SIMIC

DROUGHTS are forcing shipping companies to abandon some of the world's main river cargo routes, says Maersk senior director Ann Christina Sloek-Andersen, reports BBC News.
"We had to switch a lot of cargo from river to rail in Europe to keep the big German industry clusters in Baden-Wurttemberg, Bavaria and Hessen connected to the ports of Rotterdam and Antwerp," she said of last year's low water on the Rhine.
More than 300 million tonnes of goods a year are typically transported by cargo riverboats on the wide Rhine, which flows for almost 800 miles from Switzerland to the Netherlands, where it joins the North Sea.
Yet during the summer months of last year, record low water levels meant some vessels were able to carry only 25 per cent of their usual load, causing shipping delays.
"We carry our customers'cargo on barges wherever possible," said Ms Sloek-Andersen, "because it means far less CO2 emissions compared to trucks."
However, when the Rhine's levels fell last summer, Maersk said its existing partnerships with rail providers meant they were able to "jump in with extra capacity".
Ms Sloek-Andersen said rail is the preferred alternative to river as they have a similarly low CO2 footprint, at around 20-30g of CO2 per tonne-km per year (gCO2e/tkm), as opposed to trucks that emit almost 140 gCO2e/tkm.
However, she adds that other companies had to switch to road freight.
And it wasn¡¯t just Europe that found itself high and dry last year.
Hanken School of Economics professor Sarah Schiffling said the Mississippi River is used to transport more than 500 million tonnes of freight a year, but last year record low water levels were estimated to have cost US$20 billion in economic damage.
"Droughts are not a new phenomenon," says Prof Schiffling, "but [last year] we saw droughts in multiple areas across the world, all at the same time. It had a massive impact on inland shipping."
In China, parts of the Yangtze River, whose surrounding provinces produce 45 per cent of the country¡¯s economic output, were closed to shipping because water levels were more than 50 per cent below average.