Managua engineering company and president of the Nicaraguan Chamber of Construction, said the project could deliver much-needed public infrastructure that would stimulate development across the country and have a \u201cmultiplier effect\u201d on economic growth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe need better roads, better airports, better Internet, better tourist attractions, better everything,\u201d said Lanzas. \u201cFor example, this project will include two deepwater ports which we don\u2019t have, one on the Pacific and one on the Atlantic.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lanzas insisted the environmental damage caused by the construction will be \u201cminimal.\u201d But, he added, \u201cIf I have to run over a little frog for this project to go forward and create jobs, I will.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Critics say the talk of an economic windfall is highly speculative, particularly in light of the fact that HKND has yet to make public an economic feasibility study.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhat I\u2019m afraid of is that the government is placing commercial interests above the nation\u2019s environmental well-being,\u201d said scientist Huete-P\u00e9rez.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Monica Lopez Baltodano, an environmental attorney with the Popol Na<\/a> civil society group that advocates for indigenous rights, claims that Wang Jing failed to consult with native communities in the path of the proposed canal \u2014 a violation of the Nicaraguan constitution. But canal backers say special laws passed by the National Assembly gave HKND the right to build on native lands previously designated as quasi-sovereign. Estimates of how many residents would be displaced by canal construction run from 30,000 to more than 100,000 people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBy international standards, HKND hasn\u2019t presented even 1 percent of the information to the public that it should, and there is uncertainty about whether it ever will,\u201d Lopez Baltodano said in an interview. \u201cWe\u2019re talking about the transfer of national territory to a private investor with very few limits on what he can do.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n ERM, the project\u2019s consulting firm, said in an email that it has conducted 2,000 \u201chousehold surveys\u201d and has \u201cconsulted closely with indigenous communities.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yet Joe Kiesecker, a scientist with The Nature Conservancy, faulted the lack of an in-depth, independently funded environmental impact assessment (EIA). Such a study, he said, would enable the public to \u201csee what the future looks like if a development goes forward and what you can do to minimize negative biodiversity, social, and cultural impacts.\u201d The EIA for a project this size, which will have huge direct and indirect effects, should have been started a decade earlier, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Asked why the canal\u2019s planning has gone forward without the usual public hearings and studies in hand, canal authority president Manuel Coronel Kautz said it was due to stipulations agreed upon by the Nicaraguan government and Wang Jing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe discussed doing studies first \u2014 some in the National Assembly wanted that,\u201d said Kautz. \u201cBut if we waited for the last letter of the studies to be completed it could mean up to four years of waiting. The other factor was cost. There was no way Wang Jing was going to invest $300 million in studies without the security of having the concession in hand. So we thought we would do a parallel process.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n With so many questions hanging over the canal, many observers wonder if it will ever become reality. Huete-P\u00e9rez remains one of the doubters, noting that when scientists asked HKND if it had studied Lake Nicaragua\u2019s currents and the composition of its lake bottom, the company replied that such studies were unnecessary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThat made me wonder,\u201d recalls Huete-P\u00e9rez, \u201cif this was a serious project.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n This article is a joint project between <\/em>Yale Environment 360<\/a> and <\/em>Chinadialogue<\/a>\/Di\u00e1logo Chino, with support from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" $50bn inter-oceanic canal is an environmental disaster in the making, conservationists warn<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40000225,"featured_media":50002317,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[50039903],"tags":[523,556],"hashtags":[],"country":[50002598],"class_list":["post-50002298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-water","tag-conservation","tag-infrastructure","country-nicaragua"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n![\"Schoolteacher](\"https:\/\/dialogue.earth\/content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/jorge-lopez.jpeg\")
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