Europe’s evaporating rivers wreak havoc for food and energy

Europe’s rivers are running dry after an extended period of extremely hot weather, ratcheting up fears over food and energy production at a time when prices are already skyrocketing due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A severe lack of rainfall and a sequence of heatwaves from May onward has taken a visible toll on the region’s waterways.

In France, it has become possible to cross the Loire River on foot in some places; it is feared that water levels at a key German chokepoint on the Rhine River, one of Europe’s key waterways, could once again close to commercial traffic; and the drought-stricken waters of Italy’s Po River have revealed artifacts dating back to World War II — including a 50-meter-long barge and a previously submerged bomb.

“We haven’t seen this level of drought in a very long time. The water levels in some of the major waterways are lower than they have been in decades,” Matthew Oxenford, senior analyst of Europe and climate policy at The Economist Intelligence Unit, a research and advisory firm, told CNBC via telephone.

“For some of the main channels, there’s very little leeway, sometimes less than 30 centimeters of leeway before the channel is completely inoperable for any sort of shipping,” he added.

“So, that’s going to have very significant impacts on the economic and human activity that’s taking place around these waterways seeing as we’re likely to remain in some form of drought for some time to come.”

Europe is in the grip of what is likely to be the region’s worst drought in at least 500 years, according to a preliminary analysis from the European Union’s Joint Research Center.

As of early August, the Global Drought Observatory report said that roughly two-thirds of Europe was under some sort of drought warning, meaning the soil has dried up and vegetation “shows signs of stress.”

The analysis found that nearly all of Europe’s rivers have dried up to some extent, while water and heat stress “substantially reduced” the summer crops’ yields. Forecasts for grain maize, soybean and sunflowers were expected to be 16%, 15% and 12% below the average of the previous five years, respectively.

That comes as food prices remain stubbornly high amid Russia’s onslaught in Ukraine, a major producer of commodities such as wheat, corn and sunflower oil.

The EU’s report warned that the Western Europe-Mediterranean region would likely see warmer and drier than usual conditions persist through to November.

To be sure, the deepening climate emergency has made high…