Climate change is now threatening development goals for billions of the world’s poorest people – with a clear danger that recent gains in reducing poverty will be thrown into reverse in coming decades. A staggering 182 million people in sub-Saharan Africa alone could die of disease directly attributable to climate change by the end of the century. That is the sombre message of 'The climate of poverty: facts, fears and hope', a new report from Christian Aid, which calls on the UK government to lead rich countries in taking urgent action to curb global warming.

Police in the Zimbabwean capital Harare have rounded up more than 10 000 squatters and street children and plan to send them to rural areas, reports said on Monday (May 15). Under a fresh clean-up operation codenamed Round-Up, the police netted 10 224 people, many of them vagrants, touts and what the authorities call "disorderly elements", said the state-controlled Herald newspaper. "We are going to relocate some of the vagrants and street children to their homes," said police spokesperson Munyaradzi Musariri.

Floods in northern Tanzania have displaced more than 19,000 people, submerged close to 1,000 homes and destroyed crops, a local government official said on Monday (15 May). The floods in Moshi, near Mount Kilimanjaro, mostly affected residents who had previously been hit by drought, which had threatened up to 11 million people with starvation. "I think we have more than 19,000 displaced. Up to now there are 998 houses that are under water," James ole Millya, Moshi Rural district commissioner, told Reuters by telephone.

Recent moves by the Zimbabwean government to allow white farmers whose land was confiscated to resume farming, have drawn a variety of responses. "They killed people; they threw them out of their farms, they destroyed the economy. Now they want us to rescue them," Gerry Whitehead, whose land was seized in 2002, told IPS. However, Doug Taylor-Freeme -- president of the predominantly white Commercial Farmers' Union (CFU) -- said there appeared to be "a conducive environment to progress with this matter."

The genocide in 1994, combined with the impacts of HIV/AIDS, has created thousands of orphans in Rwanda. These orphans – many the heads of households – urgently need land use rights. A weakened system of guardianship and increasing pressures on land often prevent this.

People living in the rural highlands of Ethiopia suffer from land degradation, low agricultural productivity and poverty. Finding solutions to these connected problems requires policymakers to understand the potential impacts of different interventions.

Under pressure from soaring oil prices and growing environmental constraints, momentum is gathering for a major international switch from fossil fuels to renewable bioenergy sources such as sugar cane or sunflower seeds, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization. "The gradual move away from oil has begun. Over the next 15 to 20 years, we may see biofuels providing a full 25 per cent of the world's energy needs," says Alexander Muller, assistant director-general of FAO's sustainable development department.

Parliamentarians must introduce legislation to address inadequate distribution of resources to minimise conflicts, participants at the Inter-Parliamentary Union conference were told yesterday (May 8). "We must legislate laws that protect environment rather than dwell on politics," said Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Prof Wangari Maathai. She said most conflicts worldwide stem from greed and selfishness in which some disregard the rule of law and take more resources than others. "There is an inevitable linkage between peace, sustainable management of resources and good governance," said Mathaai.

This report assesses the state of the world’s remaining free-flowing rivers and seeks to answer the question why we should maintain our last free-flowing rivers. Most of the world’s largest rivers are losing their connection to the sea, and only a third of the world’s 177 large rivers remain free-flowing, unimpeded by dams or other barriers. A concerted effort for their conservation is urgently needed.

At a time when concerns about global warming and the need for renewable energy sources are grabbing headlines the world over, it seems particularly regrettable that communities would be afflicted by the theft of solar panels. Yet, this is precisely what is happening in rural areas of Senegal, in West Africa.

Burundian and Rwandan government officials have agreed to resolve by June border land disputes involving communities from the two countries. Rwanda's minister of state for cooperation, Rosemary Museminali, said experts from the two countries would use maps as the main tools to settle the land disputes among the communities living along the border, mostly in Burundi's northern provinces of Ngozi, Kirundo and Muyinga in the northeast.

Potential local investors meet German industrialists next week to discuss setting up a South African company to manufacture hi-tech solar energy panels developed by South African scientists. A German company has acquired the initial rights to make thinner and cheaper solar panels developed by local researchers led by University of Johannesburg (formerly Rand Afrikaans University) physics professor Vivian Alberts, and goes into full production next March.

Work has begun to repair a massive hydroelectric power station in Congo which, if fully developed, could produce enough electricity to make blackouts across Africa a thing of the past. The Inga plant, the largest single hydropower initiative in the world, was one of the few investments made in the vast central African country by former dictator Mobutu Sese Seko but has suffered from years of neglect.

A year after Operation Murambatsvina ('Drive Out Filth'), the government's sudden campaign to purge informal settlements, the lives of thousands of affected Zimbabweans have not changed. Uprooted last year from homes built illegally in the capital, Harare, families with five or more members have been squeezed into tiny living spaces authorised by the government on the outskirts of the city, with no source of employment and, in some cases, no access to medical facilities.

The mass media in the US, France and Britain are writing a great deal about the suffering in the Darfur region of western Sudan and the tensions between the Sudanese government and neighboring Chad. Not surprisingly, they write very little about the economic interests these three imperialist countries have in the oil recently discovered in this part of Africa.
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Food rations in Darfur

On April 22, 2006, the militia of the Merowe Dam authorities, armed with machine guns and heavy artillery, attacked the affected people of Amri village while they were gathering in the village school in the dam–affected area.Three people were immediately killed and more than fifty injured. The Merowe Dam (under construction) is financed by China Exim Bank and different Arab Funds, and executed by Chinese and European companies, including Lahmeyer International, Alstom, and ABB. The conflict between the dam authority and the affected people is about the resettlement places.

The government of Mozambique announced last Friday, 21 April, that the Export-Import Bank of China has agreed to back the construction of the proposed Mphanda Nkuwa Dam, worth over US $2 billion. The financial agreement comes at great risk to Mozambique's economy, environment, and people, for the benefit of foreign big business. Justiça Ambiental (JA!), a Mozambique-based organization, is urging its government to suspend all activity on the project until all project studies are completed and published.

The government wants the Tanzania Electric Supply Company (Tanesco) to stop depending on hydroelectric power and diversify into alternative sources of energy. In his keynote speech at a meeting of Tanesco directors and senior managers, Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Energy and Minerals Arthur Mwakapugi also called on Tanesco to wean itself of government subsidies by adopting a more commercial approach of running the firm instead of depending on government handouts.

Preparations are underway for ministers in charge of water in the 10-member countries of the Nile Basin Initiative to convene their 14th ministerial meeting on Wednesday (May 3) in Burundi’s capital. The ministerial meeting will mainly assess the progress made in the common vision programme, said Patrick Kahangire, executive director of the Nile Basin Initiative. The Nile Basin Initiative was set up February 22 1999 in Dar Es- Salaam, Tanzania, with the goal of getting the countries to work together towards the development of natural resources for the benefit of all, said Kahangire.

A UK government programme has warned that animal diseases will pose a growing threat in Africa unless the continent's health and veterinary services are significantly improved. The warning came yesterday (26 April) in a study by the Foresight programme, set up to advise the government on risks that emerging diseases could pose to people, animals and plants over the next 25 years.