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Nicaragua Canal: A Giant Project With Huge Environmental Costs

May 16, 2015

Nicaragua Canal: A Giant Project With Huge Environmental Costs

Work has already begun on a $50 billion inter-ocean canal in Nicaragua that would cut through nature reserves and bring massive dredging and major ship traffic to Central America’s largest lake. Scientists and conservationists are warning that the project is an environmental disaster in the making. 

In a scenic lagoon on Nicaragua’s Brito River, less than a mile from the Pacific Ocean, schoolteacher Jorge Lopez and a friend were fishing on a recent morning. He gestured toward a bend in the narrow river, canopied with arching trees draped in moss, and said, “There are howler monkeys, crocodiles, and parrots all along this waterway. It would be a shame to lose all this.”

What threatens this tranquil spot and many others in Nicaragua is a controversial and wildly ambitious project to build a 173-mile canal — more than three times the length of the Panama Canal — that would connect the Pacific and Atlantic oceans via the Caribbean Sea. The $50 billion canal project is the brainchild of Chinese businessman Wang Jing and has the full support of the Nicaraguan government, which claims that the canal will give a huge boost to the country’s economy, the second poorest in the Western Hemisphere after Haiti.

Many Nicaraguans back the canal project, and preliminary work has already begun — 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.

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