The Grand Canal (Nicaragua)

         Nicaragua is about to embark on what may be the boldest and riskiest Megaproject in the history of the world. One that will change it forever. It’s going to build the biggest canal in the world . The $50 billion Nicaragua Grand Canal will cut the country in half to connect the Atlantic Ocean with the Pacific, running through the biggest lake in Central America. At 173-miles-long, it’ll dwarf the 120 mile-long Suez Canal in Egypt and directly compete with the Panama Canal 250 miles to the south, through which more than 15,000 ships already pass each year. But in the coming years, many more ships full of goods and raw materials are going to try and pass back and forth from the Pacific to the Atlantic to connect Europe, Brazil and the Eastern Coast of the United States, with China and the rest of Asia. The story of how little six-million-man Nicaragua, the second-poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, is able to afford such an expensive project is a fascinating case study of globalization, and how capitalism is increasingly driving geopolitical decision-making. In June of last year, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega’s Sandanista party also controlled parliament and - without any real debate - gave a 50-year, no-bid contract to Chinese telecommunications magnate Wang Jing to build and manage the proposed canal. And, it just so happens that, also last year, according to a report in the LA Times, Wang hosted a number of Nicaraguan officials and businessmen on a trip to China, where the powerful and connected Wang supposedly flaunted his extreme wealth and was accompanied at all times by Chinese military officers and other high-ranking governmental officials. So, it’s tough to believe him when he insists that the Chinese government is not financially backing the project, especially when we already know that China is using state financed companies to buy more and more assets in the West. The opportunity to own the world’s most valuable shipping lane seems too tempting for the Chinese government to pass up. The supposedly democratic government of Nicaragua is using a page out of China’s playbook, by refusing to release any of the studies about the impacts of the canal until December 2014, the same month construction will begin. That’s because there is a loooong list of environmental and humanitarian concerns. The project will tear through countless ecosystems and communities, and rip into the source of much of the country’s freshwater, Lake Nicaragua. The residents whose land is on the canal route have received no word on what the government plans to do for them in terms of compensation and relocation. But, as easy as it is to criticize the way the project is being handled, it’s also fairly hypocritical of me, as an American, to mount a very convincing argument against the plan. Afterall, about a hundred years ago, US President Theodore Roosevelt basically took control of Panama and pushed through the canal there, a project that’s benefitted America time and time again, and has made Panama economically better off in the long run. But we’re not living in 1914… Now is the time of social media-fueled revolution, where images and video fly around the world instantly, empowering even the poorest locals to use the power of the global community to rally support for their cause and exert political pressure in unpredictable ways. So, what I’m saying is that it may have been easy for President Ortega see all that money flying around and secretly, singlehandedly approve a massively disruptive project like this, but when those bulldozers start tearing apart the countryside - and people’s homes - there’s probably going to be hell to pay for not consulting the voters at all. This could be shaping up to be another one of those important moments of struggle in world history between the powerful haves and the have nots. On the one hand, you have the limitless funding of the Chinese who want that flag-in-the-dirt, statement-making moment for their country of staking a claim in the Americas. We know the canal would benefit corporations in the west through the shipping and trade benefits I outlined earlier. And with construction set to begin in Nicaragua next month - there doesn’t seem to be any stopping it from starting. But on the other hand, this thing is going to take six years at a minimum to finish, and if we’ve learned anything from recent history, it’s that a lot can happen in six weeks or six months, let alone six years.