This week representatives from the NGO groundworks and the Northdale community met with government officials to discuss industrial air pollution problems.

The Lesotho Highlands Water Project has throttled wild rivers and drowned verdant valleys. Its concrete megadams have flooded out thatched huts, subsistence farms and grazing lands here in the impoverished mountain region known as the Roof of Africa. And now the project is embroiled in one of the biggest corruption scandals in the checkered history of African development.

The Department of Rural Water Supply in the Ministry of Agriculture in Kunene North has received 2,2 million Namibian dollars from the government. The money will assist to alleviate drought conditions and to drill new boreholes.

The Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) has lifted the three-month suspension on the export of wildlife. President Yoweri Museveni wrote to the authority saying the Government could not stop export of wild animals reared on private farms.

The Nairobi City Council will soon launch a garbage recycling policy to deal with the 1,600 tonnes of waste generated by residents daily. Town Clerk Jack Mbugua at the same time said the council was concerned over the heavy pollution of Nairobi rivers.

Dozens of poachers were back in Betty's Bay marine reserve on Sunday evening hauling out sackfuls of perlemoen, only hours after Environment Minister Valli Moosa said he would call on all South Africa's law enforcement agencies - including the elite Scorpions unit - to join the war against abalone poaching on the southern Cape coast.

For 40 years, international fuel companies have mercilessly polluted the oil-rich Niger Delta. Today, the region which used to be an area of natural beauty is an ecological disaster. Many of its residents - traditionally fishermen, traders and farmers - lack basic necessities like clean drinking water. Edible fish has to be imported. The same region produces some of sub-Saharan Africa's most spectacular art: fabulous sculptures, acrobatic masquerades and elaborate aquatic pageants, with boats as ornately festooned as Rose Bowl floats. These regattas are staged on rivers believed to be the home of water spirits that have the potential to secure communal well-being.

A multi-million dollar project to help nomads and communities in three African countries conserve and boost the prospects for native flowers, shrubs and trees has been launched by the United Nations with backing from the Global Environment Facility (GEF).

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has hailed the decision by a key expert panel to adopt a position paper on the right to water. Addressing the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Sergio Vieira de Mello said the initiative to develop a general comment on water would be a meaningful contribution to the World Water Forum to be held next March.

For rich people, a beautiful landscape is something of value. For those falling on hard times, rolling hills and spectacular valleys are of less worth. Unless, that is, they can be turned into a money-making opportunity. That is what landowners around the farming town of Estcourt in the South African province of KwaZulu Natal are hoping to do when they pool their title deeds to form one of the country's biggest game parks.

A broad coalition of Ghanaian organisations, including teachers, doctors, nurses, trade unions, women's and human rights organisations, NGOs, students and others have stated their opposition to the World Bank-backed "private sector participation" proposal and delivered a memorandum to this effect to their government. We urge you to take immediate action to instruct U.S. Executive Directors to oppose the World Bank's water privatization proposal in Ghana and to oppose loan conditions promoting increased cost recovery for water. Access to water is a basic human right and should not be denied to people simply because they are poor.

Agricultural ministers in South and East Africa have agreed to create a regional policy on genetically modified (GM) organisms in a bid to ensure that their countries follow common guidelines on health and environmental safety, and other related issues. The decision, taken at a meeting of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) in Kampala, Uganda, comes in response to controversy over the Zambian government's refusal to accept donations of GM maize.

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In Angola, the former rebel movement Unita has reacted angrily to a United Nations report accusing it of retaining unknown quantities of weapons and illicit diamonds. During the final years of the civil war in Angola, Unita relied on diamond sales to fund its military activities.

Pietermaritzburg-based award-winning environmental activist Bobby Peek on Monday joined forces with American activists to take on the Royal Dutch Shell petroleum company. "Shell's oil refinery in South Africa is an apartheid relic that is presently crumbling. The plant has had more than 17 major incidents since January 2001, impacting directly on the people in South Durban and they have a right to call for government to shut it down," said Peek.

What are the challenges that African countries face in adopting plant variety protection through intellectual property rights regimes? What lessons can African countries draw from the Indian experience? Africa Centre for Technology Studies (ACTS) research suggests that the introduction of monopoly rights is not appropriate for most sub-Saharan countries. What plant variety protection regime would be suitable?

Southern right whales are making a comeback, giving ecologists a rare piece of good marine news as fish stocks shrink and oil spills foul fragile coasts. South African scientists said Tuesday that an annual count had revealed the biggest number yet in the survey's 32-year history of the gentle leviathans, which can grow to 56 feet and weigh 70 tons.

The penultimate article in the Center for Public Integrity's series on the business of war tracks the twists and turns in an arms trafficker's dealings with the Liberian President Charles Taylor and his supply of Sierra Leone's RUF rebels.

While the government has retained ownership of forests centrally, at the local level people have used forest resources without restriction, leading to the over exploitation of many forest resources and a lack of sense of ownership and responsibility among forest communities. This is according to a paper produced by Tanzania Online, which also examines government plans to transfer management rights for forests while retaining tenure centrally and confusion over how the division of rights can occur legally.

The water situation at Omaruru and in the Daures constituency further west in the Erongo Region is critical. These communities are dependent on the Omaruru River for their water, but the river has not flown for two years, resulting in very low water tables. The town of Omaruru's water supplies will only last until February.