The US-based oil giant ExxonMobil has been ordered to pay three Niger Delta communities 1.4 billion naira (US $10.1 million) as compensation for the effects of a 1998 oil spill, Nigerian and company officials said on Monday. In a judgment delivered on Friday, Justice Abdullahi Mustapha of the Federal High Court in Lagos held the oil company liable for damage done by floating crude oil to fisheries and the ecology of the coastal communities of Bonny, Brass and Andoni, a court official said.

A UN conference on climate change has been warned about the growing impact of global warming on mankind. Senior UN official Klaus Toepfer said climate change was a reality that would increasingly lead to human suffering and economic hardship. Natural disasters, mostly caused by extreme weather, cost more than $60bn this year alone, the international conference in Italy was told.

A new report co-published by 13 organisations working on climate change, development, sustainable energy and water management gives a dozen reasons why large hydro should be excluded from global efforts to promote renewable energy. The report cites the negative impacts of large hydro on people, ecosystems, energy security, and efforts to adjust to climate change.

This International Food Policy Research Institute document examines the effectiveness of the 'conservation farming (CF) system', a package of agronomic practices for smallholders introduced to Zambia in 1996 and advocated by a range of stakeholders including donors, government and the private sector.

Kenyan lawmakers have welcomed an historic court ruling, in which a man convicted of raping a four-year-old girl was jailed for life, terming it an important step towards deterring rising cases of sexual violence against children in the country. The 18-year-old offender, Paul Ngure Ngigi, was sentenced on Monday after pleading guilty in a trial described as one of the shortest-ever. This was also the harshest penalty ever served in Kenya for a sexual offence.

Impressions that the battle against global warming is being won are misleading. In many ways, the struggle has only just begun, both on the scientific and the political front, while for many developing countries, action to mitigate its potentially disastrous impact is becoming increasingly urgent. A dossier from www.scidev.net provides news, analysis, commentary and background information on current debates about the nature and implications of climate change.

While rich countries develop most of the global strategies for the protection of species, it is vital to remember that the poorest countries harbour most of the world's biodiversity. This means, in essence, that the guardians of these plants and animals are millions of poor indigenous people and local communities. Within these communities, what is considered important by Western scientists might not be understood, or may even be seen as irrelevant.

"In the past, we were told that large dams bring development. Now the dam lobby claims that large dams are essential to "alleviate" poverty and close the gap between South and North. The last 50 years has shown this to be a fraud. The global large dam era has been marked by a sharply growing and unacceptable inequality between South and North, and between rich and poor. We denounce the fallacy that hydropower and large dams are essential to slow global warming and adapt to its impacts."

"We, in the Leadership Office of the Hamadab Affected People ( LOHAP) have been campaigning over the last ten years to get the implementation of this project postponed until its historical, cultural and social impact together with its environmental consequences, have been well studied and evaluated, to avoid any irrecoverable historical losses."

Is water privatisation being over-promoted? Is private sector participation (PSP) in its current forms likely to promote the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals to provide the poor with reliable, affordable and sustainable, safe drinking water? How do members of poor communities affected by the process judge PSP?

Many observers were sceptical when a few years ago the IMF embarked on a mission to respond to the "cries of the poor", in the words of its then head Michel Camdessus. Little has been delivered since then on what was supposed to be a new, more flexible approach and the time has come for an in-depth reconsideration of the Fund's role in low-income countries, says the Bretton Woods Project.

At the second World Wind Energy conference that ended last week there was a call to the world community to create a level playing field regarding costs and subsidies and to increase their commitment to the production of renewable energies. Other resolutions include the need to find innovative financing schemes to foster the wind industry in poorer countries and to allow local communities to benefit directly from such industries.

A study of African elephants suggests they may be more numerous than they were four years ago, scientists say. They think there are from 400,000 to 660,000 elephants across the continent, with large numbers in southern Africa.

AIDS' devastation is nowhere more obvious than in sub-Saharan Africa, where poverty and lack of access to health care -among many other factors - have allowed the disease to spread unchecked through country after country. But there is a small bit of good news. A number of organisations are taking innovative steps to mitigate the worst aspects of AIDS by helping affected communities ensure a supply of locally-grown nutritious food.

Judge Essop Patel delivered a ruling last month that should give some relief to media operations and journalists who are harassed by sources and others threatening litigation to obtain copies of news articles before they are published, the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) said. Judge Patel ruled in the Pretoria High Court that it would be an unnecessary burden for newspapers to hand over copies of articles and reports for public preview.

The global community must take action to reduce deaths from indoor air pollution, which kills more than 1.6 million individuals in the developing world a year, says a report released last week. The report, Smoke: The Killer in the Kitchen, argues that "it is nothing short of an international scandal that indoor air pollution has been largely ignored".

The Tanzanian parliament has blocked plans by the government to allow genetically modified (GM) seeds and crops to be imported, saying that they are not needed in the country and could damage its environment. The decision was made during a debate on draft legislation earlier this month covering the import and distribution of GM seeds.

As millions of displaced Angolans arrive back home after a devastating 27-year war, arguments over land ownership and access are on the rise, raising concerns over the potential for serious conflict. Aid and humanitarian agencies are worried that the poor in both rural and urban areas, already in a vulnerable position, will have insufficient access to the benefits of the government's proposed land law, which has itself come in for criticism.

Botswana's successful efforts to preserve its natural resources, notably by working with neighbouring countries, drew praise November 13 at an international conservation symposium held in Washington. "It would be hard to find a country which has been more successful in establishing a transparent, active, professional governance in the last several years than Botswana has been in dealing with their assets and in dealing with their problems," Senate Africa Subcommittee Chairman Lamar Alexander told the "Conservation Is Good Business" symposium.

Gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos and orang-utans - the closest living relatives of humanity - could vanish from the wild within 50 years, say United Nations leaders meeting in Paris. They have appealed for $25m to save the world's great apes from extinction. The western chimpanzee has vanished from Benin, Gambia and Togo. Fewer than 400 remain in Senegal and 300 to 500 in Ghana. The population of chimps in Guinea-Bissau is below 200. Only about 600 mountain gorillas survive in Uganda, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.