The Eastern Cape provincial government, in partnership with the Public Service Commission, is expected to launch the Explanatory Manual on the Code of Conduct in Bisho. This week, Eastern Cape Resident Public Service Commissioner, Mzwandile Msoki, said the explanatory manual was developed to assist in simplifying the code of conduct for all civil servants.

International attention is now focused on achieving sustainable tourism development through conservation of the ecosystem and Nigeria is no exception to this approach.

Privatisation of water services is virtually compulsory for  developing countries: both the World Bank and the IMF impose  it as a precondition for funding assistance. The privatised  water sector world-wide is dominated by a handful of multinational companies. They are not interested in serving the  poorest people, who are not seen as profitable customers.  Water services are becoming the privilege of those who can  pay high prices. 

Discovering oil in West Africa has been a bonanza for western companies. But can billions of barrels help one of the world's most destitute regions out of poverty? The sleepy tropical island city of Malabo had hardly changed in years. The capital of Equatorial Guinea, a tiny West African nation of fewer than 500,000 people, consisted of little more than some moldering Spanish colonial buildings, a few palm-lined plazas and the tightly packed shanty towns which encircle most African settlements. But over the past three years, Malabo has been transformed. Office buildings have shot up, hotels and banks have opened, and foreigners - once a novelty in Malabo - now cram the town's fancy new restaurants. There's so much construction, joke the locals, that if you open your mouth and stick out your tongue someone is likely to build on it. The source of this economic boom can be found buried beneath the nearby ocean floor.

The Niger Delta town of Okpella in Nigeria's Edo state suffered its second oil spill in three years when a pipeline belonging to the Nigerian National Petroleum Company, a state owned concern, ruptured and spilled an as yet undetermined amount of refined crude oil into the environment.

Once described by author Ernest Hemingway to be "as wide as all the world," the ice fields atop Mount Kilimanjaro have now retreated to their lowest surface extent in the past 12,000 years and could vanish within the next two decades, new research suggests.

The end of military rule in Nigeria has brought little benefit to the people living in the oil producing communities of the Niger Delta, Human Rights Watch says in a new report. Despite the change from military to civilian government in 1999, there is still widespread deployment of army, navy and paramilitary Mobile Police at oil facilities across the delta. Much greater sums of money are flowing from the federal government to the delta region, but ordinary people living in the delta see little if any benefit from these funds, Human Rights Watch said.

In South Africa, South Durban is a place where the toxic chemical industry is allowed to continue to operate even after there have been four explosions in the past month. In one incident, a worker was killed when a fuel tank exploded. It had exploded a week before, but government had failed to shut it down.

WWF, the conservation organization, has applauded the decision by the Global Environment Facility (GEF) to endorse the Africa Stockpiles Programme (ASP), which aims to clean-up and safely dispose of over 50,000 tonnes of obsolete pesticide waste stockpiled throughout Africa.

On 9 October 2002, the privately-owned national daily newspaper "The Daily News" reported that a group of youths from the National Youth Service programme destroyed 450 copies of the paper in the eastern border town of Mutare.

Hers was a dramatic burst into the nation's literary scene sometime around the mid 1990s. Though relatively young and unheralded, she brought with her something that was radically different. She sought attention not by going or swimming with the multitude but by being daring and different. And it was only natural in being uncommon, it became difficult if not impossible to ignore her.

Ted Reilly, founder of Swaziland's wild animal park systems, surveys the green early spring hills of October, noting that "the Southern African region enjoyed some good rains this past week, but meteorologists tell us not to think a few showers can break this drought. We are in for more of the same next year.”

An emotive regional debate on the safety of genetically modified food aid has thrown a spotlight on South Africa's stance on biotechnology, exposing a lonely but unwavering policy. Diplomatic wranglings have overshadowed a food crisis threatening much of southern Africa, with countries in need of food aid first refusing to take GM maize, and then negotiating deals to make sure their own crops do not become contaminated. But while Malawi, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and most prominently Zambia have all expressed great concern over even accepting GM crops, regional economic powerhouse South Africa is steaming ahead with an agenda of strong support for agricultural biotechnology that insiders say is here to stay.

"There is little doubt that the headlong rush to private markets has failed to address some of the most critical issues and concerns about water," says Dr. Peter H. Gleick, lead author of "The New Economy of Water" and Director of the Pacific Institute. "How can we protect the world's poorest people, how can we ensure that the environment gets a fair share, how can water quality be protected for future generations? All of these questions must be answered before we move forward with more privatization."

Can genetically modified (GM) crops really play a role in helping to address the needs of the developing world? SciDev.Net is pleased to announce the launch of its dossier on GM crops, which aims to provide an informed guide to the key issues pertinent to the adoption of GM crops in developing countries.

Poor developing countries have so far contributed relatively little to the causes of global warming yet many of these countries will bear the brunt of climate change through loss of food production. The burden will undoubtedly fall disproportionately on the poorest and most vulnerable, says the International Institute for Applied Systems in a report dealing with climate change and agricultural vulnerability.

Easing a total ban on ivory trading could lead to the devastation of elephant populations in Asia and Africa, conservationist Richard Leakey said Monday.   Leakey, who is also a leading paleontologist, said moves by five African countries to reinstate a legal ivory trade at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) meeting next month will lead to an increase in illegal trade.

The Resident Representative of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), Marc Destannes de Bernis, says preservation of the environment should not be seen as contradictory to economic growth and social development.

Malawian farmers have been accused of removing posts that mark the Mozambique/Malawi border, in the western province of Tete, in order to extend their farms into Mozambican territory, reports "Noticias" on 27 September.

Environmental justice is a useful tool in tackling human vulnerability and environmental management, Capacity Global (Capacity), a UK-based, not-for-profit organisation working on poverty, environment and human rights, has found. Environmental justice for vulnerable communities is based on two main principles: Everyone has the right to a clean, safe and healthy environment and to manage their own resources. The most vulnerable people in society, the poorest in particular, should not suffer the disproportionate, negative effects of environmental omissions, actions, policies or law.