Climate Change and International Transportation

Mauricio López Dardaine

Today we would like to borrow some paragraphs from the UN ECE document cited bellow, one of the papers drafted in preparation for their September meeting in Geneva. As many of you are aware, we have been posting comments on this subject ever since we launched our blog on September 3^rd of last year. Some of our comments are more specific: Tendencias y Emisiones del Transporte (5/17/13); Emisiones aéreas UE (10/24/12); Blue World and Shipping (10/22/12) and Cambio Climático y Comercio Marítimo (9/6/12). Most of the titles in Spanish have their respective English versions.

Awareness of the emissions caused by transportation has been increasing within those circles involved in international trade. There is a kind of vicious circle at work: emissions of green house gases, caused among other by trade and transportation, cause in turn Global Warming, which is responsible for sea level rise. This sea level rise is, before anything else, a threat to global ports and thus to world trade and transportation.

This paper drafted for the meeting in Geneva deals with these questions. World traders and exporting nations ought to be by now  active in both Mitigation and Adaptation. Today, looking the other way …is unthinkable!

Source:  United Nations ECE/TRANS/WP.5/2013/2; Group of Experts on Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation to International Transport Networks

 “…Climate change (e.g. mean sea level rise, warmer water temperatures, higher intensity of storms and storm surges and potential changes in the wave regime) may severely impact coastal infrastructure and services, such as ports and other coastal transport hubs and networks. Daily port operations can be directly influenced by storm surges and backwater, resulting in port closures. Recent studies have assessed the population and assets exposure of 136 port cities with more than one million inhabitants, finding that tens of millions of people and assets with a value in excess of United States dollars 25 billion may be exposed to coastal flooding by 2050. Coastal inundation will have significant impacts on coastal transportation infrastructure by rendering it unusable for the flood duration and significantly damaging terminals, intermodal facilities, freight villages, storage areas and cargo and, thus, disrupting intermodal supply chains and transport connectivity for longer periods. Ports, which form key-nodes in international transport networks and link international supply-chains, will be particularly impacted, due mostly to the long life-time of their key infrastructure, their exposed coastal and/or estuarine location, and their dependence on trade, shipping and inland transport that are also vulnerable to climate change… “

“…Extreme winds can damage coastal and estuarine railways, damage port facilities (e.g. cranes and loading terminals), destroy agricultural crops (and, thus, indirectly affect the transportation industry), induce more frequent interruptions in air services and damage airport facilities (equipment, perimeter fencing and signs), damage road/railway infrastructure (through e.g. wind-generated debris) and stress road and rail operations. In addition, changes in the wind (and wind-wave) directional patterns may also have important implications on e.g. seaport operations and safety.”

“… Seaports, key nodes of the international transport networks, will bear some of the worst impacts of climate change due to its nature — placement at the edge of lands and seas…”

In order to keep our comments as short as possible, something that tends to be our rule, today we have only focused on Global Ports. We hope the above abstract from  this report by experts, some of whom I was lucky to meet in Geneva in 2011, has made its point.