The German Association for the Environment and Nature Conservation (BUND) has sharply criticized the plans put forward by Federal Transport Minister Steffen Bilger (CDU) regarding how to handle the current low water levels. Olaf Bandt, the BUND chairman, told the “Rheinische Post” that the measures presented by the Transport Minister prove that “the government does not understand that low river levels are a symptom of the climate crisis.” Bandt argued that the problem cannot be resolved through dredging riverbeds or increasing the number of trucks on highways.
He pointed out that history confirms that infrastructure expansion significantly deteriorates the ecological state of rivers. However, Bandt added that healthy river landscapes are crucial for landscape water retention, which helps mitigate the effects of low water.
The BUND stressed that inland shipping must adapt to the rivers, not the other way around. Bandt warned that replacing modern ship transport with hundreds or thousands of truck journeys places an unreasonable burden on both people and the climate. Furthermore, the BUND chairman demanded that the Transport Minister ensure that rail infrastructure can better handle bottlenecks within inland shipping operations in the future.
The organization concluded by detailing the larger context of climate change. Due to global warming, droughts and low water periods are occurring more frequently and severely in certain regions. Climate change is altering precipitation patterns, resulting in rain falling less often but in much larger volumes. To prevent the emergence of even more extreme weather events, it is imperative that the combustion of fossil fuels-such as coal, oil, and gas, which release additional greenhouse gases into the atmosphere-is stopped.
