Chinese building a rival to the Panama Canal in Nicaragua

Merco Press reports that

Nicaragua on Monday announced the start of work on shipping canal designed to rival Panama's waterway and revamp the economy of the second-poorest country in the Americas, behind Haiti. The project is backed by China as it attempts to reshape its influence in the region currently dominated by the United States, which built the Panama Canal a century ago.

“This project will bring no benefit to the people of Nicaragua, it will only benefit the Chinese,” the South China Morning Post quoted 24-year-old protest leader Danilo Lorio as saying. “The compensation offer for our lands is ridiculous.”

There have been 17 such demonstrations against the canal in recent months with the largest on December 10 drawing a crowd of 5,000 to the capital Managua. Nicaraguans are angry over what they charge are illegal land seizures by the Nicaraguan government in order to pave the way for the massive and controversial infrastructure project.

The proposed canal is set to intersect Lake Nicaragua, known locally as Lake Cocibolca, sending cargo ships and tankers straight through the largest source of freshwater in Central America. Further, the canal is expected to displace tens of thousands of mostly rural and indigenous landholders and would likely devastate over 400,000 acres of rainforests and wetlands, which scientists say are critical to local and regional biodiversity conservation efforts.

According to Ohio State University doctoral candidate Chris Hartmann writing for Foreign Policy in Focus, “Farmers and residents near the lake are concerned that the proposed canal will disrupt subsistence agricultural practices, further pollute the lake, and decrease water for personal consumption and irrigation. Both farmers and residents worry they will be evicted from their lands, and many will refuse to leave willingly.”

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