The people of Western Sahara have lived in refugee camps in the hostile Algerian desert ever since their country was invaded by Morocco in 1975. The organisation War on Want has worked with the Saharawi since 1984, providing practical support for the people living in the camps and campaigning to highlight the injustice of their situation. The United Nations promised them a referendum more than ten years ago but it still shows no sign of happening. Visit this web page by War on Want to find out how you can support the people of the Western Sahara.

Africa should expand its sources of renewable energy to fight the poverty widespread among the continent's 800 million people, top international energy experts told a conference in Nairobi on Saturday. "It's in Africa where renewable energy is needed most for poverty alleviation," Manfred Konukiewitz, the top energy official in Germany's economic and development ministry, said. He was addressing the final session of a two-day African energy ministers conference, convened by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) in Nairobi, to formulate a common position ahead of a world energy conference in Germany next month.

The Congo Republic is to resume exports of afrormosia hardwood to the European Union, officials said Friday, after the EU suspended imports for several months amid concerns that excessive lumbering would drive the trees to extinction. The EU suspended imports of afrormosia, which grows only in three countries of western and central Africa - Cameroon, Congo and its vast neighbour to the east, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) - to force the governments to put in place a replanting programme for the tree.

Since the Zimbabwe Government embarked on its fast track land resettlement programme, the food situation, particularly in respect of the staple maize, has been getting worse every year. Initially people were talking of food shortage, but "famine" would now seem a more appropriate term to apply to the situation the country now faces. "Famine" has been used to describe situations of extreme food scarcity and starvation in countries such as Ethiopia and Eritrea. Nobody ever contemplated that Zimbabwe, formerly the bread-basket of southern Africa, would come to be referred to in terms of famine.

The number of eastern lowland gorillas in Congo has fallen by more than 70 percent in the past 10 years after armed groups, refugees, miners and villagers destroyed the apes' habitat during years of civil war and instability. Estimates suggest there are now fewer than 5 000 eastern lowland gorillas left, down from about 17 000 in 1994, said Erica Archibald of the Atlanta-based Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International.

Zimbabwe's participation in the multi-billion-dollar Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park (GLTP) is in doubt following bickering over the awarding of title deeds. It has emerged that the private sector, which was billed to develop Gonarezhou National Park, has spurned government's offer for a stake in the initiative unless they are given title deeds for their specific areas of interest. The project, which also involves Mozambique and South Africa, has suffered protracted problems on the Zimbabwean side as there is no development as yet of requisite infrastructure such as roads, bridges, hotels and lodges, a senior official in the Tourism and Environment Ministry said.

When a four-meter-long Nile crocodile lost all fear of humans and began lunging at visitors to one of the lodges in Moremi Game Reserve, Botswana, wildlife officials considered the usual practice of lethal control. The concerted efforts of Earthwatch principal investigator Dr. Alison Leslie and her team allowed them to capture the animal and transport it to a crocodile farm for captive breeding. Conflict between humans and Nile crocodiles is a growing problem in Africa, as human populations continue to increase and encroach on wildlife habitat. Conflicts have recently been reported from 17 African countries within the range of the crocodiles, and Leslie receives reports of "problem" animals about once a month in the Okavango Delta region of Botswana.

A landmark case in the Supreme Court of Appeal that may have a bearing on all future land issues in South Africa has started in Bloemfontein. Forty thousand people living at Modderklip, a piece of land next to Daveyton near the border between Gauteng and Mpumalanga could be evicted if their case fails. However, the direction the government would take is at present the main issue and the topic of international interest. Three years ago the Johannesburg High Court agreed to the request for an eviction order by Abraham Duvenhage, the owner of the farm. However, according to the Modderklip residents Duvenhage could not pay the sheriff the R1.8 million to carry out the eviction. He requested the Pretoria High Court to force the State to implement the laws and provide suitable accommodation for the 40 000 or compensate the land owner.

Meshack Onyango was at work when the bulldozers came, but his neighbours rescued his mattress and paraffin stove before the demolition crews ploughed his ramshackle home back into the red earth. The tin roof of his shack was stripped off by thieves before the wrecking started, but he counts himself lucky to have saved a few possessions. More than a third of a million people living in the slums around Kenya's capital, Nairobi, now face a similar fate as the government prepares to clear shanty settlements which have encroached on to the borders of railway tracks and on land reserved for road building.

Across Southern Africa the legacy of settler colonialism lives on in a dualistic agricultural system that has been perpetuated first by deliberate state policies and, more recently, by the forces of free market capitalism. Small-scale farming, which provides a precarious living to million of poor rural households, remains severely neglected by policy makers in the region. Recent seizures of commercial farms and other land in Zimbabwe and increasing militancy among land activists in the region, suggests that a radical demand for land remains strong among much of the rural population. This paper explores the dynamics of land reform and land policy in Southern Africa with special consideration of the radical struggles for access to land and resources.

An estimated 2.4 billion people do not have access to basic sanitation facilities, while 1.1 billion people do not have access to safe drinking water. By 2015, countries across the world have pledged to provide another 1.5 billion people with access to improved drinking water, and another 1.9 billion people with access to basic sanitation facilities. Now, the Swiss Tropical Institute, in a report commissioned by the World Health Organisation (WHO), has outlined the significant economic benefits to the world, and particularly to developing countries, if the Millennium Development (MDG) and World Summit on Sustainable Development goals are met. People with access to safer, cleaner and healthier water and sanitation facilities would become sick less often.

Freelance journalist Campbell here writes about the cost of diamonds not in dollars to the consumer but in blood, torture, and death for the unfortunate residents of contested mining areas in Sierra Leone. He explains that "conflict diamonds," or "blood diamonds," which account for only three to four percent of all diamonds sold, are mined in war zones, smuggled out of the country, and sold to legitimate companies, financing ruinous civil wars and the plots of international terrorists, including the al Qaeda network. The gems' value and portability have made controlling the diamond mines important to guerrilla fighters, who maim and kill innocent villagers to secure their territory.

More than 60 groups representing farmer, consumer, environmental and development organisations from 15 African countries have sent an open letter of protest to the World Food Programme (WFP). These groups are protesting against the pressure exerted by the WFP and USAID on Sudan and Angola over their respective decisions to impose restrictions on GM food aid. The groups are demanding that the WFP and USAID immediately desist from misleading the governments of Angola and Sudan with a scenario of 'No Choice', and forcing them to accept GM food aid.

The government of Cameroon has ordered an environmental impact study of the planned hydroelectric dam on the Lom and Pangar rivers, including the world environmental organisation IUCN in the expert panel. As electricity needs are booming in Cameroon, IUCN is not explicitly negative to the dam, even though the proposed Pangar-Djerem Wildlife Reserve will be affected. Cameroonian authorities are poised to go ahead with a hydroelectric dam on River Lom, a few kilometres downstream of its confluence with River Pangar. The rivers are tributaries to Cameroon's mighty River Sanaga, a river basin contributing with over 90 percent of the country's hydroelectric energy.

Inefficient farming practices are helping to drive deforestation, pollution, ocean degradation, and species loss and constitute the most serious environmental threat in the world today, according to a new book. According to World Agriculture and the Environment, a global survey by Dr. Jason Clay, head of the Center for Conservation Innovation at World Wildlife Fund (WWF), agriculture contributes to serious environmental, social, and economic problems, particularly in developing countries.

Delegates at a conference of Southern African former liberation movements and their sympathisers have given their backing to Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's controversial stand on land reform. "Mugabe's not doing any more than what a lot of indigenous people are asking for around the world," Michael Anderson, an Australian aboriginal activist and founder of the Sovereign Union of Aboriginal Nations and People of Australia, told AFP. "They want self-determination, they want return of the lands, control of their natural resources," he said.

Land is always a deeply political issue, involving highly disputed and often very dangerous terrain, as recent events in Zimbabwe have illustrated all too graphically. But working on land requires adopting very long term horizons and sticking with things through thick and thin, for these are long term processes which defy quick fixes or easy final solutions. Contexts do differ greatly but it is clear that the clumsy imposition of liberalisation, the rolling back of the role of the state and of the state marketing boards, grain reserves and the like, combined with manifestly unfair international trade rules, have left many poor people far more vulnerable than they were and far more dependent on access to land than ever before, while that very access is increasingly threatened in a globalising world. In such a context, struggles for land rights continue to form a vital part of the wider fight for global justice. This is according to a paper for a Oxfam-Zambia Copperbelt Livelihoods Improvement Programme Land Workshop held on 29-30 March 2004.

Malawi loses about $341 million every year through environmental related problems. This figure is more than half of the current annual national budget and represents a third of the country’s total Gross Domestic Product. Energy and Mining Minister Hetherwick Ntaba said: “Laws to govern the environment are there but there is no one willing to enforce them. Our small and fragile economy cannot afford this waste."

Hard on the heels of Earth Day came Africa Malaria Day. Earth Day got more coverage, and that's a shame, because malaria is as big a scourge as AIDS, maybe worse. Malaria kills two million people a year and ravages economies. In Africa, a child dies of malaria every 30 seconds, and many who don't die suffer brain damage. But we've been blinded by environmental paternalism. And so we're standing back and watching. The problem is our irrational aversion to DDT, which, in the popular imagination, is the most toxic pesticide known to man. So allergic are we to DDT that the World Health Organisation will not fund its use, and most agencies are pushing for a ban worldwide. This, despite massive evidence that DDT as it is used today does no harm to people or the environment - and saves lives.

This paper from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology examines the factors which determine participation and effort in illegal hunting, in western Serengeti, Tanzania. It studies the impact on illegal hunting of the integrated conservation and development project, the Serengeti Regional Conservation Project (SRCP), and looks at how the pattern of crop production in agriculture, market accessibility and wildlife-induced damage to crops and domestic animals affect illegal hunting.