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**Rahul** (0:01)
Germany's great river, the Rhine, is drying up.

**Katarina Selzer** (0:04)
Today is our 15 cm. The forecast for the end of the week, Saturday, is 9 cm.
This is, of course, absolutely catastrophic for us.

**Rahul** (0:14)
It's World Business Report from the BBC World Service. I'm Rahul, what could the long-term impact of sweltering temperatures mean for shipping in Europe's biggest economy, Germany? And we're going to take you to Iceland, where the eclipse is good for business.
But we are once again talking about the weather on this program because it's causing huge problems for some of Europe's biggest rivers, particularly this one.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:48)
One important thing is missing here, water. Germany's busiest transport river is running dry. The Rhine is crucial to Germany's economy.

**Aline Burbage** (0:56)
80% of its inland shipping of goods relies on the river.

**Rahul** (0:58)
Yeah, because of the heatway, we are seeing falling water levels on the Rhine, as we heard there, and that's making it very difficult for commercial shipping and for industry as well. Katarina Selzer is head of agricultural products at the German company RWZ.

**Katarina Selzer** (1:14)
Currently, we are in a similar difficult situation to the one we had in 2018 Back then, the water level in Kaub, which is the relevant level for us, was 25 cm. Now, today, it's at 15 cm. The forecast for the end of the week, Saturday, is 9 cm.
This is, of course, absolutely catastrophic for us. We can't currently transport the goods to the processors by ship. This means that wherever feasible, we're switching to lorries to bring goods to our customers. But as I said, only where it's feasible.

**Rahul** (1:47)
And on Tuesday, the German chemical company, Covestro, declared a force majeure for some of its products. What does that mean? Well, it means it's not able to deliver some of them because of the problems on the Rhine. And there are other reports that it is no longer possible to book some cargo shipments because of the drought. Let's bring in Ulrike Mommendier, a German economist who was a former member of the German Council of Economic Experts. And it's fair to say this is a region you know very well. It's where you come from, isn't it? The Rhineland.

**Ulrike Mommendier** (2:17)
That's exactly right. I'm one of the ladies who was kind of baptized in the Rhine and cologne, how we call it.

**Rahul** (2:25)
And just for our listeners, can you explain to them why the Rhine is so important for German industry? What is based around it?

**Ulrike Mommendier** (2:33)
Yeah, so first of all, you know, basically almost all of our inland water, gas, right, goes to the Rhine, about 80% of Germany's transport. Now, we are a country that has a lot of transport on roads, but in particular, the heavy stuff, the bulky stuff, the big stuff, they're generally going over the river, and that's the river Rhine. And in fact, a lot of our industry, like heavy manufacturing, including the Rhine, more steel companies, the Rhine mine hub, in Goodwick's hub, we have a lot of companies, they all want to be near the Rhine to use the water for transport and also for the processing.

**Rahul** (3:10)
We are now seeing, aren't we, some German states suspending a rule that they had in place to stop trucks operating on a Sunday, because there has to be other ways to move products, otherwise the German economy could grind to a halt.

**Ulrike Mommendier** (3:25)
Yeah, I was actually quite happy with the swift reaction in some of the German states, but this is Germany. Immediately, there was protest about the procedures not being used the way they should be. And of course, the environmentalists are saying, understandably, well, we have this problem because we're not taking care of the climate. Now we want to hurt the climate even more with more processing on the roads. I mean, I would say the swift reactions as a quick fix is a good idea. You might want to combine it with more EV vehicles, but of course we also need long-term solutions.

**Rahul** (3:59)
Stay with us, I want to bring in George Conboy, President of Brighton Securities in Rochester, New York. And we've been talking a lot about how the climate is impacting different industries, but one sector is transport, isn't it? A lot of goods, George, globally, are still moved on water.

**George Conboy** (4:15)
Right, Rahul. Transport affects raw materials and finished products. So you've got a double dip of transport costs into finished products. And so much of German raw materials move down the 500 or so miles of the Rhine, two thirds of it.