Oil giant Total has halted its 225,000 barrels a day production in Nigeria, after yet another trade union protest. Total, which had been forced to stop output last Friday, ceased it again on Tuesday after a union dispute over staff supervision.

Canada's Tiomin Resources has signed a controversial deal with the Kenyan government to mine titanium in Kwale, near Mombasa. The project has been vigorously opposed because nearly 5,000 people will have to abandon their homes. Environmentalists have also raised fears over radiation and harm to forests and marine life.

Houses, cars, pets and irate residents were sprayed with crude oil from the Caltex oil refinery in Cape Town on Sunday, after a pressure valve popped during routine maintenance. According to refinery manager, Steve Woodruff, more than 100 angry residents arrived at the Caltex refinery to find out where the oil was coming from. Woodruff acknowledged the refineries responsibility, and recommended that residents contact them regarding claims.

Many countries and civic society organisations have been campaigning for global targets for energy efficiency. However, not all countries agree on the targets, despite an almost universal recognition of the importance of renewable energy. The move towards global targets has been slow. After a failed attempt to reach consensus at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002, many countries and civic society bodies pinned their hopes on the Conference on Renewable Energy, which was held in Bonn, Germany, earlier this month.

Rare species like the black rhino are being wiped out in Zimbabwe because of rampant poaching and human settlement on private game reserves seized by the state, a conservation group said last Thursday. "At the moment the situation really stinks," said Johnny Rodrigues, the head of the Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force, a wildlife advocacy group. "The reports we're getting from the guys on the ground are that all the wildlife stocks have been completely wiped out in the private conservancies. There's nothing left," he said from his Zimbabwe home.

Agriculture is the most important user of environmental services, including water, forests, pastures, soil and nutrients. Poorly managed agriculture can lead to environmental degradation and pollution, deplete natural resources and compromise food safety and human health. Sustainable agriculture provides environmental services that are important to society in urban and rural areas, locally and globally.

The United Nations urged Rwanda, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo on Tuesday to protect vital ape habitats on their borders after a huge swathe of forest was cut down on the Congolese side. The U.N. was responding to reports that six square miles of mountain gorilla habitat had been cleared in the Congo part of Virunga National Park, threatening one of the planet's rarest and most magnificent wild animals.

The government of Equatorial Guinea, the rags-to-riches West African petro-state where major U.S. oil companies have invested billions of dollars in recent years, has violently put down the latest coup plot against it, summarily executing at least a dozen alleged rebels and rounding up and torturing relatives and associates of an opposition party accused of sponsoring the coup attempt, according to Amnesty International. The alleged coup attempt, which the government itself announced May 30, was the latest in a series of such efforts over the years directed against President Teodoro Obiang since he overthrew Macias Nguema.

The past decade has seen tremendous development of international legal protections for the environment and public health. Many nations have ratified numerous multilateral environmental agreements to protect the air, water, land, and biodiversity. Despite these efforts to confront environmental and public health problems, the public concern over environmental threats seems to have increased rather than decreased. A key reason for this is the failure of many countries and their leaders to implement adequately or enforce the standards in these new MEAs to overcome the mounting problems that the MEAs were designed to combat.

Nigeria, Africa's leading oil producer, and its newly oil-rich neighbour Sao Tome and Principe, on Sunday signed a joint declaration regarding transparency and governance in the Joint Development Zone shared by the two countries. The President of Nigeria, Olusegun Obasanjo, and visiting President of Sao Tome and Principe, Fradique De Menezes, agreed at a meeting in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, to full public disclosure of all transactions in respect of oil companies’ activities in the zone, which spans the two countries' waters in the Gulf of Guinea.

"The Anti-Privatisation Forum alongside its partners in the Coalition Against Water Privatisation condemn the 9% increase in Johannesburg’s water tariffs that will come into effect on 1st July as part of the Johannesburg Council’s 2004-2005 budget. Since 2001, when the management and operations of Johannesburg Water were privatised to the French water multi-national company – Suez – water tariffs have cumulatively risen by over 40%. This precipitous rise in the price of water is the direct result of the ‘cost- recovery’ approach that is part of the profit-seeking activities of Johannesburg Water. As a result, tens of thousands of poor people have had their water cut-off and are now being forced to accept the self-disconnection technology of pre-paid water meters."

A new WWF report warns that indiscriminate dam-building is threatening the world's largest and most important rivers. The WWF report, Rivers at Risk identifies the top 21 rivers at risk from dams being planned or under construction. It shows that over 60 per cent of the world's 227 largest rivers have been fragmented by dams, which has led to the destruction of wetlands, a decline in freshwater species - including river dolphins, fish, and birds - and the forced displacement of tens of millions of people.

A fast approaching global energy and climate crisis threatens to reverse human development, says a new report, The Price of Power, released by the New Economics Foundation (NEF). But even a small shift of support away from fossil fuels toward clean renewable energy could save millions of lives and help avert global warming. The combined spiralling costs of climate change and dwindling supplies of oil mean that without a major shift to renewable energy, internationally agreed targets to reduce poverty will not be met and people in all countries will suffer a progress-reversing energy shock. The growing threat to the conventional energy supply means any long-term efforts to improve the human condition will have to be linked to renewable energy sources.

Forests and woodlands cover about 24% (or 5 million hectares) of the total land area of Uganda, of which 80% is woodland, 19% moist high forest and 1% commercial plantations. Approximately 30% of such forests and woodlands are gazetted mainly as protection forests directly under various forms of government jurisdiction. The 70% outside the gazetted forest domain exist under various forms of private and customary control.

The threat of AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa goes beyond the loss of human lives. Research funded by the Africa Biodiversity Collaborative Group shows that the pandemic is posing a serious threat to the environment and is complicating conservation and natural resource management efforts. Timber and medicinal plants appear to be particularly at risk.

Shell directors, under fire for polluting communities and damaging people's health, promised to visit some of the affected areas when challenged by community representatives at their AGM in London. Challenged by Durban community activist Desmond D'Sa, company chair Lord Oxburgh gave his personal assurance that he would visit the Durban refinery and see for himself the pollution suffered by the community. Shell stands accused of operating to lower standards at its Durban refinery, where leaks and gas flaring are regular occurrences.

Given current market prices around the world for genetically modified cotton and the average cost of pesticides for cotton farmers in West Africa, there is no way that this cotton could provide an economic advantage to the average West African cotton farmer, argues a report from Genetic Resources Action International (GRAIN). "There is no justification for the current efforts to push Bt cotton into West Africa. The potential advantages of Bt cotton are very limited and far outweighed by the negative consequences that it could bring to farmers in the region," the report states.

Eighty percent of Malakal's 120,000 residents and most of the 35,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) in and around the town have no clean drinking water, according to the UN. The town's water plant, which normally purified Nile water for Malakal's residents, had not been operational for a month, Nadia el Maaroufi, an official with the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), told IRIN. "People are taking water direct from the Nile, leading to an unknown number of deaths and cases of diarrhoea," she said. "We do not know how many people are dying."

The Namibian Agricultural Union (NAU) has sought to allay fears that the country is heading for a Zimbabwe-style fast-track land reform programme. This follows a second round of letters notifying farmers that the government intended to purchase their land under its reform programme and was willing to pay "just compensation".

More than 500 residents of Phiri, Soweto took to the streets of Johannesburg City Centre on Saturday morning in protest against installation of pre-paid water meters in their community.