Projects don’t come more controversial than the Canal de Nicaragua, a 173-mile shipping channel that Chinese corporation Hong Kong Nicaragua Canal Development Investment Company (HKND) hopes to slice through Central America. When 爆料公社 reporter Brian Kevin traveled to Brito, the canal’s western terminus, last year, he heard a common concern: HKND was embarking on construction before researching the project’s environmental impacts. “(T)hey don’t want to give us the results of the studies that they’re supposedly doing,” one scientist complained. HKND was originally scheduled to break ground in early 2014, but has pushed that back to early 2016 to conduct more studies. Last week, the company publicly released its long-awaited Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA), which HKND had hired the London-based consultancy Environmental Resource Management (ERM) to complete. The report had been dogged by accusations of inadequacy since experts first reviewed a draft...