Nicaragua defies canal protests HKND, the Hong Kong-based company that is building the canal, has commissioned its own assessment. The company says that a draft will be available for public review this month, with a final report in March or April. In November 2014, the company delivered an eight-hour presentation in Managua that critics say largely played down potential environmental impacts. A government spokesman did not reply to requests for information about the review process. Scientists have therefore assembled an ad hoc review process of their own. An assessment completed in September by the Humboldt centre concluded that the canal would cause “very significant environmental impacts”, and probably would not have been approved under Nicaragua’s usual rules. And in November, participants at a scientific workshop in Managua hosted by the Nicaraguan Academy of Sciences came up with a list of environmental concerns about the canal project. “We can’t offer any advice, but we can pose the important questions that anyone should answer before embarking on a project this big,” says water-conservation researcher Luís Zambrano of the Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City, who was one of the 13 international scientists invited to the workshop. nature/news/nicaragua
Posted on: Tue, 30 Dec 2014 08:50:20 +0000
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