Construction of what will be the largest hydroelectric dam in the Republic of Congo began on Tuesday in Imboulou, 215 km north of the capital, Brazzaville, in the central department of Plateaux. The project, expected to take six years at a cost of US $280 million, is being led by a consortium of two private Chinese companies.

At least five people were killed when a leaking oil pipeline exploded and caught fire in southeastern Nigeria last week after it had been spilling crude oil into a river for two days, local residents reported.

From October 13th to 16th the Africa Forest Law Enforcement and Governance ministerial meeting will take place in Yaoundé, Cameroon. Whether this initiative will result in any concrete actions to tackle the immense problem of illegal and unsustainable logging operations in Africa remains to be seen. In the meantime, illegal logging in Cameroon's forests continues to wreak havoc on the environment, economy and local peoples' livelihoods.

The apartheid regime herded the Makuleke off their ancestral lands in a huge game reserve, leaving only white shards of broken dishes and the concrete foundation of a general store as reminders of their presence. It took nearly two decades, until after the introduction of South Africa's multiracial democracy, for the impoverished tribe to win back ownership of the land near the junction of the Limpopo and Luvuvhu rivers.

The National Union of Namibian Workers has come out against the outsourcing of water and electricity networks to a South African-owned company, the Southern Electricity Service Company.

Oil has been spilling from a broken pipeline in the Niger delta for several days, polluting the farmland, fishing grounds and drinking water of five villages, residents in the affected area said on Tuesday.

Eighteen-year-old Rehema Tumwebaze assists her mother at a food kiosk in Katanga, a Kampala slum. They use about 15 Jerrycans of water per day for the family business. At Shs 50 per 20-litre Jerrycan, their water bill is Shs 750 per day. Government plans to invite private players into the provision of water services, but will Ugandans get cheaper and better access?

The community in Phiri, after a mass meeting held on the 13th September, decided to organise a march to the Soweto offices of the Johannesburg Metro. During the week 13-19 September community members alongside activists from the APF, SECC and several other APF affiliates conducted a door-to-door campaign in Phiri to mobilise support for the struggle against the pre-paid meters. This campaign was buttressed by an APF-initiated meeting of several progressive organisations and movements (during the same week) in order to form a broad coalition against water privatisation.

Widespread deforestation and an ever-increasing demand for agricultural land threaten thousands of plant species in Africa, some of the world's leading botanists warned Tuesday. As many as 4,500 of Africa's rare species of flowering plants — the continent has 45,000 documented plant species, one-fifth of the world's flora — are at risk, speakers at the 17th meeting of the Association for the Taxonomic Studies of the Flora of Tropical Africa (AETFAT) said.

Ecotourism is touted as a boon to the environment; poor locals working as guides and hoteliers will no longer exploit natural resources for survival. But tourists leave a lot more than footprints, according to a study announced at the fifth World Parks Congress in Durban, South Africa. Biodiversity hotspots, home to extraordinary numbers of species, are worst hit. Water siphoned for tourism can upset finely balanced ecosystems. Once natural treasures are destroyed, tourists depart forever, leaving local peoples in worse shape than before the travel boom.

One major focus of last week’s World Parks Congress in Durban was the efforts by sub-Saharan nations to create 22 vast transfrontier conservation areas known as ‘peace parks’. The areas designated will span 475,000 sq km of land across 15 countries, stretching from Lake Victoria in the North to South Africa. Peace parks are a way for neighbouring countries to cooperate on a common concern – protecting biological diversity – by pulling down frontier fences in ecologically rich spots that straddle their shared border.

On a sandy shore whipped by fierce winds and punishing waves, sits Africa's only nuclear power plant. The two reactors here at Koeberg, which came online in the last days of apartheid, pump out 6.5 percent of South Africa's electricity and light most of Cape Town, 12 miles down the coast. This could become ground zero of a revolution in the way Africa - and the world - are powered. South Africa's state energy provider, Eskom, is leading a $1 billion project to develop a new technology that it says will give nuclear power new life, both here and abroad.

Water from a prepayment meter is 20% more expensive than from a standard meter in Johannesburg and 58,8% more expensive than the same amount of metered water in Cape Town. And while the people of Sandton are free to choose whether to have a prepayment meter, the poor of Soweto do not enjoy the privilege of choice, argues Roger Ronnie, the general secretary of the South African Municipal Workers’ Union. Ronnie was responding to an advert placed by Johannesburg Water (JW) in a South African newspaper. Communities in Soweto have revolted against JW's attempt to install pre-payment water meters.

As he walks across the dusty tracks of his sunburnt village, Abdallah Nyinga looks much like any other teenager. But this thoughtful, softly-spoken 16-year-old is really quite different from the rest - single-handedly, he’s gradually changing the way his community thinks. The change started four years ago, when he was at primary school. As part of a WWF environmental education programme which runs throughout Tanzania, one of Abdallah’s lessons concerned the importance of trees.

Conservationists from around the world have agreed upon a 10-year plan to increase and improve the protection of the earth's most sensitive and important environmental areas. The Durban Accord was signed by more than 2,500 delegates from 170 countries on the last day of the World Parks Congress in South Africa.

More than 100 villages were flooded at the weekend after Nigeria's state power firm opened an endangered hydroelectric dam, a government spokesman said Monday. Mahmud Abdullahi, a spokesman for the northern state of Niger, told AFP that the National Electric Power Authority (NEPA) had opened the gates on Nigeria’s largest hydroelectric station on Saturday.

The international community needs to provide financial and technical help for Africa's protected areas, the World Parks Congress has recommended. In a report issued on Tuesday, it says one of the most important environmental challenges facing the continent is the need to reconcile development needs with sustainable management of its natural resources.

Madagascar said Tuesday it planned to more than triple the size of its nature reserves to help protect some of the planet's weirdest and rarest creatures. Long isolated from the rest of the world, the African island's wildlife has evolved in unique and startling ways, making it an ecological treasure trove.

Fourteen Southern African nations have agreed common guidelines on how they should handle genetically modified (GM) organisms and the products resulting from biotechnology. They agreed, for example, in the light of last year's controversy over the import of food aid containing GM ingredients from the United States, to try to source food aid from within the region.

Tempers flared among delegates attending the fifth World Park's Congress in Durban, South Africa, when renowned conservationist Dr Richard Leakey 'rubbished' the concept of categorising indigenous people from the rest of the local communities, saying it amounted to politicising conservation.