Climate Focus

By Sharon Kimathi, Energy and ESG Editor, Reuters Digital

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Water is back in focus in today’s newsletter as Ethiopia’s new dam causes fresh disputes with its neighbor Egypt over flooding, while residents of the Dutch-Caribbean asked its courts to order the Dutch state to accelerate its cuts to greenhouse emissions due to rising sea levels.

Let’s start with Ethiopia’s new dam after the rising Nile waters inundated homes and fields in northern Egypt over the weekend, forcing residents to move by boat.

The waterlog has intensified a war of words between Cairo and Addis Ababa over whether Ethiopia's giant Nile dam has worsened seasonal floods.

In the Nile Delta village of Dalhamo, in Menoufia Governorate, some 50 km (31 miles) northwest of Cairo, men paddled wooden boats through narrow lanes where water lapped at the walls of their homes.

The Nile has long been affected by seasonal flooding due to monsoon rainfall in the Ethiopian Highlands that usually peaks in July and August. But this year a late-season surge has pushed north from Ethiopia, through Sudan, and into Egypt.

In Sudan, the U.N. migration agency said floods in Bahri, Khartoum state, displaced about 1,200 families last week and destroyed homes, compounding an 18-month war that has crippled the country's response.

Egypt's Water Resources and Irrigation Ministry has accused Ethiopia of "reckless unilateral" operation of its Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, saying sharp, unannounced swings in water releases after the dam's September 9 inauguration helped trigger a "man-made, late flood".

Over in the Dutch-Caribbean, residents told a court that climate change had made life on their island of Bonaire unbearably hot and dry and asked judges to order the Dutch state to cut greenhouse gases more quickly.

Onnie Emerenciana, a farmer in his 60s, told the court that the heat affected the health of the elderly and the poor, droughts affected crops and rising sea levels risked wiping out historically significant slave huts on the island's beaches. Click here for the full Reuters story.

Today’s top Climate Buzz follows up from yesterday’s Sustainable Switch about European Union lawmakers watering down the bloc’s flagship corporate sustainability law as the fossil fuel sector is also weighing in on the rules, asking for it to be scrapped in its entirety.

That’s right, deep cuts were not enough for TotalEnergies and Siemens who have called on European governments to axe the corporate sustainability due diligence directive (CSDDD), according to a letter seen by Reuters. Click here for the full Reuters story.

A woman takes a photo of the damaged century old Daanbantayan Church following the magnitude 6.9 quake in Daanbantayan, Cebu, Philippines. REUTERS/Eloisa Lopez

A powerful earthquake of magnitude 7.4 struck offshore in the southern Philippines on Friday. At least two people were killed, civil defense official Karlo Puerto told Reuters, both in Mati City close to where the quake struck. There were no other reports of casualties from regional disaster offices contacted by Reuters.

The quake was among the strongest in recent years to hit the Philippines and came two weeks after the island experienced its deadliest earthquake in more than a decade with 74 people killed on the central island of Cebu following an offshore quake of magnitude 6.9.

Jonathan Rinderknecht, 29, was arrested in Florida on charges of intentionally igniting what would become California's devastating Palisades Fire, which killed 12 people and wiped out a wealthy enclave of Los Angeles at the start of the year, the U.S. Justice Department said.

According to a criminal complaint filed by the U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles, Rinderknecht started a fire near a hiking trail in the mountains near Pacific Palisades a few minutes after midnight on January 1 after he completed a shift driving an Uber car. He then proceeded to repeatedly call 911 before successfully connecting to report the blaze. He also recorded videos on his phone of firefighters attempting to extinguish the blaze.

Europe's plastics industry faces plant closures at an accelerated rate and falling further behind global rivals in recycling without urgent action, sector lobby group Plastics Europe said.

The group said it wants the European Union to recognize plastics as a strategically vital industry and to address the sector’s crippling energy costs, climate-related taxes and high feedstock prices, as well as the impact of U.S. tariffs.

Last month, UNESCO labelled the Vjosa valley in Albania as one of 26 newly designated Biosphere Reserves, part of an initiative to "safeguard some of the planet’s richest and most fragile ecosystems", it said in a statement.

But now, environmentalists are worried for its future as scraps of plastic from an open landfill dance in the wind into the Vjosa River, while a large pipe discharges sewage into the fast-flowing water as diggers scrape gravel from the riverbed to make concrete. Click here for the full Reuters article.

Click here for an inspiring video and article on Bangladesh’s solar-powered “floating schools” which ensure children do not miss class when rising waters cut off roads and villages.

The initiative was launched in 2002 by architect Mohammed Rezwan using $500 of his scholarship money and has grown into a nationwide model run by the non-profit Shidhulai Swanirvar Sangstha (SSS).

Hunger crisis: Israel and Hamas agreed to the first phase of a ceasefire deal for Gaza, which paves the way for humanitarian aid entering Gaza to increase to hundreds of trucks per day,