South America’s New Panama Canal to Pass Through ‘Green Hell’

Paraguay’s Chaco region. Source: Bing Maps

The Panama Canal is an interoceanic navigation route between the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean that crosses the Isthmus of Panama at its narrowest point, whose length is 82 km.

It has been considered as one of the great works of world engineering of the twentieth century, the canal works through locks at each end that raise the boats to Gatun Lake, an artificial lake created to reduce the amount of work required to the excavation of the canal, 26 meters above sea level, and then down to the level of the Pacific or the Atlantic.

It should be noted that before its opening, the natural passages used between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans were the Strait of Magellan and Cape Horn, located in the southern tip of Chile.

Now, a proposal emerges which the government of Paraguay compares with a Panama Canal in recent days.

A canal that will pass through the ‘Green Hell’

In this way, it has been said that the “new Panama canal” of South America will go through the ‘green hell’.

And Paraguay plans to turn its remote and sparsely populated northwest into an international transportation hub and a key link between the ports of the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of South America, in a proposal that its government compares with a Panama Canal of the last days.

According to the Minister of Public Works, Arnoldo Wiens, the investment of more than $ 2 billion in basic infrastructure, such as roads and bridges, aims to transform the Chaco region and boost trade. The Bioceanic Corridor will connect ports in Brazil and Chile, while a revitalized highway will cover the region from north to south.

In fact, it is considered that this will generate unprecedented development.

Now, it is necessary to emphasize the rapid deforestation that is clearly already transforming the brutally hot and ecologically diverse area, formerly known as the ‘Green Hell’, where a large number of indigenous communities live in the country.

Paraguay faces the challenge of minimizing the environmental impact of large-scale development that will sooner or later reach Chaco, said Yan Speranza, executive director of the Moises Bertoni Conservation Foundation, a nonprofit organization that manages around 70,000 hectares of the private nature reserve in the country.

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Source: Ken Parks | Bloomberg