United Nations University Leadership Academy's global course on Leadership for Environment and Human Security will take place in Jordan and South Africa during 12-30 August 2002.

The Academy's goal is to enable the participants to "learn about leadership directly from leaders" We ensure our participants have the unique opportunity to interact with global and national experts. The academy offers an innovative core curriculum on leadership including History of leadership, Contemporary Theories of Leadership, Contexts of Leadership, Ethics of Leadership, Individual Leadership Analysis and Development. Global Human Values required to meet contemporary global challenges is an integral component of the curriculum as developed by the Academy.

In a new book, "The Skeptical Environmentalist," Bjorn Lomborg looks at the current state of the planet and takes issue with the many sensational claims made by the environmental movement over the years. Using data from government organizations such as the US EPA and the United Nations, he points out that in most areas, environmental quality is improving. People are living longer, healthier and more prosperous lives, which is contrary to what many of these groups would like us to believe.

Ready for the WSSD? Enroll in P&DM's Globalisation & Environment Executive Course.
The University of the Witwatersrand's Graduate School of Public and Development offers short courses for government and non-government officials, to provide cutting-edge information about public and development issues.

Following the highly successful International Conference on 'TAX AND THE NON-PROFIT SECTOR' in March 2001, the Non Profit Partnership will hold a national conference on the enabling environment in March 2003.

Environmental activists in Kenya have welcomed a court order temporarily blocking the Kenyan government's plans to excise some 70,000 hectares (170,000 acres) of the country's remaining forests, pending the hearing of a suit they have filed challenging the move.

The impact of HIV/AIDS is usually considered in terms of health costs and losses of skilled labour. But its impact on the agricultural sector, particularly in Africa, is having a devastating effect on food security — partly because many people in rural areas are too ill to work, and also because, as generations die off prematurely, they cannot pass on what they know about crops and wild plants.

Efforts to save animals from extinction will fail unless human poverty is tackled as a part of conservation strategies, one of Britain’s leading environmental scientists has said. “Effective conservation of the earth’s biological riches will not happen without sustainable development and greater equity in the distribution of wealth and resources across all nations,” John Lawton, head of the UK National Environment Research Council told a group of industrialists and environmentalists at the Gerald Durrell Lecture 2002 in London.

Is "clean technology" an oxymoron . . . or the future of our planet? Does it represent one of the great business opportunities of the new millennium . . . or will it rise and fall like so many over-hyped technologies of the past? Will it engender a revolutionary shift in how we live, work, and play. . . or a more evolutionary shift largely transparent to the masses?

Militants in southern Nigeria have freed 43 oil
workers after holding them hostage for four days on an offshore oil rig,
ChevronTexaco, the US transnational for which the hostages worked, said on
Friday. "The youths left the rig on Wednesday night and the hostages were freed
unharmed," a senior company official told IRIN.

Since the oil boom that started in 1997, Equatorial Guinea has not only been a target of pressure to improve its disastrous human rights situation, it has also been able to spend its new riches on pressuring other countries not to intervene in its affairs. Now an "African Switzerland," repression of the political opposition is stronger than ever but outside pressure remarkably low.

The need for land reform is among the new hurdles facing Angola as the country moves to a post-conflict phase of reconstruction and development in the wake of this month's ceasefire agreement.

"Bushmen are some of the best ecological scientists on the planet," Jon Young told a packed crowd at the Riekes Center in Silicon Valley. "We thought they were backwards because they're illiterate and don't dress like us. Now our scientists are asking them for information."

Tens of thousands of people in over 700 villages
in Kano State, northern Nigeria, may be infected by onchocerciasis (river
blindness), The Guardian newspaper reported the state governor, Rabiu Musa
Kwankwaso, as saying at the weekend.

The Petroleum Retailers Association of Sierra Leone has expressed concern about the filth that is associated with fuel distribution at the Kissy Terminal. The present system is very much prone to corruption and abuse by officials of the Kissy Terminal, involving drivers, transporters and the police, as well as representatives of oil marketing companies that the situation requires urgent Government attention.

It is with great pleasure we introduce the International Centre for Environmental Social and Policy Studies (ICESPS), a non governmental organization in Kenya actively involved in programmes on environmental policy, sustainable Development and capacity building, with emphasis on Research, Training and the promotion of grassroo s communities initiatives. At present ICESPS is accredited on a consultative status to major International organizations, including UNEP (Nairobi), Habitat (Nairobi) GEF-UNDP, and other UN agencies vocal points, ECOSOC (Newyork) and has just been appointed as a member of the working group in the global mercury assessment (Unep-chemicals Geneva) and Ministry of Environment and Natural resources prep-coms for the world earth summit. We are also active members in the intergovernmental negotiating committee for an international legal binding instrument on persistent organic pollutants (POPS) under UNEP.
We provide high quality consultancy and technical assistance to public and private institutions and communities in various fields.

Our expertise covers inter- alia, drafting on environmental law and Natural resources management issues, water, rivers, energy, waste management micro-finance in all the above mentioned areas, we provide the necessary information and guidance in the preparation of policy framework papers, project development, development and implementation of adequate policies, strategic laws and regulations. We have drafted Bills on Air Quality and Hazardous Waste for the states of Oman and Belarus respectively.

Our team of experts is comprised of highly qualified professionals with extensive experience in various fields.

A successful launch next month of a nearly $1 billion satellite would mark the fourth spacecraft NASA has sent into orbit recently to follow the global movement of life's most precious resource: water. The satellite Aqua will follow the Jason 1 and a pair of twin spacecraft called Grace, launched in December and March, respectively.

Three North American tribal leaders who led a drive to stop new oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge were among eight "eco-heroes" awarded a top world environmental award Monday. Other winners of this year's $125,000 Goldman environmental prize include a Somali grandmother who has fought to preserve her country's dwindling stands of old growth acacia trees and a Polish conservationist who pioneered the use of eco-tourism to preserve traditional family farms.

The Basarwa hunter gatherers may have lost the first round of their court bid to remain in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, but they still have another chance to fight their removal, one of their lawyers said on Monday.

Two years after the onset of a devastating drought, Kenya is moving out of emergency and into a recovery phase, though there are still pockets that continue to feel the stresses of drought, especially in pastoralist areas, according to the latest UN donor alert for the country.

Serious military engagements are occurring between government of Sudan forces and the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) in western Upper Nile (or Unity/Wahdah State) and northern Bahr al-Ghazal, in the south of the country, according to humanitarian sources.