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COMMENTARY: A canalside reckoning: Panama’s ecological paradox

The Panama Canal is of strategic importance to global trade and naval mobility. By severing two continents and merging two oceans over a century ago, the canal transformed a slender ditch through the jungle into the Western Hemisphere’s most indispensable single piece of infrastructure.

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The Panama Canal (and therefore Panama) has recently come under intense political threats specifically driven by U.S.-China geopolitical maneouvring over control of the Panama Canal. This has led to Panama cancelling a key port contract with a Hong Kong firm, sparking a diplomatic standoff with China.

As an environmentalist, I travelled to Panama to witness firsthand the insidious threats to the canal not for political reasons or contractual matters but rather for ecological-related effects due to climate change.

The freshwater paradox

The engine of Panama’s national identity and economy, the canal is a powerful case study where trade, climate and national resilience collide in a single watershed. Panama is a nation grappling with the immense and compounding ecological consequences of its greatest asset — a canal system where every engineering solution, from its creation to its recent expansion, has written a new chapter in an ongoing environmental challenge. The canal that built this........

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