ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
And I'm Ari Shapiro at a small village in Panama called Limon de Chagres.
(SOUNDBITE OF RUNNING WATER)
SHAPIRO: We're standing at the edge of this beautiful river. I can see little fish swimming just under the surface. There's a small hand-carved wooden canoe floating under a tree. What does this body of water mean to you?
DIGNA BENITE: (Non-English language spoken).
SHAPIRO: "This river is my whole life," says 60-year-old Digna Benite. She smiles wistfully under her straw hat. She grew up here on the Rio Indio. She would play in the water while her father caught fish.
BENITE: (Non-English language spoken).
SHAPIRO: "The water is so clean and calm," she says, "it rises and falls. For me, it's harmony."
A long, narrow boat pulls up. Digna Benite and a younger man named Olegario Cedeno help us climb in, and we pull away from the shore.
(SOUNDBITE OF BOAT MOTOR STARTING)
SHAPIRO: The boat pulls over to the edge of the Rio Indio, and we climb up some steep stairs that are basically carved into the mud bank.
Olegario, what are you showing us?
OLEGARIO CEDENO: (Speaking Spanish).
SHAPIRO: "Here, I'm showing you where the dam would be," he says.
The Rio Indio dam - it doesn't exist yet, but authorities intend to start building it in just a couple years. Panama has been looking for solutions to a long-term problem. Every time a ship passes through the Panama Canal, more than 50 million gallons of fresh water from Lake Gatun pour out into the ocean. Nobody ever thought Panama could run out of water. It is one of the rainiest countries in the world. But a couple years ago, a drought got so bad that the canal had to reduce traffic by more than a third, which had a huge impact on global shipping. So Panama is looking for ways to get more water to the canal, and they've chosen this spot. A place Digna, Olegario and more than 2,000 others call home.
Digna looks out at the field where the Canal Authority plans to build the new dam. We stand in the shade of a wild coffee tree, the fragrance like honeysuckle wafting off branches full of white blossoms.
Senora Digna, when you see this place and you think about what might happen here, what goes through your head?
BENITE: (Through interpreter) I feel as if they would kill us because we wouldn't be surrounded by nature anymore. For example, this coffee plant that we're standing by, you know, I grab the bean. I take it. I toast it, and then that's the coffee that I have in the mornings.
SHAPIRO: It would be simplistic to say this problem is all because of climate change. Climate scientists say the data point to a more complicated reality.
(SOUNDBITE OF BIRDS SQUABBLING)
SHAPIRO: At the shore of another body of water, tropical birds squabble in the trees at the edge of the jungle. Lake Gatun is a freshwater reservoir created by the construction of another dam more than a century ago during the creation of the Panama Canal.
STEVEN PATON: My name is Steven Paton, and I'm in charge of the Physical Monitoring Program for the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute.
SHAPIRO: Paton has no view on whether the much smaller Rio Indio dam should be built or not. What he does have is research, perhaps more than any other tropical rainforest in the world.
PATON: Our data goes back to 1880, when the French first arrived to start doing their construction. One of the first things they did was to install climate stations, because they knew that rainfall was going to be an incredibly important thing.
(SOUNDBITE OF FOOTSTEPS ON METAL)
SHAPIRO: We walk down a modern metal dock, a startled iguana takes a swan dive.
(SOUNDBITE OF WATER SPLASHING)
SHAPIRO: It just jumped off the dock into the water and climbed up on a rock. I can see it down there now.
Paton says, a couple years ago, that iguana might have landed on dry dirt.
PATON: Imagine - right now, the water is only about 2 feet below the level of the dock. It was something like 10, 12 feet. We had to go down a ladder to get on the boat.
SHAPIRO: And for you as a researcher, is that, like, this feels dire and frightening, or is it like, what an exciting thing to research?
PATON: Whenever you see a really impactful phenomenon, there's the scientist side saying, wow, that's really fascinating. But then the other human side says, ooh, that's really bad.
SHAPIRO: The drought was caused by El Nino, and scientists have not found a clear connection between El Nino and a warming planet. But Paton says there are some strange patterns emerging. The driest years in more than a century of record-keeping, have been in just the last decade.
PATON: So we don't know whether this is just an outlier that it was just random, we just threw three double-sixes in a row, or whether it represents the canary in the coal mine.
SHAPIRO: That helps explain why Panama is looking for ways to increase the supply of fresh water to the canal.
JORGE LUIS QUIJANO: Right now, we are late by six years.
SHAPIRO: Jorge Luis Quijano was administrator of the canal from 2012 to 2019.
QUIJANO: The funding for that project included - half of it was for actual environmental and social aspect.
SHAPIRO: What is your message to the people in the communities who would be displaced by the construction of this dam?
QUIJANO: We're going to make sure that we relocate them to a place where they can continue with the life and probably improve on that. They are in areas where there's no electricity. So one of the things that this project could probably provide is also hydroelectric power. They have no potable water. We would have a potable water plant as well. They have a marginal lifestyle.
(SOUNDBITE OF DISHES CLANGING)
ALEJANDRINA MUNOZ: (Through interpreter) We are happy here. We have water. We have electricity because we have solar panels. We have everything here.
SHAPIRO: Back in the village of Limon de Chagres, Alejandrina Munoz washes dishes as she prepares a breakfast of eggs, yucca and coffee sweetened with sugar cane. Everything she cooks comes from her land or from the river. She says fresh water from a nearby mountain spring flows right into her home and pours out of the tap.
If the dam is built, what will this place be?
MUNOZ: (Through interpreter) It would be underwater, and where are we going to go?
SHAPIRO: The Canal Authority told us they haven't yet decided where displaced people would be resettled. To Munoz, this is the opposite of a marginal lifestyle. She experiences abundance more than hardship. Relatives who live in the city sometimes drive here to take extra food off her hands. There's a hand-painted sign in front of her house.
MUNOZ: (Through interpreter) And it says, for a green Panama and for respect of the - of nature, we do not want a reservoir or a dam.
(SOUNDBITE OF ROOSTER CROWING)
SHAPIRO: As we walk through the village, most of the houses have similar signs - (speaking Spanish) - no to the reservoir, they say. Dozens of community members have gathered in a shaded outdoor meeting space next to the church to tell us how they feel. I ask the group whether anyone feels tempted by the life of luxury that the government promises.
(CROSSTALK IN SPANISH)
SHAPIRO: "No, we won't accept it," they say.
If anyone here supports the government proposal, we couldn't find them. After several people express their individual views, the group stands together and joins in a chant.
UNIDENTIFIED COMMUNITY MEMBERS: (Chanting in Spanish).
SHAPIRO: "Our river is not for sale. We will defend it," they shout.
This is almost to a word the same chant that urban Panamanians yelled as they shut down wide avenues of Panama City last week, protesting President Trump's effort to take the Panama Canal. The villagers say this is a smaller version of the same argument. To them, it's about sovereignty and respect.
(SOUNDBITE OF SARO TRIBASTONE'S "SERENADE") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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