Home | Business News | Browse by Publication | N | NotiCen: Central American & Caribbean Affairs

LAKE NICARAGUA IN DECLINE, BESIEGED BY CORRUPTION, PRIVATIZATION, AND POLITICS.

Article Excerpt
Lake Nicaragua is the largest and most important source of fresh water in Central America, the second-largest lake in all of Latin America. It has the potential to bring potable water to many of the isthmus's 32 million people, half of whom have no access to clean fresh water. But before that potential can be realized, the lake must be saved from the state corruption, the international politics, and the unfettered commercialization that, taken together, are killing it.

In Nicaragua, the lake is known as Cocibolca, the sweet sea. Second in size in Latin America only to Lake Titicaca, it covers approximately 8,624 sq km and, like a sea, features high winds, crashing waves, and even sharks. In all, a formidable body, impervious to natural forces but not to human avarice and neglect (see NotiCen, 2006-02-09).

One of the major sources of the lake's contamination is the proliferation of fish farms, specifically of tilapia. Taking advantage of the government's failure to exercise its regulatory powers regarding private exploitation of the lake, the firm Nicanor SA operates breeding pens for these fish. Of combined Norwegian and Nicaraguan capitalization, the enterprise also has another advantage--the general manager of the operation, Patrick Bolanos, is the nephew of President Enrique Bolanos. The farm incorporates a processing plant on the shores of San Ramon, Ometepe. Ometepe is an enormous island in Cocibolca.

Caged rats

In October 2003, an interim environmental review prepared in connection with negotiations for the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) included documentation written in 2001 by Salvador Montenegro Guillen, director and founder of the Centro para la Investigacion en Recursos Aquaticos de Nicaragua of the Universidad Autonoma de Nicaragua (CIRA/UNAN). After writing on the rising value of tilapia on world markets and the ease...