Is the Panama Canal Sustainable?

The sailor boy render was completed in 1914 by the United States. The 51 mile long r starte swerves through bluejacket at the narrowest point among North and southward the States to combine the Atlantic and the pacific oceans. Panama is in Central America mingled with Columbia and Costa Rica.The Panama CanalThe provideal was built to and go along ships from Europe and Africa going the entire way around the bottom summit meeting of South America (the red route on the map), to r distributively westbound Asia. The duct cuts through Panama and allows most ships to pass through it so save on cost and time (the green route on the map). By building this duct, shipping has been given an enormous advantage, as ships no longer exact to sail around the tip of South America to reach either ocean and sailing time is drastically reduced. cigarettevass the natural environmentThe climate in Panama is hot and humid, with a prolonged rainy inure (May to January) and a short dry epoch (January to May). The sh ars normal daily temperature is 26 degrees Celsius and varies little throughout the socio-economic class, perhaps 2-3 degrees. During the eventide hours, however, the temperatures change more considerably, and can fluctuate as a lot as 6-10 degrees Celsius. There is a climate graph below showing the climatic conditions in Panama.Climate, rainfall and humidity graphs for PanamaThis graph shows that the rainy season does last from May to January and month with the highest rainfall in November with 569mm and the lowest rainfall in February with about 40mm of rain. This graph too shows that the average temperature throughout the year is around 26 degrees. There is very little seasonal transition in temperature but there are large seasonal fluctuations in rainfall. The humidity chart shows that the humidity is also high throughout the year, peaking between June and November, but only varying by 9% everyplace the all in all year. So between June and Nove mber, there is high humidity, high rainfall and on average, only 5 hours of sunshine a day as apposed to the 8 or 9 hours from January to April.A Sketch map of the panama regionThis map shows the rainforest and where the locks and the reservoirs are located. Man has had to create these reservoirs for the canal to run properly, meaning man has modified the drainage area. In order to hold in the reservoirs, more of the land has had to be flooded, rainforests and settlements also. This meant that many habitats were destroyed and many animals would energize died as a result. Not only this, but substantial amounts of rainforest would put up had to exact been destroyed, that lay in the canal path and where the afore mentioned reservoirs are, once more destroying habitats and killing animals.Along the route of the canal there is a serial publication of 3 sets of locks that level and raise the ships on their way to and from Atlantic and Pacific oceans. These locks are called the Gatu n, Pedro Miguel and the Mira Flores locks.At Gatun there are 2 parallel sets of locks each consisting of 3 flights. This set of locks lift ships a total of 26 metres. The locks are constructed from concrete. More than 1.53 one million million million cubic metres of concrete were used in the spin of the Gatun locks alone. The smallest set of locks along the Panama Canal are at Pedro Miguel and hurt one flight which raise or lower ships 10 metres. The Mira Flores locks have two flights with a combined lift or decent of 16.5 metres. canvass the Social EnvironmentPanama urban center is the largest city in panama. Its metropolitan area contains nearly one third of the nations inhabitants, about 1 million good deal. From 1980 to 1990 the citys population grew from 386,300 to 413,000. After 1990 the population again grew rapidly, increasing to 688,927. The city cannot sell with such rapid growth and there isnt enough accommodation for the altogether population, so shantytowns start appearing, these are clusters of shacks, which the people build themselves. They make their houses out of anything they can find, corrugated iron, tyres and the like.These shantytowns accommodate only the poorest of the population as the richer citizens can afford the higher house prices in the city. This rapid urbanisation and the maturation of the shantytowns makes Panama City much more polluted. The shantytowns sprawl out from the City centre and start to intrude on the rainforests, and so posing an ecologic threat and threatening the sustainability of the Panama Canal.Urbanisation levelThis graph shows the persona of urbanisation over the past 15 years and the predicted levels of the next 20 years. According to this graph urbanization is set to increase steadily over the next 25 years.The Panamanian brass are moving people into the rainforest to give them a chance to rebuild lives and to escape the surge urbanisation and unhygienic conditions of the shantytowns. This reli eves the congestion in the city and gives people radical opportunities.Investigating the Economic EnvironmentThe Panama Canal is generating a striation of money for the people of Panama it is not only a potent business and a power source, but a tourist fondness too. Many visitors come to visit the canal and bring a survey of revenue into the area, encouraging businesses to grow and prosper. The ships must pay over 15 hundred dollars to use the canal, so this brings a visual modality of revenue into the area.The Panama Canal can make the quality of life increase on one hand, but decrease on the other. The Canal brings a lot of revenue into the area although it can divide the social classes. The Canal creates a richer class, which are the people that profit from the canal, who continue to get richer as the canal brings in more and more money and a poorer class, as they have to move into the rainforest and live off the land with little or no money. It could also introduce crime i nto the area as the canal creates richer areas, with more valuable things in it, and with the poorer people living close by in the shantytowns, it is an open invitation for crime.If the Canal had to close, Panama would economically suffer immensely. Its briny source of income would have dried up and the countrys wealth would go win in the mouth dramatically as a result. The shipping companies that use the canal would also suffer incalculably as their ships would have to sail around the tip of South America to reach the eastern world. Panama would have massive problems then with urbanisation, as people would flock to the city in hope of jobs, thence the shantytowns leave alone rapidly increase in size, posing new problems to the city. The Canal and its reservoirs depict 700 000 people with fresh peeing. If the reservoirs cease to operate, then these peoples water supply will be cut off.EvaluationIf the Panamanian rainforest is cut down too much, the consequences will be dire. T he canal will not be able to function properly as there will not be enough water in the reservoirs to sustain the canal. The trees grow hold together the obscenity so if the trees are cut down during deforestation, then the soil becomes loose and with the huge amounts of rain that the area receives much of the soil will be washed away, into the reservoirs that feed the canal. If vast amounts of soil wash into the reservoirs then the soil occupies some of the volume of the reservoir, volume that could have been taken up by water.This means that the reservoirs cannot hold as much water as they were designed to hold. As the canal relies solely upon these reservoirs, depletion in the amount of water the reservoir could take would harm the canals efficiency as every ship that travels through the canal takes with it an immense amount of water so there would not be the water available to make up the canal, ultimately ensuring the closure of the waterway.SolutionsThe water in the lakes h as been going down because of deforestation. The politics have made a new organic law that allows the establishment to have the final say for any projects in the watershed zone. trio million dollars is being set aside to combat any environmental plans and satellite imaging is being set up so the judicature can view the area on a much big scale and can see the real extent of the damage. This should enable the government to act quickly if they can see a potential threat. The presidential term must also regulate urbanisation as a stretch out of Panama Citys unplanned, chaotic urbanization into the watershed would spell disaster for the canal, electricity supplies, and clean drinking water.However, the government are not perhaps fetching the issue as seriously as they should be. In 1995, the government gave leave for a four-lane road to be built in the lower catchment of the watershed, ploughing straight through the national park. The Panama Canal can be sustainable if the cor rect precautions are taken to ensure that urbanisation and deforestation do not increase any more, otherwise, they will volute out of control and the panama canal will have to close, outcome many, many businesses in the local area and around the world.