Fri, 05/25/2012 - 08:36 — tortilla
Lizzie Phelan, Press TV, May 25th 2012
Nicaragua’s plan to build a waterway links the Pacific and Atlantic that would carry bigger ships than the existing Panama Canal. Nicaragua is the only place that an alternative interoceanic canal can be built.
The vital trade route between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, the Panama Canal, is unable to cope with the sustained increase in seaborne trade and growing use of ships that are too big to enter it. Now rising economic powerhouses, Russia and China, are looking to Nicaragua for an alternative.
The geographical features of Nicaragua make it perfect for this kind of project. From Alaska to the Southern most tip of South America in Tierra del Fuego the lowest elevation across the Americas is here where I am standing in Southern Nicaragua.
And after a 119 mile journey up the River San Juan into this lake, Lake Nicaragua, all that remains is for 12 miles of canal to be constructed from here to the Pacific Ocean so that ships can pass through the isthmus.
5 other possible routes are also being studied by the new commission called the Grand Interoceanic Canal Authority of Nicaragua, which has support from Russia and China.
But it is not just those countries that will benefit. So for the United States to find a better, an improved way of going from the East Coast to their West Coast and to the Asia Pacific, is very very important.
The main cause for US and European intervention in Nicaragua over the centuries has been to try to reap the benefits of the geopolitical power this kind of interoceanic canal would bring. But with this initiative firmly in the Nicaraguan government’s hands, if it is realised the prime beneficiaries will be the Nicaraguan people, who could see their country turn from one of the region’s poorest to a regional economic power.
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