Andrew Clem home
Andrew Clem banner

Blog post


Monthly archives
(all categories)


October 5, 2006 [LINK / comment]

Will Nicaragua build a canal?

At the turn of the last century, a serious alernative route to a canal through Panama was along the San Juan river, which forms the southern border of Nicaragua. It would pass through Lake Nicaragua, and then traverse a mountain range before reaching the Pacific coast. That country's President Enrique Bolanños is urging Nicaraguan voters to approve a referendum to seek funding for building such a canal. It would have a wider channel to permit larger ships to pass from the Pacific to the Caribbean, no doubt taking much traffic away from Panama. It would cost $18 billion and take 12 years to finish -- which are only rough estimates, of course. See BBC. It's very ambitious, especially for a country with a shaky political-economic foundation, but it's the sort of prestige-oriented task that could promote national unity. It may be that such plans were the underlying reason for the border tensions between Nicaragua and Costa Rica late last year.

Posted (or last updated or commented upon): 05 Oct 2006, 2: 42 PM

(unformatted URL)
      .



This post is over a week old, so comments are closed.


© Andrew G. Clem. All rights reserved. Your use of this material signifies your acceptance of the Terms of use.


Hits on this page (single blog post) since July 2, 2007:

Category archives:
(all years)



This (or that) year's
blog highlights

Blog highlights have been compiled for the years 2010-2012 thus far, and eventually will be compiled for earlier years, back to 2002.


Explanation

The "home made" blog organization system that I created was instituted on November 1, 2004, followed by several functional enhancements in subsequent years. I make no more than one blog post per day on any one category, so some posts may cover multiple news items or issues. Blog posts appear in the following (reverse alphabetical) order, which may differ from the chronological order in which the posts were originally made:

  1. Wild birds (LAST)
  2. War
  3. Science & Technology
  4. Politics
  5. Latin America
  6. Culture & Travel
  7. Canaries ("Home birds")
  8. Baseball (FIRST)