Suez Canal, the Passway to Successful Global Trade
As reported by BBC on July 7th, the Ever Given has finally been released from the Suez Canal after a three-month blockage in the waterway. This incident was described as an extraordinary event that experts said they had never heard of happening in the canal’s 150-year history. This blockage undoubtedly caused global commerce to slow down by forcing many ships at the time to take longer alternatives to get to their destination. This leads to additional fossil fuel combustion and other costs along with. Besides that, there were also many other ships unable to go to another route, stuck in place until the traffic ended. This canal shut down raised public worries of worldwide supply shortages and rising costs, largely confined to the activities of large shipping companies which are already under a lot of pressure from the COVID-19 pandemic.
With little side story told which highlighted the criticality of the Suez Canal, it connects the Mediterranean and the Red seas and separates the African continent from Asia. Because of its good geographic location, many countries and nations can benefit from it. This canal can provide the shortest route between Europe and regions that lie around the Indian and Pacific oceans.
The canal was constructed in 1869 by Ferdinand de Lesseps, the former French consul. It has become one of the world’s most heavily used shipping lanes. Before it constructed the canal, all ships traveling toward Asia had to head on an arduous journey around the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa. Now after the canal was built, it provided a shorter safer route and became heavily used ever since then.
The Suez Canal was built to serve, and profit from, international trade, its international status remained undefined for many years. As the Suez Canal is called one of the busiest trade arteries in the world, there are around 50 ships travel through the canal daily carrying between USD 3-9 billion worth of cargo, on average. Over one billion tonnes of cargo were shipped through the canal in 2019, four times the tonnage transiting the Panama Canal during the same period, according to Egypt’s Suez Canal Authority (SCA)
For many years, the canal’s limited width and poor depth made it impossible to handle two-way traffic from modern tanker ships. In 2014, the SCA engaged in an ambitious program of canal-widening to increase the daily capacity of vessels from 49 to 97 by 2023, at a cost of approximately USD 8.2 billion. The Suez Canal Authority of Egypt proposed a proposal to enlarge the canal and build a new 22-mile lane branching off the main channel. The Egyptian government in 2015 opened a 35km channel parallel to the main waterway. This expansion enabled two-way traffic for most of the route and allowed larger vessels to transit, accommodating ships the size of the Ever Given.
Suez Canal also played a vital role in the cold war era between Egypt and the combined force of Britain, France, and Israel. The cause of this conflict started with Britain’s military occupation of the canal zone, which had continued even after Egypt gained independence in 1922. In October 1956, a combined force of Britain, Israel, and French launched the attack on Egypt and then succeeded in advancing close to the canal, but later withdrew from Egypt in disgrace following condemnation from the United States and the threat of nuclear retaliation from the Soviet Union. The result of the crisis is that the Canal was eventually under Egypt’s control.
Discussion
Suez Canal is a very successful water project throughout history. It had been estimated and studied by economists, found that Egypt is the most important in terms of being pivotal and being able to affect global welfare when there are changes to how easy it is to go through this particular node after long at many different trade destinations. Approximately, there are 80% of the volume of global trade is transported by water through canals, it is a great of shortening the Transportation route thus reduce fossil fuel combustion and benefits global supply chains. Within that 80% of the volume of the goods, there are about 12% of the world’s trade is made by Suez Canal. As we see the result of how many global trades got delayed after a blockage caused by Ever Give. It had highlighted the importance of widening the canal to enhance global trades and prevent such blockage in the future. Speaking of construction to expand the width of the canal. It is then necessary to mention the environmental impact on the indigenous people and animal species near the construction site.
Perhaps the most harmful species is called nomad jellyfish. These jellyfish were originally from tropical waters, then they were introduced to the Mediterranean via the Suez Canal in the 1970s. Their reproduction rate is so fast now their population is too big, frequently making make commercial fishing impossible and have sometimes closed tourist beaches lining the Mediterranean for days at a time. Some of the jellyfish have found they can temporarily disable the power stations along the eastern Mediterranean after they became stuck in the stations, the seawater-powered cooling systems. Nearby fishermen have found their catches ruined for similar reasons. About 90% of the catches are jellyfishes, due to the rest of fishes are all damaged and population got reduced. Researchers at the University of East Anglia estimated that jellyfish from the Suez would cost fishermen in the northern Adriatic Sea – which is only a small part of the Mediterranean – €8.2m (£6.5m) in financial losses.
Almost every water project has an environmental impact, no matter major or minor, recoverable or not. It is always critical to acknowledge and minimize them as much as possible. Nature’s health is the priority for environmental scientists, but for economics and businesspeople, it is ideal to maximize the advantages as much as possible while avoiding making too many “mistakes”.( environmental damage). Building water such as Suez Canal, Panama Canal, and South-north water diversion that are bringing benefits to the public and even the whole world, it is worth it, but still, environmental sustainability is the key, because we don’t want to have the canal built but giving off lands and putting thousands of species in danger.