Nicaragua’s Grand
Canal - The other side of the story
Mark Burton and Chuck Kaufman
Enviado
por tortilla en Mar, 30/12/2014 - 07:31
December
26th 2014
Nicaragua is on the
verge of beginning construction of a trans-isthmus canal, a dream that goes
back to the colonial era. The canal will supplement the Panama Canal and will
handle the largest ships which can’t fit in Panama’s locks. Nicaragua has made
a sovereign decision on how it is going to develop and it is now
under attack. Just like many people in the US supported Nicaragua's
sovereign right to defend its territory in the 1980s, and to decide who is
going to be their president (President Ortega remains quite popular in his
third term), solidarity activists should support the sovereign right of
Nicaraguans to develop their country as they see fit.
We are sensitive to
important environmental issues raised by the construction of a megaproject such
as a new canal connecting the Pacific to the Caribbean. However, much of
the environmental criticism seems to be coming from the United States, and some
from Europe. It is more than a little ironic that North Americans, who have
hardly 2% of their original forest cover left, and produce more pollution per
capita than any other country on earth, are lecturing Nicaraguans on the
environment. It is also true that quite a number of the people marching
in Nicaragua against the project are from the opposition which opposes
everything that the democratically-elected government of the FSLN tries to do.
Opposition parties, including those of former Sandinistas, are scared to death
that the FSLN will continue to increase employment and decrease poverty. They
are concerned that development spurred by the canal will increase the FSLN’s
popularity and further marginalize their own electoral ambitions.
The Nicaragua loses
70,000 hectares of forest per year to slash and burn agriculture by people
who are desperately poor and just eke out a living in the countryside, or due
to large-scale agriculture and ranching interests. Better enforcement and
decreasing levels of poverty, thanks to government programs, did reduce forest
loss to 63,000 hectares in 2013. However, Nicaragua has long been the poorest
country, after Haiti, in Latin America and it simply doesn’t have the money to
sustain Nicaragua’s forests. Some economic indicators now indicate Nicaragua
has risen above Honduras in the ranking of poorest countries, but regardless,
Nicaragua is still a poor country. With its budget, the Nicaraguan government
can only afford to reforest 15,000 hectares per year. Presidential advisor
Paul Oquist says that the only conceivable source of money for more
reforestation is revenue from the canal. If the US would pay Nicaragua the $17
billion (plus nearly 29 years of interest) that it was ordered by the World
Court to pay as reparations in 1986 for the damage caused by its illegal Contra
War, Nicaragua wouldn’t need the canal in order to achieve sustainable
development. But, critics aren’t even working on that issue.
As Panama learned, a
canal is absolutely dependent on a healthy watershed, which requires unbroken
expanses of healthy forest. So construction of the canal will actually improve
that important environmental health factor. The Nicaraguan government also points
out correctly that poverty is the greatest destructive force on their
environment. Jobs created by construction and operation of the canal will
reduce poverty and increase revenue. The government of President Daniel Ortega
has a proven record as one of the foremost governments in the world working to
adapt to and mitigate the effects of climate change.
Last year Nicaragua
passed 50% of electricity production by renewable sources, and government
policies have opened the way to 90% green energy production by 2020. We only
wish we had a government in the US as concerned about the environment as
Nicaraguans do. Those who argue against the canal treat the areas that the
canal will go through as if they are pristine rainforest and wetlands. This is
simply not true. Anyone flying from West to East over what once were vast and
impenetrable forests will see that decades of agricultural frontier advancement
and illegal clear cut logging have left hollow shells of trees around nearly
adjoining squares of bare earth.
The wetlands too have
been highly degraded by pesticide run-off and commercial shrimp farming. As a
result of public comments about the need to protect an important wetland area,
canal planners added a long bridge to the plan to reduce impact. Indeed, many
changes to the plan, including the route itself, have been made as a result of
an ongoing environmental impact study and consultations with the communities
the canal will affect. The argument by canal opponents that the process has
been opaque and that people have not been consulted rings hollow and smells of
political opportunism.
There are good and
sincere reasons to be concerned about the environmental impact of the canal,
especially pertaining to threats to water quality in Lake Cocibolca (Lake Nicaragua).
The “great lake” is the largest reservoir of fresh water in Central American.
The canal will cross it and the plan calls for serious dredging. Supporters of
the canal point to the dredged topsoil as a resource to recover land denuded by
Hurricane Mitch in 1998. Whether the dredged soil will be free enough of heavy
metals and other pollutants, we don’t know, but neither do the canal’s
opponents.
However, we are
suspicious that opponents of the canal are playing right into the narrative of
forces that care nothing about the environment and everything about the
maintenance of US hegemony over the countries of Latin America and the
Caribbean basin. This is credible because the canal will be a big
blow to US imperialism and hegemony. Apart from making Nicaragua
wealthier and more independent, it is also punches a hole in the
strategic value of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP).
The TTP is an attempt by
the US and transnational corporations to create dependent countries that are
beholden to the United States and which also agree to isolate
China. Critics call it “NAFTA on steroids.” Chile,
Peru, Panama, Colombia, Mexico are all in the TPP treaty that will likely be a
rare point of agreement between the Republican Congress and President Obama when
it is voted on early next year. The canal bypasses this attempt to
isolate China as the large ships carrying Chinese goods will be able to trade
efficiently with Brazil, Cuba, Venezuela and other countries.
China is one
of these countries’ largest foreign trade partners. The canal will also
save mega-barrels of oil burned up because the biggest ships must travel
thousands of miles around the tip of South America since they are too big for
the Panama Canal. It does no good to argue that those ships should never have
been built. We agree. However, they were, and they are plying the world’s
oceans at this very moment. Indeed, China and Cuba just completed talks during
a visit to the island by Chinese President Xi Jinping that will include a
Chinese investment of $100 million to upgrade the port at Santiago de Cuba to
handle ships exceeding 40,000 tons. Venezuela, as well, has plans to build an
oil refinery in Cuba.
China is now the third
largest foreign investor in Latin America, (the first in Brazil) and often
makes trade and aid deals on better terms and without the strings attached by
the US and Europe. China has given financial, technological, and diplomatic
support to the cooperative trade group, ALBA (Bolivarian Alliance of the
Peoples of Our Americas) which includes Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Bolivia,
Ecuador and several Caribbean island nations.
An example of China’s
support for Latin American countries is its offer to support Argentina when a
New York judge declared Argentina in default of its international debt
payments. So-called vulture funds had bought up Argentine debt for pennies on
the dollar, but sought court approval to collect the full face value of the
debt. As a result, Argentina was in danger of having its foreign credit supply cut
off. An official of China visited Argentina the day after the New York court
ruling and offered Argentina credit on favorable terms.
The United States, with
its hegemonic Monroe Doctrine, has never been able to accept that Latin
American countries may develop as they wish and have relations with whomever
they wish. Since 1999, with the election of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, Latin
America has increasingly freed itself of US hegemony. US imperialists,
including Obama, do not accept that changed reality and are using tools like
sanctions against Venezuela and even darker schemes by USAID, the National
Endowment for Democracy, and the CIA to attempt to bring Latin America back
into the fold.
Our job as solidarity
activists is to expose and oppose US intervention in the sovereign affairs of
Nicaragua, Latin America, and indeed the world. It is not our job to criticize
or lecture other countries on the sovereign decisions they choose to pursue in
the interest of economic and social justice. To do so makes us little better
than our government or of interventionist groups like Human Rights Watch. As
residents of a country that cut down its own great hardwood forests and
continues to poison its, and the world’s, water and air, we should show a bit
of humility before hectoring other countries on environmental issues.
Besides, we find the
claims that the canal will have positive environmental impacts to be at least
as persuasive as the arguments for its negative impact. In the final analysis,
we argue that it is up to Nicaraguans to decide whether or not the benefits
outweigh the risks.
Mark Burton is an NLG
criminal defense attorney and board member of the Alliance for Global Justice.
Chuck Kaufman is AfGJ National Co-Coordinator. The views expressed in this
article are their own. The Alliance for Global Justice has a policy of
neutrality on the canal and its project, the Nicaragua Network, is committed to
objectively reporting both sides of the issue.
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