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Climate concern hots up as floods rain down
We asked our editorial teams across the network to highlight the key issues making headline news in their radio stations as we resume production after the summer recess. One dominant theme emerged: the climate crisis.
Last week’s disastrous floods on the border between Nepal and China-controlled Tibet, which have left well over a thousand people dead and more than four thousand still unaccounted for, have clearly returned this issue to the collective European consciousness… especially in the wake of a summer of extreme weather events.
Practical help
The International Red Cross estimates that more than 90,000 people have been affected by the flash floods in Nepal on 26 August. Gonçalo Orfão, the organisation’s national emergency coordinator in Portugal, tells Renascença that we need to turn our attention to putting in place long-term support for Nepal’s recovery.
Gonçalo Orfão, National Emergency Co-ordinator for the Red Cross in Portugal (in Portuguese):
“In addition to the fatalities, there is a very large section of the population that needs support to return to normality. These are people living in isolated areas of a mountainous region, relying on local economies. So, beyond search-and-rescue operations to locate survivors, our efforts must also reach these people. They need support in the form of essential supplies – food and non-food items, as well as first aid – and, crucially, assistance in restoring their sources of income.”
Prevention, prevention, prevention
Meanwhile, esRadio Castilla y León broadcasts a lengthy interview with Jesús Contreras, a spokesperson for Spain’s Association of Civil Engineers, on our preparedness, here in Europe, for increasingly extreme weather events of this type.
He highlights a number of ways we should be actively working to prevent such disasters, given the changing climate.
Jesús Contreras, Spokesperson for the Association of Civil Engineers (in Spanish):
“You cannot prevent the phenomenon of rain or climate change, but you have to try to combat it. This means carrying out projects such as reforestation, which is very important in headwater areas to prevent or at least limit soil erosion; as well as major flood-mitigation works in catchment areas. There is also an issue for which there is no longer really a solution, namely the pressure from urban development.”
In particular, he criticises the folly of building on land known to be prone to flooding.
Prevention, Contreras stresses, is key.
Jesús Contreras, Spokesperson for the Association of Civil Engineers (in Spanish):
“Prevention involves educating the public and informing them of safe places in their local area where they should go when such an event occurs. These plans are known as emergency preparedness plans, or pre-established emergency plans, as for fires. And this is a matter of urgency; it really does save lives. […] The other thing is to keep the infrastructure we have in good working order. We can’t have a situation where something like this happens and the bottom drain isn’t working, or you’ve got problems with the spillway, or there’s a structural issue. It could wash away the dam – so we need to maintain what we have.”
But, he is asked, how prepared are we as things currently stand?
Jesús Contreras, Spokesperson for the Association of Civil Engineers (in Spanish):
“What is certainly true is that when it rains, it rains heavily. […] We are seeing some truly intense summer heatwaves – they say this year has been the hottest on record. And of course, that warms the water, the sea, which will trigger new episodes [of flooding] now, in the autumn. Are we prepared? Well, that depends on where the intensity of the rain is concentrated. We’ve seen that in certain areas. The River Turia, for example. Valencia is very well protected – look how nothing happened there. Why? Because four reservoirs and a massive channelling system were built as part of the preliminary design following the floods of ’57. So, nothing happened there. But in El Pollo, nothing was put in place, and 200 people died.”
Outdated infrastructure
In the same week as the devastating floods in Nepal, storms were also raging in the Baltics, as covered by our Latvian, Lithuanian and Estonian member stations. And much further south, a small town in southern Bulgaria was swept away when flash floods triggered simultaneous flood waves on two local rivers, both of which burst their banks.
In a conversation with BNR, Stelian Dimitrov, chair of the Bulgarian Geographical Society and vice-chancellor of Sofia University St Kliment Ohridski, claims that no one has any real idea which of Bulgaria’s existing watersheds are able to withstand rainfall of the intensity experienced in this region, and which are not.
He outlines the scale of the problem.
Stelian Dimitrov, Chair of the Bulgarian Geographical Society (in Bulgarian):
“What we are talking about is the fact that we have infrastructure that is not designed to cope with modern climatic conditions. The climatic conditions that were taken as a basis when this infrastructure was designed and built have long since changed. It was designed for conditions that prevailed 10, 15 or 20 years ago, whereas we now live in a much more dynamic geographical environment. This is being driven primarily by climate change, the main source of this dynamism. Ultimately, what engineers thought would hold up for years now turns out to be simply unfit for purpose.”
When a watershed is not fit for purpose, a wave can build, picking up all the debris, mud and rocks in its path. And this kind of debris flow is much more destructive than water alone.
Professor Dimitrov adds that Bulgarian experts have been calling for years for at-risk areas to be mapped and detailed digital models made, underlining that “prevention is always cheaper”.
Money, money, money
One lesson from the past few months is that it takes more than solidarity to tackle climate-related disasters, says German broadcaster AMS. Pierfrancesco Maran, chair of the European Parliament's environment, climate and food safety committee, stressed to committee members on Tuesday that we need a change in mindset to accompany the changing climate.
Pierfrancesco Maran, Member of the European Parliament – S&D, Italy (in English):
“The climate emergency is no longer an exceptional phenomenon. It is a structural reality. Our response must therefore also be structural, not limited to emergency response, but focused on prevention, preparedness and resilience.”
This of course costs money. But Hadja Lahbib, the European commissioner whose portfolio includes preparedness and crisis management, echoed our Bulgarian expert’s view that a lack of preparedness is far more costly in the long run.
Hadja Lahbib, European Commissioner for Preparedness and Crisis Management (in English):
“Every year we call it the worst fire season on record. That should tell us something; that really should tell us something. The risks are changing fast and we need an approach built to keep up with it. That is the question we need to answer in the EU-CPM budget negotiations ahead. Yes, preparedness cost money, but not being prepared costs a lot more in lives, homes and so much more. We cannot keep learning that lesson year after year.”
Commissioner Lahbib’s attendance at this relatively routine meeting, as forest fires raged in Belgium too, demonstrates the level of concern in Europe surrounding this issue.
Of course, before the start of the summer season, Brussels had been busy praising the exceptional efforts that had been made to prepare for climate-related crises. But once again, the scale of the weather events experienced was even greater than anticipated.
More on migration
Our Italian colleagues, meanwhile, are focused on the recent migrant-related row between Rome and Madrid.
In early August 2026, around 75,000 migrants attempted to cross from Morocco into Ceuta, Spain’s tiny North African enclave. Most of the people were sent straight back to Morocco but some 5,000 remain in Ceuta.
The surge is thought to have been driven by changes in Spanish legislation restricting summary sea returns and Spain’s domestic regularisation policy, which allowed over a million undocumented migrants to apply for legal status in the country.
Spain’s policy changes have sparked outrage around Europe, with 22 member states co-signing a letter accusing PM Pedro Sánchez of generating a major ‘pull factor’ that has destabilised the bloc’s borders. The crisis has specifically triggered a vocal diplomatic feud and tit-for-tat border restrictions between Italy and Spain – something that Italian interior minister Matteo Piantedosi attempts to play down in an interview with Radio 24.
Matteo Piantedosi, Minister of the Interior of Italy (in Italian):
“I would like to reiterate that our decision to temporarily reinstate internal border controls at air and sea borders was not a measure directed against Spain or any other partner. Any kind of offensive action against Spain, a country linked to us by historic ties of friendship and brotherhood, is out of the question. It was simply a precautionary and organisational decision intended to protect national security and the stability of the entire European border control system at a time of great pressure [...]. It should not be forgotten, in this regard, that the temporary reinstatement of internal border controls has been activated hundreds of times over the years by European countries.”
Matteo Villa is a senior research fellow at ISPI, the Italian institute for international political studies. He is responsible for monitoring geopolitical and geo-economic trends, among which migration trends. He puts the whole fuss in perspective, suggesting that Rome has somewhat overreacted.
Matteo Villa, Senior Research Fellow at ISPI (in Italian):
“Looking at the statistics, even assuming that 5,000 people reach Spanish soil – do not remain stuck in Ceuta, but actually get there – how many of them would come to Italy? Well, on average, I'll tell you: 250. So we're creating a storm over very, very low numbers and at great risk. To give you an idea, 65,000 people arrived in Italy last year; this year, the figure is likely to be 30,000. So, 250 is truly negligible. That said, the risk – and the Sánchez government is right to point this out – is that we Italians could also suffer the same treatment we have meted out to the Spanish. Just this month, other European countries want to send tens of thousands of people back to Italy because they landed here first. And how did they manage to land here yet move on to other parts of Europe? Because there is freedom of movement and few border controls. If we suspend Schengen for 250 people, then Germany could do the same for 150,000 people who have arrived in Germany from Italy in recent years.”
Bloody nose meted out on META
In other headline news, last Wednesday (26 August), Meta settled a major lawsuit brought by a coalition of US states. The main premise of the case was that the company behind Facebook and Instagram intentionally designed its platforms to be addictive and harmful to children and teenagers for the sake of profit.
Meta has agreed to pay out some 17 billion dollars in fines and has made significant concessions regarding how young people use its platforms.
Leanda Barrington-Leach is executive director of the 5Rights Foundation, an international NGO advocating for a digital world fit for children and young people. She tells our colleagues at The Europeans podcast that she was disappointed the states agreed to settle so quickly, as they clearly had a strong case against Meta.
This said, she acknowledges that the fine Meta has agreed to pay, over 10 years, is significant. And although the changes to platform functionality do not go as far as she would have liked, they do at least set a precedent.
Leanda Barrington-Leach, Executive Director at 5Rights (in English):
“They have in the settlement agreed to make changes. They are changes regarding existing features and functionalities. They are changes which are really about putting safeguards on top of badly designed systems. So they're not perfect, but they also, again, go to show that they can quite easily make changes. They can limit, for example, time access. They can limit notifications. They can block things like beauty filters, etc. So it goes to show that all of the safety-by-design pieces that we're asking for are possible.”
For now, these measures seem to only apply in the US. Is there any chance, ask The Europeans, that we might see them in Europe soon?
Leanda Barrington-Leach, Executive Director at 5Rights (in English):
“There's absolutely no reason why they can't apply this globally. But I think they don't have a commercial interest to do so. So it will depend on regulators putting the pressure on and saying, ‘Well, you're doing that in the US. We expect that as a minimum. And of course, we expect you to go much further’. Because the US is relying on these court cases, but we have strong regulation. We have a much stronger basis to ask for much more substantial changes.”
https://www.europeanspodcast.com/all-episodes/will-metas-american-makeover-come-to-europe
So, that’s just a small taster of what’s on the agenda around the Euranet Plus network right now. Come back next week for another round-up of European affairs from our team of journalists across the bloc.