A senior Conservative Party MP in the United Kingdom who heads a Commons committee to alleviate poverty in the Third World has been accused of attempting to use his position to make up to £1.5m for his own company, according to the Sunday Times newspaper. Tony Baldry, a former foreign minister, has been paid by a diamond firm to lobby the government of a west African country to secure valuable diamond concessions, says the newspaper. Baldry, chairman of the Commons international development committee, has close links with Sierra Leone, a war-ravaged country heavily dependent on British aid.

Turtles are endangered worldwide, but the five species of turtles found along the Tanzania coastline are now increasing in numbers. An intensive education and awareness programme has enlisted local fishermen and villagers in the conservation programme. Turtle nests are now protected and monitored in many parts of Tanzania. The longest and best documented programme is on Mafia Island, recognised as a regionally important nesting ground for Green and Hawksbill turtles.

African countries will now be better able to guard against invasive pests that threaten their forests, sometimes from as far afield as North America, thanks to a new United Nations-backed web site launched to fight a danger that has grown seriously with the increase in trade, travel and transport. The site, created by African specialists at the initiative of the Forest Invasive Species Network for Africa (FISNA), is hosted by FAO. Features include information on new outbreaks of invasive pest species and woody species. It also provides references, publications and other links related to invasive species in Africa, those that are not native to a specific forest ecosystem, whose introduction does or is likely to harm the ecosystem.

"In the name of humanism and self-determination, Blair's evangelical mission undermines Africa's case for development. And in the name of governance it threatens to weaken still further Africa's already fragile nation states," writes Daniel Ben-Ami, author of 'Cowardly Capitalism: The Myth of the Global Financial Casino, in this commentary for www.spiked-online.com. Ben-Ami writes that Africa's situation is so dire that any extra assets would be welcomed, but that the Commission for Africa Report, is likely to do more harm than good.

"The Zambezi River is the source of life for our families… [it] is generous and other users along with us benefit from it. We respect all of them as good neighbors, and we especially recognize the important role of Cahora Bassa dam… However, in the 30 years since the dam's construction, we have lost productive lands along the river and on the islands. The reeds we use have disappeared. Fish in the river have also decreased. In the delta, the River arms are progressively drying up. The mangroves are threatened, and so, too, is the prawn fishery…" These are some of the conclusions that a group of 70 subsistence farmers, fishermen and NGO members from the Lower Zambezi River in Mozambique developed in a declaration they presented to government authorities in October 2004. The full article is contained in the February edition of the World Rivers Review. published by the International Rivers Network.

With an area of 27,834 sq km, landlocked Burundi is a battleground between the Rwandan army and militia from the Congo, and is plagued by a protracted civil war, which has claimed the lives of thousands of Burundi civilians. The over 5 million Burundi population is unevenly distributed geographically, with large populations displaced by economic crisis and war, forced to change their livelihoods. In a country with a long term legacy of colonial rule by successive Dutch and Belgian colonization --added to pre-colonial divisions and problems between landlords and communal farmers-- lack of access to land has been a major cause of deforestation. The forests, once extensive, today account for some 9% of total land area.

Oil is a big problem at the global level, where its use is resulting in climate change through the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. At the same time oil is an even bigger immediate problem in the areas where it is extracted, particularly in the tropics. In these regions, oil exploration and exploitation impact heavily on local peoples, whose lives and livelihoods are destroyed though deforestation, forest degradation and coastal ecosystem destruction, all accompanied by widespread human rights violations and impoverishment. Within that scenario, a meeting was held from 1-3 March in Lagos, Nigeria, convened by Oilwatch-Africa: the "Conference on Oil, Resource Conflicts and Livelihoods in Africa". The meeting was attended by representatives of NGOs, academia, media and legislators from Cameroon, Chad, Congo Brazzaville, Ghana, Mozambique, Nigeria, South Africa and Sudan, as well as from Latin America, North America and Europe.

Two environmental pressure groups are still opposed to fresh attempts by the government to construct a hydroelectric power dam at Bujagali falls. Addressing a press conference on Wednesday, Frank Muramuzi, the president of the National association of Professional environmentalists, said there were flaws, which have not been addressed. Muramuzi, who was flanked by Oweyegah Afunaduula, a Makerere University don and secretary of the Save Bujagali Crusade, said they would lobby global funding bodies to halt investment in the dam.

Five years after discussions on how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, not enough of the agreed actions had occurred for the Kyoto Protocol to be put into practice. During this time, discussions have reduced the positive impacts of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, reducing the potential for developing countries to benefit from future emissions trading. Can the faltering global climate regime still include the needs of developing countries?

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Wangari Maathai has appealed to the world's eight most industrialised countries for urgent action to save the rainforest of the Congo basin, the world's "second largest green lung" after the Amazon. "We do hope that the G8 leaders will agree on some action, including the conservation of African forests in general but the Congo Basin forest ecosystem in particular," Maathai told a meeting of some 50 environment ministers in Rome.

The UK Government is using taxpayers' money in a push to privatise water and sanitation in some of the world's poorest countries, says a new report from the World Development Movement. The report says millions of pounds of aid have been spent employing consultants, often UK companies, to 'advise' developing country governments to hand management of their water to foreign companies.

Despite the documented costs of privatisation to the poor, the UK is leading international efforts to create mechanisms to fund privatisation consultants. "Aid money for the much needed restructuring of water and sanitation provision in poor countries is then only forthcoming if the consultant's privatisation plan is accepted," says WDM. WDM says while there is an urgent need for reforms so that people across the developing world have access to water and sanitation, the debate is over how this could be best achieved. "'Plan A' of donor governments and institutions – water and sanitation privatisation – is failing and will continue to do so for a number of fundamental reasons."

* Compiled from the report by Pambazuka News.

The Durban Group is a coalition of NGOs, social and environment activists, communities, academics, scientists and economists from around the world concerned about climate change, who call for a global grassroots movement against climate change. The group denounces the current flawed approach of international negotiations and claims that it must be met by the active participation of a global movement of Northern and Southern peoples to take the climate back into their hands, reports the World Rainforest Movement.

Several members of the Durban Group participating in the 5th World Social Forum held at Porto Alegre, Brazil, gathered there to exchange information and elaborate strategies for action regarding climate change. One of the outcomes was an open letter to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to convey him "two convictions: first, that another world is possible; second, that it will not be possible if people do not have a climate they can live in."

Never in the history of the world has the prosperity paradox become as monumental as in this 21st century, making economic democracy the biggest political challenge. National economies, especially those of developing countries, have been compelled to swallow one economic prescription after the other, yet micro and macro-economic imbalances persist. These are formulations drawn from the deep well of neo-liberal economics designed to teach poor nations the good old-fashioned fiscal discipline.

In Nigeria, we have had such IMF and World Bank imposed reforms as SAP (Structural Adjustment Program), PRSP (Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers) etc and now NEEDS (National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy). The aim of these policies we have always been told were to eradicate poverty. Apparently realizing that the achievement of this objective has proven elusive, our economic policy operators have instead settled for the politically safer objective of “poverty reduction”. Poverty eradication has therefore been consigned to oblivion.

This century witnessed an overwhelming increase in labor saving inventions that have vastly improved production capabilities. The question is: Why is it that poverty still persists in spite of the great progress achieved especially in the field of technology? Why so much poverty in the midst of abundant resources? What an economic failure! It is therefore very pertinent to unmask the mystery behind the world’s persistent economic woes and failures if developing economies must come out of the woods. This economic malaise is nevertheless not limited to developing economies alone.

There was one man who really saw the forest. He not only saw the forest but examined every tree. His name is Henry George, an American philosopher whose classic bestseller Progress and Poverty (1879) identified the causes of poverty and proffered workable solutions to them.

George was able to unmask the founders of neo-classical economics - the paradigm embraced by world governments and taught in universities and colleges, accusing them of acting in bad faith. “As policy-makers”, wrote renowned American economist, Professor Mason Gaffney in the book, “The Corruption of Economics” co-authored with Dr Fred Harrison, “neo-classical economists present us with “choices that are too often hard dilemmas”.

“Here are some of the dismal dilemmas that neo-classicals pose for us today. For efficiency, we must sacrifice equity; to attract business we must lower taxes so much as to shut the libraries and starve the schools; to prevent inflation we must keep an army of unfortunates unemployed; to make jobs we must chew up land and pollute the world; to motivate workers we must have unequal wealth; to raise productivity we must fire people; and so on”.

Leading exponents of Neo-classical economics - the dominant paradigm, Fred Harrison in his essay “Death Rattle of a Deadly Paradigm” noted “are expressing anxieties about the relevance of their theoretical apparatus”.

>>>>>Read why there can be no freedom without land equity. Click on the link below for the rest of this article.

Reclaiming the Land' brings together original investigations of the new generation of rural social movements in Asia, Latin America and Africa. From Brazil and Mexico to Zimbabwe and the Philippines, dispossessed peasants and unemployed workers of diverse political and ideological character have used land occupations and other tactics systematically to confront the neoliberal state. This book provides both national and micro-level case studies of these movements.

The rainforests of the Congo Basin stretch over some 200 million hectares (494 million acres) and six central African states. Only the Amazon has a larger tropical forest area. But if current trends continue, about 70 percent of these forests may be gone by 2040, says the global conservation group WWF, which is behind several big projects to protect the area.

More people are affected by the negative impact of poor water supply and sanitation than by war, terrorism, and weapons of mass destruction combined, according to a paper published in this week's issue of The Lancet. Almost 4 000 children are killed everyday by this "silent humanitarian crisis". Dr Jamie Bartram, co-ordinator for the World Health Organisation's Water, Sanitation and Health Programme recommends the dramatic scaling up of efforts, involving the expansion of safe drinking water and sanitation coverage in order to meet the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) water and sanitation target by 2015. Bartram's article in The Lancet is the fifth in a series of papers summarizing the key conclusions of the Millennium Project – a three-year independent advisory effort commissioned by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to review progress of the MDG.

By 2025 there will be 700 million urban Africans. Sub-Saharan Africa not only has the world's fastest rate of urban population growth, but its cities also have the highest proportion of unplanned - and often illegal - low-income settlements. Given their highly informal nature, providing African cities with adequate water and sanitation services, and increasing hygiene awareness presents a great challenge.

Tanzania will this year begin its first field trials of genetically modified (GM) crops. The first plants to be tested will be cotton modified to resist attack by insect pests, including a caterpillar known as red bollworm that feeds on cotton and causes bollworm disease. The plans were announced by Wilfred Ngirwa, permanent secretary for the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, at an international workshop on GM crops held in Arusha on 7 February.

Sajida Khan is a soft-spoken, dignified but intense Durban resident who opposes the World Bank's methane-to-electricity project at the Bisasar Road Landfill. Her passion is fighting - and almost palpably winning, now - against awesome forces, including environmental racism, global warming and international economic power.

It is a story that needs telling. But not before another - more personal - story, one which merges seamlessly with the history of the municipal dump whose closure Khan has been fighting for years.

In 1980, Bisasar Road Landfill in the Indian suburb of Clare Estate officially opened its gates to rubbish-dumping trucks. I was just three years old at the time and living in the suburb next door. During the course of my entire childhood, the Bisasar Road landfill was a regular topic of discussion, as my mother and I made trips to visit my grandmother nearby.

Clare Estate was the bridge between our familial residences. I vividly remember the preparations, as we hit that short stretch. Car windows had to be rolled up. Nostrils had to be squeezed tight with tiny, pincer-gripped fingers. Breaths needed to be held. The stench was reminiscent of my public school toilet on a really hot Durban day.

I would also marvel at the big houses on the hill lining the road on the opposite side of the dump (we lived in a block of flats). They stood majestically like something out of Fitzgerald's Great Gatsby, in sharp contrast to the huge stinking dump right in from of them. A few houses were owned by one of the wealthiest Indians in Durban, my mother used to boast, as if they were members of our own family.

I could never quite work out why rich people would live right across from a refuse dump. Little did my premature mind comprehend that everyone, including the rich Indian, could only live in an area designated under apartheid's Group Areas Act. Since Clare Estate had a large quarry, it was deemed unsuitable for white people. Indians were allocated that area.

A few years after the opening of the dump at the site of that quarry, I remember my mother excitedly telling me that the Bisaser Road facility would be shut and transformed into a park for the community. As a child whose life was spent riding a bike around our tar-covered parking lot the idea of a park in our vicinity was just too thrilling.

Perfume and toxics

It's now 2005 and I'm 27 years old. We live in a non-racial democratic South Africa today. But Clare Estate's notorious dump is still there, although approaching it, I notice something very different.

The stench has changed markedly, into a kind of 'mutant funk', as comedian Jerry Seinfeld describes the combination of body odour and perfume deodorant. Bisaser Road landfill now exudes the stink of dump rot mixed with an artificial sickly-sweet smell, emanating from long 'perfume rods' lining the road on the outer rim of the landfill. These rods were installed to merely mask the fumes arising from the dump; but the effect is quite nasty. Again I pinch my nose.

This time, instead of driving past, I enter one of the Gatsbyesque houses on the hill, Khan's residence. The city councilor in the area had just announced to the media that the landfill was, finally, to be closed. So again, as in my youth, I felt almost ecstatic at the thought of this old dream now coming true.

But there is more to the story than met the nose.

Khan welcomes me warmly into her home. Her lounge is framed by glass doors overlooking the entire landfill below, and beyond to the informal shacks and formal homes directly adjacent to the landfill, and a technikon campus at the bottom end of the dump. Just out of eyesight are two primary schools, a secondary school and a home for the safety of abandoned children, all in close proximity to the Bisaser Road dump.

>>>>>For the full article please click on the link below.

A coordinated monitoring and alert system to track the use of oil revenues should be developed by civil society groups in Chad, says a new report on the Chad-Cameroon oil pipeline by Catholic Relief Services.

The report recommends that civil society groups identify existing structures or networks at the regional and local levels that can help disseminate and collect information about project execution to and from the population at large. On an international level, civil society should continue to hold International Financial Institutions, oil companies, and Northern governments to account for their responsibilities with regards the project. The report says the project is "hanging by a thread" and cites "critical loopholes" with regards revenue transparency, accountability and management.

"It is too early to declare Chad's oil project a failure or a success. But, the experience to date confirms the danger of investing in the extractive industries before a country is shown to meet minimum conditions of respect for human rights, fiscal transparency, and demonstrated government capacity to implement pro-poor programs," says the report.

The World Bank financed Chad-Cameroon Petroleum Development and Pipeline Project transports oil from landlocked southern Chad to the Atlantic coast of Cameroon for export. It was billed as the first project to contain significant checks and balances to make sure that oil wealth translated into development.