Under loud protests the work on the controversial Pacific Atlantic channel has started in Nicaragua. President Daniel Ortega announced at a ceremony in the capital Managua launched the mega-project. At the same time protesting thousands of farmers against the building because they fear the destruction of their livelihoods.
The opposition and citizens’ groups have criticized that numerous environmental requirements had not been met. The “Great Interoceanic Canal” will cross Lake Nicaragua with its unique ecosystem. The route also passes through residential areas of Indian communities to be resettled. The channel should already be completed in 2019.
“A century dream come true,” counters promises the website of the Chinese HKND group. The name of the billions of investor says it all: HK Nicaragua Canal Development Investment Company’s corporate construct that will take the most ambitious building project on this globe in attack
Behind. puts the flamboyant Chinese oligarch Wang Jing. On the canal company Nicaragua has a 51 per cent, its Chinese HKND group with 49 percent. Wang the operating rights of the channel has secured for the next 50 years, which can be extended for another 50 years.
mega project will cost $ 50 billion
The new waterway will cost around 50 billion dollar after official figures. Geographically to “El Gran Canal,” as the government of Sandinista President Ortega called the project team at the mouth of the Rio Punta Gorda on the Caribbean coast to the mouth of the Rio Brito in the East Atlantic and the Pacific.
The construction will go on our current plans around five to six years. Nicaragua hopes that similar bubbly billion revenue as the Panama Canal generated in the neighborhood. China wants to be independent strategically on to that Panama Canal and secure its long term agreed oil supplies from Venezuela.
Not only hydrological challenges of this mega project are gigantic. The economic impact of the proposed channel will shift the balance of power in the region, if indeed the engineers all technical challenges despite the feat should be able to actually build the new connection between the Atlantic and Pacific.
The Panama Canal is, however, a small trickle
Last Thursday was Benjamin Lanza, chief of the Nicaraguan Chamber of Crafts, the rest of the small country proclaim good news. If it goes to the local companies that have been hired for the building, then to start the construction vehicles as planned on Monday: “We are ready.”
In The first step would then be applied the access roads for the excavation work. Only for about three months are provided. With the actual channel construction, as clarified Lanza, but will start later. Before the first excavation of the new artificial waterway can be tackled only the preliminary steps must once be caulked.
Parallel to the future channel path slopes must be built, to allow access to the site. A port on the Caribbean coast to be built to take heavy construction equipment at all in reception can that are necessary for the later excavations.
Because the dimensions of the channel are enormous: It is intended to extend over a length of 278 kilometers, be 230-520 meters wide and 30 meters deep. In contrast, the Panama Canal looks like a small trickle. With the actual channel of the Chinese hunger is still not satisfied. The operators want to stomp and highways, two ports, an artificial lake, a free trade zone, a tourism complex and a steel and concrete company from the ground.
On top of that may China also degrade the raw materials found there. Critics complain therefore, the Asians had bought in the style of colonialists for comparatively little money an entire country.
China’s growing influence in Latin America
Background of Chinese investment group is also the government in Beijing. This gives the already controversial project even more explosive. Because China’s influence in Latin America will become even greater than it already is. Beijing has slipped in recent years into the vacuum left by the region of the involuntary withdrawal of the United States.
Since the shift to the left in Latin America, China succeeded to obtain direct or indirect access to the raw materials Central and South America, while the hated “gringos” lost more and more influence. The oil-rich Venezuela China concluded long-term supply contracts.
There is a project full economic and political contradictions. Nicaragua’s President Ortega that, the Sandinistas once fought against the domination of the big landowners, decided just for the Chinese oligarchs Wang Jing as an investor, is socialist followers Ortega’s difficult to cope with. China now has in Nicaragua free hand and wants to protect strategic long term.
Because to get the Venezuelan oil to China, the tankers have been through the Panama Canal. While the US has returned the channel to Panama years ago, but the country counts as one of the few Latin American nations still for direct sphere of influence in Washington.
With the Nicaragua Canal, this is the calculus of the Chinese, would be the supply of Venezuelan oil safely. In Ecuador, the country has secured access to the oil in the ecologically valuable rainforest in Paraguay China has bought huge tracts of rows for food production.
Ecological impacts are unknown
The big advantage for the Latin American governments: China politics and the media of the vast country do not prying questions of human rights and environmental protection. Western companies must, however, deal with nagging demands of activists from their own countries.
is correspondingly intense discomfort in Nicaragua. The scientist Jorge A. Huete-Pérez from the University Centroamericana in Managua is one of the most vocal critics of the project. The environmental impact of this huge building were not clear, mainly because it split the country in two. For the wildlife that was a disaster.
In addition, the Chinese information policy raises more questions than they answer. “There are always changing plans at short notice and without explanation taken from the site,” said Huete-Pérez. This leads to fear and anxiety in the population who did not know what to expect.
Still is always clear which people are forced to move because of the project and to leave their homes. Around 100,000 Nicaraguans are affected, according to the estimates of local media. So just know that in addition to the planners of the HKND group but still nobody. First mass protests there had been before the start of construction.
This is why many people are turning to the Catholic Church, which also given the interdependence of the Sandinista government, but Christian Democratic opposition seems to be the last independent institution in the country with the construction companies.
Population calls Catholic bishops to help
A few days before the official start of construction, members of the Commission channel with the Nicaraguan bishops gathered for a briefing. The meeting aims to open questions have been that concerned citizens of the Church have send. The Secretary-General of the Nicaraguan bishops’ conference, Bishop Jorge Solorzano said after the meeting, the bishops had asked the government to listen to the concerns of the people and to be taken seriously.
The Papal Nuncio, Fortunatus Nwachukwu, answered the question of whether the information of channel Commission spokesman Telemaco Talavera were sufficient “Contentment is relative.” But the church would by no means put the project in the way when it would be guaranteed that it meant a way out of poverty and at the same time a technological development of the country for thousands of Nicaraguans, Secretary General Solorzano had recently signaled.
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