[LINK] "Nicaragua’s Interoceanic Canal, a Nightmare for Environmentalists"

[rfmcdonald]

The Inter Press Service carries José Adán Silva's article warning of the environmental effects of an interoceanic canal in Nicaragua.

The international scientific community’s fears about the damage that will be caused by Nicaragua’s future interoceanic canal have been reinforced by the environmental impact assessment, which warns of serious environmental threats posed by the megaproject.

The report “Canal de Nicaragua: Executive Summary of Environmental and Social Impact Assessment” was carried out by the British consulting firm Environmental Resources Management (ERM) and commissioned by the Hong Kong Nicaragua Canal Development (HKDN Group), the Chinese company that won the bid to build the canal.

The 113-page executive summary sums up the study, whose unabridged version has not been made publicly available by the government, ERM or HKND.

In the study, ERM says the megaproject could be of great benefit to the country as long as best international practices on the environmental, economic and social fronts are incorporated at the design, construction and operational stages, for which it makes a number of recommendations.

[. . .]

The canal will go across the 8,624-sq-km Lake Cocibolca, also known as Lake Nicaragua – the second largest lake in Latin America after Venezuela’s Lake Maracaibo. The route will be nearly four times longer than its rival, the Panama Canal.

The 276-km canal will link the Atlantic and Pacific oceans; of that length, 105 km will cross Lake Cocibolca.