A Very Bad Plan
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John, Tess, and I had come to Nicaragua looking for answers about another grandiose plan: to link the country’s Caribbean and Pacific coasts with a 173-mile canal, capable of carrying the world’s largest container ships. It would be more than three times longer than Panama’s, and be wider and deeper, accommodating ships of more than twice the deadweight tonnage, even after the Panama Canal expansion now underway. And while the Panama Canal, completed in 1914, took 10 years to build, Nicaragua’s canal backers intend to knock this one out in five.
Proposals for a canal across Nicaragua have surfaced every half-century or so since the mid-1800s, but nothing ever came of them. When the United States got serious about building a Central American canal in the early 20th century, for instance, Nicaragua was the preferred route. At least until lobbyists for the French Panama Canal Company successfully convinced Congress to buy out its concession—in part by spooking the politicians, sending each a Nicaraguan stamp featuring an exploding volcano.
The current plan was approved in June 2013 by the country’s National Assembly, shepherded through by President Daniel Ortega. Ortega is the 69-year-old socialist who led Nicaragua in the 1980s after his Sandinista National Liberation Front overthrew the dictatorial (and U.S.-backed) Somoza government in 1979. He was reelected in 2006 and 2011, and has aligned himself with the “Bolivarian Alliance” of populist Latin American nations that was established by former Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez. A canal has been on Ortega’s radar since his return to power. The previous administration laid the groundwork in 2006, circulating a proposal to lure investors. In 2012 the Ortega government announced that investors from China, Russia, Venezuela, and elsewhere had expressed interest.
For the Orteguistas, the canal represents an unrivaled opportunity for economic growth in Nicaragua—the second-poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere after Haiti—which may be why they seem so eager to start construction. The legislature authorized the passageway following just three days of debate and no public comment. It granted the concession to China’s Hong Kong Nicaragua Canal Development Investment Company (HKND), led by a little-known Chinese telecom exec named Wang Jing. Writing for The New Yorker, veteran Latin American reporter Jon Lee Anderson cites a source with close government ties saying that Wang first made contact in 2012 with Ortega’s son, who had visited China as a private citizen. When Nicaragua approved HKND’s bid a year later, there were no competitors. Nothing on Wang’s resume suggests experience overseeing large development projects; HKND nonetheless received a 50-year contract, renewable for another 50, to develop, operate, and build infrastructure, including roads and ports, for what’s being billed as the largest civil engineering project the world has ever seen. ...
http://www.audubon.org/magazine/january-february-2015/a-very-bad-plan
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