Will the Panama Canal face competition in the coming decade from Nicaragua?

Off Radar Cruise News has become aware of a British consultancy Environmental Resources Management Ltd that recently delivered an highly anticipated social and environmental study dedicated to the impact of the proposed Nicaragua Canal. 

To date not much detail has been provided to the press and public and what we know at this juncture is just that the Canal offers potential benefits for the environment and the Nicaraguans as a whole.

A spokesperson from Environmental Resources Management Ltd stated that the company was neither for or against the project, indicating that the study merely uncovered potential challenges the Nicaraguan government and the contractor – the Hong Kong-based HK Nicaragua Canal Development Investment Co Ltd (HKND Group) could potentially face. It should be noted that the completion of the study is the first notable sign of progress concerning the project since the groundbreaking ceremony organized back in December 2014.

We now understand that an inter-institutional commission will discuss the results of the study this June 2015 with the canal commission voting on it later in July 2015.

Nicaragua Grand Canal Details
In essence the Nicaragua Grand Canal is expected to be massive 172-mile waterway (230-520 meters wide & 27.6 meters deep), making it significantly longer, wider and deeper than the 51-mile Panama Canal further south in central America.

The project has a reported price tag of $50 billion USD and the forecasted completion date is 5 years once work has started, which means all being well the Canal will become operational by 2020.

In all the Canal will feature 6 sub projects:

1. The Canal (including locks)
2. 2 ports
3. A free trade zone
4. Holiday resorts
5. An international airport 
6. Several new roads. 

Moreover, there will be construction of:

• A power station
• Cement factory
• Steel factory
• Other related facilities.

The Canal will slice through Lake Cocibolca (also known as aka Lake Nicaragua), Central America’s main freshwater reservoir and the largest tropical freshwater lake of the Americas. The plan will also force the relocation of indigenous populations and potentially impact a fragile ecosystem which includes certain species at risk of extinction. This is at least according to the Rice University environmental engineer "Pedro Alvarez" and members of a consortium of some 21 environmental scientists.

Going back to March 2015, the consortium of scientists originating from both North and South America expressed concern about the impact of the Nicaragua Canal through a coauthored paper titled ”Scientists Raise Alarms About Fast Tracking of Transoceanic Canal Through Nicaragua.” This has since generated some controversy.

In summary, it is claimed that the biggest environmental challenge is to build and operate the canal without catastrophic impacts to this sensitive ecosystem. An impact to the natural lake could result from incidental or accidental spills from 5,000+ ships passing through annually; moreover invasive species brought by transoceanic ships, which could threaten the extinction of aquatic plants and local fish, such as the cichlids that have been evolving since the lake’s formation. Sustained dredging could also impact on aquatic life through alterations in turbidity and hypoxia, triggered by resuspension of nutrients and organic matter that exert a relatively high biochemical oxygen demand.

Certainly the Nicaragua Grand Canal is an ambitious project and all such projects are bound to face controversy. However, for those in the Shipping business it's an exciting proposition and no doubt something that overall the people of Nicaragua badly need.