The canal will jeopardize our ability to adapt to climate change

Reflections by an engineer and environmental expert on the effects climate change is having in Nicaragua, the global negotiations on the issue up to now and the critical relationship between it and the interoceanic canal.

Victor M. Campos Cubas

Global warming, as we know, is the increase in the Earth’s mean temperature. This climate change is provoked by carbon dioxide emissions, known as greenhouse effect gases, resulting from the burning of fuel, deforestation and a host of other human activities. By now we all have some idea of what it is and what it’s doing, and concern about it is finally growing in the world.

Voices linked to corporations and the mercantile ideology have spent a long time denying that global warming is largely the result of gasses expelled into the atmosphere by the intensive development of increasingly contaminating and predatory human activities. But the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which gathers and analyzes independent scientific studies from all over the world, has finally clearly and categorically stated in its fifth report that climate change is the result of human activities. There’s no longer room for any doubt.

Greenhouse effect gasses
don’t respect borders

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called climate change “the pre-eminent geopolitical and economic issue of the 21st century. It rewrites the global equation of development, peace and prosperity.” His words reflect the transcendence of this phenomenon humanity is now facing.

Climate change is a global problem. Greenhouse effect gasses distribute themselves evenly across the planet, totally covering the Earth’s atmosphere. They don’t respect borders. So it’s both a global problem and a regional, national and local one. It affects everyone, everywhere. And that means it’s a problem for Nicaragua and the rest of Central America. Ever since 1991, three Central American countries—Honduras, Nicaragua and Guatemala—have been among the 10 countries that GermanWatch’s climate change risk index map shows to be most vulnerable to the effects of climate change based on the number of climatic events they have suffered and the number of people affected.

The main effects of climate change

The main effects of climate change are either an excess or a scarcity of water. While we can see that our dry season is generally longer, that it’s hotter and there’s less rain, there’s also more flooding and more powerful hurricanes. The most recurring climate change events, which make up 86% of the combined recorded total, are floods, storms and landslides, followed by droughts.

Climate change has altered the pattern of tropical cyclones. The hurricanes in the Caribbean are tending to move further north, and although there has been no increase in their frequency, they are becoming more intense. Some scientists believe the peak intensity reached by Hurricane Mitch over Central America in 1998 was specifically a result of climate change, but it’s hard to attribute climate change exclusively to any specific phenomenon because there have always been expressions of climatic vulnerability. The El Niño current along the Pacific Ocean’s coasts, for example, has always existed. What could be happening now is that climate change is influencing its greater frequency and duration, causing longer dry periods.

Climate change causes harmful effects on human health by increasing water-related diseases and the numbers of certain disease-transmitting vectors. For example, the climate variation has already expanded the area of Nicaragua where leishmaniasis, also known as mountain leprosy, can be found. The increased temperatures resulting from the heating up of the climate are also triggering other illnesses, such as skin cancer, cardiovascular problems, kidney problems due to reduced hydration… And climate change isn’t just affecting humans; it’s also having an impact on other species of flora and fauna. Its effects on biodiversity are especially dramatic.

The variability of the climate is also influencing crops. The Humboldt Center conducted a study to project the harvest corresponding to our basic diet of gallopinto and tortillas (beans, maize and rice) up to 2050. We were able to forecast important reductions in the conditions required for developing those three basic food crops, because climate change alters not only the temperature, but also rainy seasons and the soil. Zones that currently have a high maize production may no longer have one in a very few years. Coffee growers are already seeking higher zones to plant their crop or else seeking substitute crops such as cacao to compensate for the problems they’re already having growing coffee due to climate change.

We aren’t making this up

We environmentalists are always accused of exaggerating things. A series of studies we did and sent to the government about the possible effects of climate change in Nicaragua based on combining temperatures and rainfalls—not using the most unfavorable figures but rather a moderate scenario to make it credible—produced what should be worrying data. According to the projections in these studies, there will be an average 1.6 degree centigrade increase in the temperature and an average 800 millimeter reduction of rain in Nicaragua. And I repeat, these are average figures; there will be areas of Nicaragua where there will be even higher temperatures and even less rain, and vice versa. But this is the way our country is heading.

We also compared the current map of climate risk zones in Nicaragua with our projected the scenario for 2050. What we found is that 139 of Nicaragua’s 153 municipalities will be at high risk by that date, compared the 94 that are now. And the 88% of the country’s land mass currently at high risk will have risen to 97% by 2050. Put yet another way, if 45% of Nicaragua’s population (some 2.3 million people) is living in high-risk zones today, 87% (some 6.5 million people) will be doing so by 2050.

Given the life-and-death importance of having safe potable water for coping with climate change, we studied its availability in the poorer municipalities. If 96 of our country’s poor municipalities have poor or at best average availability today, that number will climb to 118 in the 2050 scenario. Said differently, if the availability of drinking water is only poor or regular in 85% of the country’s land mass, it will be true of 91% by 2050. With respect to the population, 95% will have poor or regular access to safe water in 2050, compared to 46% today.

We also studied the availability of safe water for people who live in risk zones. Here the figures are even more alarming. If 116 municipalities at climatic risk also have difficulties getting clean water, the number will have risen to 145 by 2050, representing an increase from 64.6% to 93.6% of the national territory.

What can be done about all this?

In climate change jargon, the talk is about “mitigation” and “adaptation” responses. Mitigation refers to preventing the warming from continuing to increase, which obviously means reducing the emission of greenhouse effect gasses. Their emission in the Central American region as a whole represents only 0.7% of the world’s total emissions, and in Nicaragua the figure is even more insignificant. That’s why about all we in Nicaragua and the rest of Central America can do at this point in the global problem is figure out how to adapt, because even if we stopped emitting all greenhouse effect gases, it wouldn’t have any significant repercussion from the global perspective.

But it must be clearly pointed out that if the interoceanic canal is actually built, it will accentuate the climate change effects in our country by drastically changing our water resources, which is our guarantee of being able to adapt to climate change. That canal will destabilize Nicaragua’s most important watershed, Basin 69, which is made up of Lake Xolotlán, Lake Cocibolca and the Río San Juan. A full half of Nicaragua’s population lives around this basin, considered the backbone of the country’s climate change adaptation possibilities. The canal would deliver a hard blow to them by deteriorating the main source of drinkable water for both Nicaragua and the region as a whole.

The global negotiation process

Let’s now take a look at the world’s climate change negotiation process, which has already been going on for a number of years. On the 12th of this very month, we’ll be going to COP 20, the 20th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which is being held in Lima, Peru, this year. The Conference’s 195 member countries, or “parties,” have spent the past 20 years trying to reach an agreement among them all that could put the brakes on climate change. So far, however, they have not listened to the scientific criteria, so have regrettably only decided to try to keep global warming under 2 degrees, which is what the Intergovernmental Climate Change Panel estimates is necessary to maintain life on the planet in the conditions we’re now familiar with.

Climate change first began to be perceived as a problem in the seventies and eighties. In 1992, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change was born as one of the results of the Earth Summit in Río de Janeiro. Its objective was “to stabilize the greenhouse effect gasses in the atmosphere” and thus halt the advance of global warming. Since global warming is increasing as a result of these gasses being sent out into the atmosphere, the only way to “stabilize them” would be to reduce them, which would indeed avoid a continuing increase in global warming. But that Framework Convention included no binding elements obliging the countries to comply with emission reduction.

The Kyoto Protocol

As climate change continued to advance inexorably, a mechanism called the Kyoto Protocol, which does contain binding obligations to reduce greenhouse effect gasses, was finally established as part of the Convention in December 1997, after many long negotiations. But the proposal was only to reduce emissions by 5.8%, while the scientific criterion speaks of the need for a 40% reduction if it is to have any significant effect.

“Flexibility mechanisms” were also established in the Protocol, including dividing the countries into three groups: “Annex 1 countries,” “Annex 2 countries” and “Non-Annex 1 countries.” Those who belonged to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in 1992 are in both of the first two groups, while those with economies in transition, mainly the Eastern European countries, are only in the first one. While both groups are industrialized countries that put more greenhouse effect gasses into the atmosphere and thus were obliged to reduce their emissions, the Annex 2 countries were given additional obligations such as providing financial resources through the Convention to enable developing countries (the “Non-Annex 1 countries”) to undertake emission-reduction activities and to help them adapt to the adverse effects of climate change. The 49 parties classified as least developed countries (LDCs) by the United Nations are given special consideration within that third “Non-Annex 1” group.

A serious problem with that classification is that it corresponds to the world situation in the nineties, so countries like China, for example, ended up in Non-Annex 1. It was expected at that point that China’s emissions wouldn’t exceed those of the United States until around 2050 or 2060, not 2012, as turned out to be the case. Nonetheless, China is still listed as a Non-Annex 1 country.

Perhaps the cornerstone of the negotiations has been the principle of shared but differentiated responsibilities according to each nation’s capacities. This means two things: 1) we are all responsible for the problem of climate change, but to different degrees, and 2) each country must respond based on its capacities.

The Kyoto Protocol was the only binding instrument to achieve emission reduction, but since major countries refused to ratify it, it didn’t have the expected effects. As a result, the use of the “flexibility mechanisms” took on more importance.

The flexibility mechanism game

What are the flexibility mechanisms? We know, for example, that burning forests to use the soil for other purposes represents 15–17% of the global emission of greenhouse effect gasses. We also know that trees fix carbon, as do some other activities. And we further know of activities that stop the emission of carbon into the atmosphere, for example when a contaminating technology is replaced with a non-contaminating one. What happens with the flexibility mechanisms is that Annex 1 and 2 countries get out of the obligation to reduce gasses by paying the Non-Annex 1 countries, which tend to be referred to as the South, due to their predominant geographical position, for reducing their emissions.

The way that works is that countries are issued carbon-fixing certificates for forest conservation or other measures, which are then tallied up to show compliance with the reduction goal. So to show that they are complying with the reduction goals, the Annex 1 countries simply buy Emission Reduction Certificates from the developing counties or LDCs that earned them. So one of the main demands in the current global climate negotiation process is for Annex 1 countries to have to reduce gas emissions or fix carbon in their own territories rather than riding the coattails of extra-territorial carbon-fixing in Non-Annex 1 countries.

The Bali Road Map

Because the significant reductions called for in the scientific reports hadn’t been met, the COP 13 negotiation process held in Bali in 2007 hit a bump in the road. The participating nations adopted the “Bali Road Map,” a two-year process to hammer out a binding global agreement that would be agreed to in the COP 15 meeting scheduled for Copenhagen. The expectation that created was enormous, but it in fact all ended in tremendous frustration.

We must remember that these negotiations are taking place in a multilateral framework where all countries in theory have an equally weighted single vote at decision-making time, but we already know that never holds true. Countries with a very large specific economic weight manage their various interests and spheres of influence in different ways. And I use the phrase “different ways” advisedly because there are different blocs, including one with countries such as the United States and Australia, another for the emerging countries, i.e. the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), and the strange G77+China bloc, which is the most numerous but hardly the weightiest. This great diversity of interests combined with the complex UN bureaucracy have turned the climate negotiations into a tower of Babel in which the economically most powerful countries always succeed in protecting their own interests. With 195 “parties” or countries making up the Convention, most of them poor, it’s inconceivable that no agreement was reached in 2009, when one would assume that the poor countries would unite and take the bull by the horns to decide what needs to be decided. But none was.

What can we expect in Lima
after Copenhagen’s failure?

Copenhagen failed because one group of countries, the United States among them of course, circulated a supposed agreement under the table. At 2:30 in the morning on the last day they tried to pass it off as a proposed resolution agreement, giving the other delegations half an hour to go off and read it and return, so they had no chance to reply. In the end, the commitments that were supposed to have come out of Copenhagen were postponed.

Putting off important decisions has been routine in the negotiations. After the frustration of Copenhagen came Cancun, where an effort was made to reestablish a proper negotiating environment. In COP 17, in Durban, South Africa, it was established that the New Global Climate Agreement must be approved in COP 21, to be held in Paris in 2015, and that the draft agreement must be ready in COP 20 in Lima.

The new agreement to come out of Paris is supposed to go into effect in 2020. But there’s still a long way to go and many things remain to be decided to achieve any real progress. There must be agreement, for example, on something as seemingly simple as the legal figure to be used: whether it will be a convention, an agreement or a protocol. The last inter-session meeting, held in Bonn in November, produced little cause for optimism about what will happen in Lima. I only hope we’re wrong.

The role of the social movements

More than 100,000 activists from all over the world converged on Copenhagen in 2009, collapsing the city in those days. But even all that activism wasn’t enough to change the course of the negotiations and avoid failure. The next year the debate came closer to home, to Cancun, Mexico. We thought there would be a huge presence of the social movements and that Latin America would have a vigorous voice through our civil society, but we arrived totally fragmented and with less participation than we expected.

The next significant mobilization was on September 23 of this year in New York, the day before the UN General Assembly meetings began. Ban Ki-moon had personally invited heads of State from all over the world, including Nicaragua’s President Ortega, to a summit on climate change, aimed at moving forward with some political arrangements and commitments that would to make the hope of getting agreement on the draft in Lima and avoiding another Copenhagen more viable. Some low-key progress was made in New York, but some of the main emitting countries didn’t even show up. What made the most news was a demonstration of over 100,000 people demanding that climate change be taken seriously.

What about Central America’s participation?

The region’s Presidents meet prior to each of the climate negotiation meetings then regale us with nice declarations, well formulated ideas we wouldn’t hesitate to sign. When they get to the actual COP negotiations, the president pro tem of the Central American Integration System duly reads the document at the first plenary session, but then each country goes off in its own direction, without agreeing on a common position. That has been Central America’s modus operandi in the climate change negotiations. The region’s populations have no idea what our governments are negotiating or what their positions are in these negotiations in which they’re supposedly representing us.

Central America contributes little
but is highly vulnerable to climate change

There’s really little Central America can do in terms of mitigation actions. From the perspective of the concentrations of greenhouse effect gasses in the atmosphere, if Central America were to totally stop emitting its gasses, its contribution would be insignificant. It certainly wouldn’t change the planetary situation. But I don’t mean this as a justification for lowering concern about our contribution to the global warming-causing emissions; we need to be coherent with all our carbon-saving measures no matter what the overall numbers tell us.

On the other hand, Central America is one of the world’s most vulnerable regions and thus one of those at greatest risk to the effects of climate change. For some reason, however, it’s not recognized as a highly vulnerable region in the context of the UN Framework Agreement on Climate Change. It’s one of the few things we agree with our governments about: we should be working to get that recognition, and for two important reasons. One is that if what’s known as the Green Fund actually gets significant resources to deal with climate change, we’d be in a better position to be awarded our fair share. And more important still, it would raise awareness of the vulnerability of our region, something even we don’t think about most of the time. Being aware of the risk we live in would encourage us to pay more attention to the issue.

The study titled “The Economics of Climate Change in Central America,” written by the UN’s Economic Commission on Latin America and the Caribbean in 2012, calculates the accumulated costs from the effects of climate change in the region as of 2011 at US$44.73 billion, equivalent to 32-54% of the regional gross domestic product. A single tropical storm in 2011—number 11—left US$2 billion in losses, hundreds dead and thousands more affected.

Nicaragua is part of the ALBA bloc in the global climate negotiations, and Bolivia’s negotiating team is very strong. We share many positions with them, including one that’s very controversial right now: the obligations of the emerging economies to reduce their greenhouse effect gas emissions. I call it controversial because still clinging to the scheme from back when Annex 1 was established means leaving those economies with little or no responsibility even though they clearly could and should reduce their emissions and have the economic resources to do so, which isn’t fair. It’s a central point in today’s negotiations. China and the United States just signed an agreement in November that, although considered an advance, contained extremely low ambitions, far from what’s needed to keep global warming below 2 degrees.

China and its protective shield

Many are worried about China continuing to shield itself in the G77 group of countries, which are still arguing to keep the now superseded scheme of Annex 1 and Non-Annex 1 countries in effect. China is encouraging that posture to keep its own protective shield in place and not have to reduce its emissions to any important degree. G77+China is a mix of such dissimilar countries as Qatar and Burundi, or Venezuela and Nicaragua. The differences are vast: in 2011 Qatar had an annual per-capita income of nearly US$100,000, while Burundi’s was some US$700. This makes for enormous inequalities in the negotiations, not to mention the measures themselves. So far Europe has the most ambitious commitments, but even they are insufficient to assure the stabilization of greenhouse effect gas emissions in the atmosphere.

We know that China, as a country, is now the greatest greenhouse effect gas emitter in the world. But we also know that the per-capita emissions for a single US citizen (17.6 metric tons) are three times those of a Chinese citizen (6.2 metric tons). And for yet another reference point, Nicaragua emits an average of 0.8 metric tons per person. In the face of this inequality, China argues that we should take into account “historical responsibility” for the accumulation of gasses in the atmosphere, which mainly falls to the greater emitters since the advent of the industrial revolution. China further argues that it can’t commit to an obligatory reduction of emissions to the detriment of its own growth and “development.” Since the industrialized countries have had sustained emissions over a very long time, challenges China, with what authority are they going to tell us how much emission we’re allowed, even if we are now exceeding their current levels? But the underlying issue is that while China’s emissions might be more recent, they are still enormous and they’re affecting us all. Given that we’re all in the same boat and in danger of going down together, isn’t it time for us all to assume emissions reduction?

Adaptation measures vs.
the fight against poverty

Costa Rica is the country in our region that has been working most consistently on the issue of mitigation. It has pledged to become a “carbon neutral” country by 2020, which is a very laudable decision, wholly consistent with its marketing of itself as a “green country” and perhaps attracting what are known as “low carbon” investments. But at the end of the day our mitigation actions to reduce emissions are insignificant.

On the other hand, our governments have set a priority on climate change adaptation actions; there’s an agreement to that effect in the Central American Integration System. But if the only thing left to us is to adapt, what does that exactly mean? The Intergovernmental Panel has established an official definition of “climate change adaptation,” but in real concrete terms, would that adaptation reestablish the conditions prior to when the climate change effects began to be felt? And if people were in extreme poverty before climate change, would those conditions have to be reestablished? That may sound silly, but in fact climate change is complicating the battle against poverty because we now have to add to that battle those tasks that must be taken up to achieve adaptation, and that involves establishing conditions that allow the most vulnerable sectors to survive climate change. This issue demands an in-depth reflection on how to address these new challenges.

What measures will truly
contribute to adaptation?

In fact, many people in Nicaragua are already adapting, because they’re having to figure out how to resolve their lack of water, for example. But what they’re doing is simple survival. It also needs to be recognized that climate change is now turning into a fashionable topic, and some funds from cooperation and international financing institutions are being directed to projects with those words in the title, although they actually don’t differ much from what we’ve already been doing: reforestation, taking care of water sources, ecological agriculture. Previously called comprehensive rural development, sustainable soil management and the like, these projects now come under the umbrella of climate change adaptation.

Are they similar activities or not? It’s another issue that requires reflection. What measures will effectively contribute to adaptation? And how can they be combined with mitigation actions to avoid the mitigation-adaptation dichotomy? What would be better, mitigating adaptation or adaptive mitigation? The answers aren’t as simple as they may sound.

There’s no adaptation protocol. We in Nicaragua are working on some principles for adaptation. We also believe it’s very important to eventually do a social audit of the adaptation measures, because while we have to adapt as far as possible, people are seeking solutions to the problems climate change is generating for them and trying to survive in ways that aren’t always the best or with the needed sustainability. We know people aren’t going to remain without water, but how are they getting it? So we’re promoting some adaptation principles accepted by all sectors and will later promote a social audit of the measures taken in our country.

So what’s the plan?

We have to ask what regional and national plans we have to deal with climate change. There was a regional climate change strategy once upon a time, and I say “was” because no one even remembers anything about it any more. About three or four years ago, there was also a national environmental and climate change strategy that combined the operational plans of the Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources (MARENA), the Nicaraguan Institute of Territorial Studies and other institutions. But it never off the drawing board. It never became a guide for public administration at the municipal or departmental level. In fact, very few people even know about it and even fewer use it as a guide. MARENA and certain organizations have promoted some municipal plans, but these efforts need to be followed up on more. The agricultural sector, on the other hand, has had an adaptation plan that has been put into effect to some degree and enjoys a certain level of compliance, which is an advance, albeit a modest one.

Nicaragua needs a National Climate Change Adaptation Plan, and we also need a commitment in the framework of the Climate Change Convention, which calls for the plan be drawn up in the most participatory way possible in all countries. Nonetheless, the national climate change commission created eight years ago and given a mandate isn’t even functioning. This government clearly has no interest in activating it, even though we’ve repeatedly called for this to be done. This commission should have representatives of all sectors so we can hammer out agreements for joint actions and implement them with a vision of the nation as a whole. But there’s no political will to do it. The authorities don’t consider it a relevant issue.

The Forum of Presidents of Legislative Branches of Central America, Mexico and the Dominican Republic has now drafted a model climate change adaptation law, proposing that each member country adjust it to its national conditions and then approve it. That legislation is now in Nicaragua’s National Assembly and they’ve called us for a consultation. We hope this process will move forward and that the law will be passed and applied.

Investments in mitigation or adaptation

We did some work in the Humboldt Center on the investments made in climate change in Nicaragua between 2005 and 2012. We wanted to see where the resources had come from, what they were for and how efficiently they were managed and applied. We found that over US$1.18 billion dollars came into the country in those years. It seems like a lot, but really isn’t. Of that amount, the majority was for energy projects such as small hydroelectric plants. Most of the funding came from the international financial institutions, followed by cooperation agencies. National private enterprise put in virtually nothing. The only criterion for these projects was that the objectives specify they were for climate change mitigation or adaptation.

Of the US$197 million received annually, US$177 million went to mitigation even though the priority ought to be to work with the people on adaptation projects. Clearly it’s useful to dedicate resources to mitigation, but adaptation should take precedence rather than the other way around. The disproportion we found also indicates that the financial flows don’t correspond to the declared priorities. They at least should have been split evenly.

Of the scant overall amount earmarked for adaptation, US$90 million was in the form of credits. Although our countries aren’t responsible for global warming and the industrialized economies are the ones sending gasses out into the atmosphere, have to adapt, and in Central America doing so or not can mean the difference between life and death. And if that weren’t enough, we have to indebt ourselves? It’s an injustice. Moreover, we should be following up on those loans for adaptation to see if they’re being used adequately, because the worst thing would be to misspend them. I’m not suggesting they are being misspent; I’m only saying we don’t know. But we do know that a careful evaluation of the international financial institutions’ portfolios shows that efficiency isn’t one of their virtues.

Our study showed that national private enterprise only participated in three projects in those years to the tune of barely 0.5% of the total investments. And even those three projects were about increasing the profitability of their own big businesses through the bonuses they get for reducing carbon emissions. It’s yet another injustice that private enterprise, the main user and abuser of Nicaragua’s natural resources and the country’s biggest emitter of greenhouse effect gasses—the burning of the sugarcane fields in the northwest, for example, causes important carbon dioxide emissions—contributes so little, yet comes out a beneficiary. To take just one example, the San Antonio Sugar Refinery receives bonuses for operating a biodigestor that reduces 262,000 metric tons of emissions of carbon, yet at the same time it hasn’t stopped burning cane.

According to our study, 45 municipalities (14.5% of the Nicaraguan territory) aren’t engaged in any climate change mitigation or adaptation activities. And in a good part of the country, precisely in the areas at highest risk, there are only mitigation measures, which is what they need least. Much of today’s investment is in areas where the indices don’t show the highest risk or the most serious climatic threats. There’s a lot of national geography to cover; so focusing climate change investment in the area of greatest risk should be a priority.

Considerations about the interoceanic canal

To repeat, today’s climate change reality plus the projections indicate that ours is a high-risk country, that we’ll have to live with this phenomenon and that people are having trouble getting a tangible sense of that reality and the nearness of its effects. Creating that awareness is a huge challenge. Some interesting experiences are being developed, such as methodological efforts to get small farmers to quantify the losses caused by climate change. But we won’t begin to change our attitudes until we manage to make the problem of climate change felt as a concrete reality by many more people.

Let’s take another look at the interoceanic canal megaproject, which, if built, will make us even more vulnerable to climate change. There are at least two imponderables about climate change that the investors and the government should consider. One is the route being opened through the North Pole due to the melting ice caused by climate change. It’s a shorter way to connect Asia’s markets with those in Europe and North America than any other and doesn’t need the construction of any canal; it’s an already open route.

The other imponderable is the effects of climate change on the canal itself. In the Humboldt Center’s study on the canal, we made projections about the canal’s operations as far as 2039. What we saw, in average terms, was that not enough water will be available by then to operate the canal. One basic engineering principle is that designs must take into account the most unfavorable situation that could occur. And from what we can see, neither the government nor the investors are doing that.

Although we weren’t invited, I attended the eight-hour informative presentation by the investors and the government on November 20 and was shocked that they presented absolutely no consideration related to climate change. Not a single word. Their hydrological projections and all the other projections, in addition to being superficial, were made without taking climate change into account. Or to be fair, that at least was the case in everything they showed that day.

How will the canal operate in drought years, not in normal ones when the volumes of water would be guaranteed? I don’t believe they’ve yet done any studies of how the canal would operate with the climate variations we’re already seeing.

The only argument with respect to climate change that the government spokespeople raised at one point was also very superficial: they said the overall emissions of greenhouse effect gasses would be reduced because the canal through Nicaragua will reduce the distances for international trade and thus favor more oceangoing commercial traffic, which leaves a smaller carbon footprint than other forms. But while there may be a reduction of overall emissions in maritime transport, Nicaragua’s own emissions will increase thanks to the canal’s activity.

Let’s be clear: by affecting our water, which is our shield for adapting to climate change, the canal will make us extremely vulnerable. The canal is putting at risk our very capacity to adapt to climate change.

Víctor Campos is the deputy director of Nicaragua’s Humboldt Center, a highly respected environmental research and advocacy organization.

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