Source: Wikimedia Commons

Dozens of environmental activist organizations in Managua met on Saturday and lodged a strong peremptory request to the government and to the Chinese company HKND Group to postpone their plans to begin construction of the quixotic and highly controversial Nicaragua Canal project.

As published by online news daily El Pais and reported by Spanish news agency EFE, the consortium of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) implored HNND and the administration of President Daniel Ortega to:

Heed our demand to not initiate the construction works previously announced to begin on either the 22^nd or 24^th of December; not until all environmental impact studies, technical analysis and civil inquiries have been completed on this matter.

In the United Kingdom, the BBC reported that:

Nicaraguan officials say construction of a $50bn (£31bn) canal linking the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans will start on 22 December. The 278km (172 miles) waterway will be longer, deeper and wider than the Panama Canal. Opponents are concerned about the impact it may have on Lake Nicaragua and on poor communities in the area. The route announced in July would pass through the lake, an important source of fresh water. Construction will begin with a port on the Pacific.

Indeed, the EFE news agency reports that the $50 billion project is set to begin at a time when most Nicaraguan workers are home with their families, just a couple of days before Christmas in a country where Christianity is vastly predominant. The project would start with a new seaport located in Brito, a coastal region located in the south of Rivas.

The complaints by the environmental activists in Nicaragua are well-known by both the Ortega regime and HKND; in fact, the Chinese company has acknowledged that the first round of environmental impact reports will not be ready until March or April 2015, but there seems to be a rush in kicking off construction.

As previously reported by The Costa Rica Star, these environmental activist groups are not alone in calling off construction of this project, which is bound to cause deep and irreversible to natural habitats in Nicaragua:

Members of the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation (ATBC) have issued a resolution that calls for the immediate cessation of all activity related to the construction of the controversial Nicaragua Canal, a quixotic project to build an interoceanic waterway to rival the Panama Canal. The ATBC resolution is based on what the organization estimates to be the environmental and social impact of excavating “278 kilometers of land, lake and rivers, cutting through pristine rainforest and the largest drinking-water reservoir in Central America.”