LADBAC@UNMB.BITNET (Dr. Barbara A. Kohl) (08/28/89)
[Summarized below are highlights from an article by
Soon Jin Kim, journalist and scholar. Kim resided in
Central America for 14 years (1961-74). He was the founding
foreign editor of the Guatemalan daily, La Nacion, and
taught at the University of El Salvador. His 1982 doctoral
dissertation at the University of Maryland included
discussion of isthmus canal options and the actors involved.
His book, "EFE: Spain's World News Agency," was published by
Greewood Press in July 1989. The article was provided by
Howard Frederick, Pasadena, Calif.]
* The Panama Canal, completed in 1914, is 51 miles
long. Its lock chambers--1,000 feet long and 110 feet wide,
water depth of 41 feet--cannot accommodate 500,000-ton
capacity supertankers and US aircraft carriers and
battleships. The world's largest tanker, the Japanese
Seawise Giant, is 1,504 feet long with a beam of 226 feet,
and a draught 81 feet deep.
Next, deforestation in Panama is steadily reducing the
canal's water supply. Each transit requires more than 50
million gallons of fresh water to lift and lower the ship in
the locks.
* In 1970, after studying 30 possible canal routes, the
Atlantic-Pacific Inter-Oceanic Canal Study Commission,
mandated by the US Congress, recommended that a sea-level
canal be built in Panama.
* A Nicaragua canal route, however, appears to be a
superior option. The waterway's course would cut through a
narrow strip of land between the Pacific and Lake Nicaragua
(8,262 sq.km. surface area), and proceed to the San Juan
River which flows from the lake to the Caribbean Sea.
* The US is currently prevented from building a canal
anywhere but Panama. The 1977 US-Panama canal treaty
specifies that the US not "negotiate with third states for
the right to construct an inter-oceanic canal on any other
route in the Western Hemisphere" [Article XII, par. 1, (b)].
In addition, Washington agreed in 1971 to abrogate the
1914 Bryan-Chamorro Treaty under which the US had exclusive
rights to build a canal in Nicaragua.
* In 1982, the US-Panama Preparatory Committee on
Panama Canal Alternatives Study invited the Japanese
government to join the project. Japan accepted. The
tri-partite Canal Alternatives Study Commission was
established in 1985. The Commission recommended thereafter
that "the current political and economic instability in
Panama" made it all but impossible to continue the study.
* Japan ranks as the biggest user of the Canal as a
trade route. Although still formally committed to
developing the Panama route, Tokyo has apparently decided
to explore Nicaragua route alternatives.
In early March this year, a seven-member Japanese
business and technical team visited Nicaragua to conduct
on-site inspections of canal route alternatives. Two months
late, in August the team delivered its feasibility report to
the Nicaraguan government. [The team included an ecology
professor from Tokyo University, and architect Kozo
Yamamoto, whose company, Yamamoto & Associates, Inc., has
designed infrastructure projects in 25 countries.]
* Nicaragua's 11-member National Canal Study Commission
is headed by Finance Minister William Hupper. According to
the author, while commission members have made no public
statements, certain details have emerged. The Japanese team
decided that the most cost-effective option would be to cut
through 12 miles of land at the Rivas Strait on the Pacific
end into Lake Nicaragua, and proceed into the San Juan River
to the Caribbean. The San Juan River would require dredging
and also straightening at certain points.
The Japanese team reportedly discarded the most
ambitious scheme to build a sea-level waterway by draining
Lake Nicaragua because of its negative impact on the local
ecology. Another discarded option was digging a canal
parallel to Lake Nicaragua.
Another option would be to construct a sea-level canal
within Lake Nicaragua while insulating it from lake waters
via a giant concrete or plastic trough. This strategy would
avoid destruction of the ecology around the lake.
* Japan is reportedly the only country in the world
with sufficient cash to undertake this 20 to 30-year project
at a cost of some $50 billion. Next, according to the
author, compared to most other contenders, Tokyo would cause
the least suspicion in Washington in terms of "security
threat3V"
Japan may also be the best equipped for such a
construction feat because of its hydro-engineering
expertise. In 1985, Japan completed the world's longest (34
miles) underwater railroad tunnel in the Tsugaru Strait,
connecting Honshu and Hokkaido Islands. Japan is also a
world leader in seismology. (Historical note: In 1903,
Theodore Roosevelt switched to the Panama option to avoid
potential problems from volcanic and earthquake activity
inherent in a Nicaragua route.)
* Nicaragua's Ministry of Agriculture and Agrarian
Reform has commissioned three- to five-year ecological
studies to assist the Japanese commission in its planning.
Specialists from Scandinavian countries are assisting in the
ecology studies. An official representing Nicaragua's
Directorate of Natural Resources (DIRENA) and the Nicaraguan
ambassador to Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg are members of
the National Canal Study Commission.
* Nicaragua is likely approaching the project with
great caution in order not to arouse US suspicions--thus,
its low profile on the canal enterprise. Nicaragua would
retain 51% sovereign interest in the canal, and would
operate the canal in such a way as "to favor the poor of the
Third World."
* Si-a-Paz (Yes-to-Peace, International System of
Protected Areas for Peace) environmental conservation groups
have expressed concern over possible damage canal
construction would inflict on a biosphere reserve they plan
to create on both sides of the San Juan River which serves
as the border between Nicaragua and Costa Rica. The
binational Si-a-Paz program would conserve some 2,500 sq.km.
of rain forest and wetlands and organize economic
development in the areas surrounding the reserve.
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Patt Haring | UNITEX : United Nations
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