The Rhine River is Europe's most important commercial waterway,
channeling the flow of trade among Switzerland, France, Germany, and the
Netherlands. In this innovative study, Mark Cioc focuses on the river
from the moment when the Congress of Vienna established a multinational
commission charged with making the river more efficient for purposes of
trade and commerce in 1815. He examines the engineering and
administrative decisions of the next century and a half that resulted in
rapid industrial growth as well as profound environmental degradation,
and highlights the partially successful restoration efforts undertaken
from the 1970s to the present.
The Rhine is a classic example of a "multipurpose" river -- used
simultaneously for transportation, for industry and agriculture, for
urban drinking and sanitation needs, for hydroelectric production, and
for recreation. It thus invites comparison with similarly over-burdened
rivers such as the Mississippi, Hudson, Colorado, and Columbia. The
Rhine's environmental problems are, however, even greater than those
of other rivers because it is so densely populated (50 million people
live along its borders), so highly industrialized (10% of global
chemical production), and so short (775 miles in length).
Two centuries of nonstop hydraulic tinkering have resulted in a Rhine
with a sleek and slender profile. In their quest for a perfect
canal-like river, engineers have modified it more than any other large
river in the world. As a consequence, between 1815 and 1975, the river
lost most of its natural floodplain, riverside vegetation, migratory
fish, and biodiversity. Recent efforts to restore that biodiversity,
though heartening, can have only limited success because so many of the
structural changes to the river are irreversible.
The Rhine: An Eco-Biography, 1815-2000 makes clear just how central
the river has been to all aspects of European political, economic, and
environmental life for the past two hundred years.
