Climate Focus

By Sharon Kimathi, Energy and ESG Editor, Reuters Digital

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Climate litigation is the focus of today’s newsletter as more than 600,000 Brazilians are suing BHP over the 2015 Mariana dam collapse, while a Peruvian farmer is suing Germany’s energy giant RWE over the company’s emissions and its effects on the melting of glaciers near his hometown.

Nineteen people were killed when the Mariana dam in southeastern Brazil collapsed and unleashed a wave of toxic sludge, leaving thousands homeless, flooding forests and polluting the Doce River.

Mothers of children who died in Brazil's worst environmental disaster demanded justice for their loved ones after submissions in their London lawsuit came to an end this week.

"It was the day that destroyed my life... the day that took away my son," Gelvana Silva, 37, said outside London's High Court. She lost her seven-year-old son Thiago in the flood.

The women are joined by 46 local governments and around 2,000 businesses in a lawsuit worth up to 36 billion pounds ($46.63 billion), making it one of the largest cases in English legal history.

The dam was owned by Samarco, a joint venture between Vale and Anglo-Australian BHP, the world's biggest miner by market value.

Tom Goodhead, CEO of Pogust Goodhead, representing the claimants, expects a decision this summer.

Elsewhere, the Higher Regional Court of Hamm will be hearing a case by Peruvian farmer Saul Luciano Lliuya, backed by activist group Germanwatch, claiming RWE's greenhouse gas emissions have contributed to the melting of the Andean glaciers,  which has raised the water level at Laguna Pacacocha, creating a significant flood risk to his home in the nearby town of Huaraz.

Lliuya is demanding the energy company contribute some 21,000 euros ($22,000), to an estimated $3.5 million cost of a flood defence project.

He argues that RWE has contributed nearly 0.5% of global manmade greenhouse gas emissions since the industrial revolution and should pay the equivalent portion of flood protection costs in the area.

And finally, several U.S. farmers and non-profit organizations filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration, arguing it is illegally withholding Department of Agriculture grants funded by the Inflation Reduction Act.

The five farmers involved in the suit were awarded grants from a USDA Rural Energy for America Program to install solar panels. The three non-profits involved were awarded Forest Service grants.

An earthquake of magnitude 4.4 hit near the southern Italian city of Naples, damaging buildings and causing locals to flee into the streets, according to Italy's National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV). The tremor, of the same magnitude as one that occurred last May, was the strongest since the early 1980s, when a long string of seismic events sowed damage and panic in the same area.

A drone view shows Jacaranda trees on Paseo de la Reforma avenue near the monument, The Angel of Independece in Mexico City, Mexico. REUTERS/Raquel Cunha 

Some jacarandas in the streets of Mexico's capital started blooming in early January, when they normally awaken in spring. The early onset bloom has set off alarm bells among residents and scientists in Mexico City, where the trees have become an iconic, photogenic mainstay of city streets. 

It’s usually a moment that attracts the eyes of residents, tourists and local wildlife, but now it has turned into a moment of fret as scientists point to climate change as the culprit. 

A study commissioned by the charity WaterAid showed how South and Southeast Asia face the strongest wetting trends as the weather in some of the world's most densely populated cities is swinging from droughts to floods and back again as rising temperatures play havoc with the global water cycle.

Click here for a Reuters wider image feature on Britain’s polluted waterways after privatized water companies discharged sewage for 3.6 million hours in 2023 which has deterred wild water swimmers, angered surfers, prompted warnings about toxic blue-green algal blooms in lakes and created an army of people who have become experts on water quality. 

U.S. electric vehicle automaker Tesla has warned that it and other major American exporters are exposed to retaliatory tariffs that could be leveled in response to President Donald Trump's aggressive use of tariffs. The Tesla comments reflect those of many U.S. businesses concerned by Trump's tariffs, but is notable because it is from Tesla, whose CEO Elon Musk, a close ally of Trump, has been leading the White House effort to shrink the size of the federal government. 

In the race to save the endangered ocelot, less than 100 of which are left in the U.S., scientists are trekking the country, pursuing fertility treatments and striving to kickstart a new generation of the wild cat. Click here or the image for the full Reuters video.

Reuters Breakingviews’ Afiq Fitri Alias and George Hay highlight the options the World Bank’s head Ajay Banga can take to avoid cutbacks under the new Trump administration’s policy that seeks to wind down climate programmes and financing as February’s executive order starts a 180-day review of all intergovernmental organizations to which the United States belongs and provides funding.

They suggest Banga can look to the International Development Association’s hybrid, leveraged financing model which represents a relatively efficient structure for the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development’s bond issuances and ability to recycle capital into new projects. Click here for the full Breakingviews article.

The percentage that Germany’s