A new global report on Environment has warned that Uganda could be a total dessert in 40 years if the government fails to protect the country’s forests. Uganda has reportedly lost more than 30 percent of its forest between 1990 and 2005. The findings of the State of the Environment Report for 2008, has blamed the great loss of forest cover to human activities, which include among others agriculture, a fast growing population and rapid urbanisation.

This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains a briefing note based on the full Stamp Out Poverty report entitled "Assessing the Alternatives: Financing climate change mitigation and adaptation in developing countries (http://www.stampoutpoverty.org). This report evaluates the options for new funding mechanisms, and advocates a mix, including a currency transaction tax. Also included in this Bulletin are a selection of links and brief descriptions of other recent reports on the issue of climate change, particularly as it affects Africa.

South Africa's biggest farmers' union on Friday criticised the government's plans to scrap a voluntary system of buying land from white farmers to give to poor blacks. Johannes Moller, president of farmers union AgriSA said the move to scrap the willing-buyer, willing-seller model, under which the government negotiates with owners to buy land, would be unconstitutional unless the system were replaced with a similar one.

This is a photo essay of the recent occupation of a piece of land in Macassar. On Tuesday 19th backyarders in Macassar, desperate for homes, built shacks on municipal land on a field adjoining the N2

Massive rural-urban migration into Freetown is putting pressure on the city’s capacity to provide clean, safe drinking water for all its residents, writes Roland Bankole Marke. In a country whose infrastructure is ‘obsolete’ and nearing ‘breaking point’, Marke calls for the nation to make an overhaul of its structural water supply system its ‘top priority’. At present water shortages leave the city vulnerable to outbreaks of disease, while the poorest cannot afford water sold privately. Solutions discussed by Marke include organisation at community level to raise funds for securing water provision, and the construction of a dam on the Orugu River.

This Oilwatch International paper on divide and rule strategy in climate politics outlines many of the tactics used by the more powerful governments and corporates within the UNFCCC process that have led to its apparent inability to do meet its stated objectives and solve Climate Chaos.

Over 2008 large-scale acquisitions of farmland in Africa, Latin America, Central Asia and Southeast Asia have increased. This report discusses key trends and drivers in land acquisitions, the contractual arrangements underpinning them and the way these are negotiated. It also analyses the early impacts on land access for rural people in recipient countries with a focus on sub-Saharan Africa.

Barbara Lopi from the says scientists in the southern African region must communicate to policy and decision-makers the economic value of using, developing and managing groundwater resources.

The Africa Water Network says that private water company Aqua Vitens Rand Limited, which manages water services in Ghana, must go.

World Environment Day (WED) was established by the UN General Assembly in 1972 to mark the opening of the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment. Commemorated yearly on 5 June, WED is one of the principal vehicles through which the United Nations stimulates worldwide awareness of the environment and enhances political attention and action.

The Republic of Congo will delay finalising a multi-million hectare land deal with South African farmers until after a planned July presidential election, Congo Republic's minister of agriculture said. AgriSA, South Africa's main farmers union, has said it had been given tax breaks and rent-free access to arable, poultry and dairy farming on 10 million hectares of Congolese land for 99 years in what would be one of the largest such deals in Africa.

cc In anticipation of Denmark's hosting of the United Nations Climate Change Conference – the COP15 – in December this year, Collins Cheruiyot says that now is the time for Africa to be proactive in asserting its right to be heard. Calling upon its leaders to seize the opportunity to represent their continent in Copenhagen, Cheruiyot stresses that Africa must not allow itself to be short-changed on so crucial a challenge.

Insufficient cheaper alternatives and a large former refugee population are fuelling tree-felling and dependence on charcoal in the self-declared republic of Somaliland, adversely affecting the environment, say analysts. Most urban households use charcoal for everyday cooking. "We use a sack of charcoal every four days because our family is large," said Zahra Omar, a mother of 12, in the capital, Hargeisa.

A United Nations-commissioned study shows that land acquisitions are on the increase in Africa, Latin America, Central Asia and Southeast Asia, raising the risk that poor people will lose access to land, water, and other resources.

African countries are giving away vast tracts of farmland to other countries and investors almost for free, with the only benefits consisting of vague promises of jobs and infrastructure, according to a report published on Monday. “Most of the land deals documented by this study involved no or minimal land fees,” it says. Although the deals promise jobs and infrastructure development, it warns that “these commitments tend to lack teeth” on the contracts.

The Climate Change Media Partnership (CCMP) has opened its 2009 Fellowship Programme. It encourages all journalists in developing countries who report on climate change to apply. This programme comes during a critical year of negotiations that ends in December with the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen where a new global deal could be struck.

Several large African cities are at risk from rising sea levels and intense storms, experts warn. Poor neighbourhoods and slums in Bugama and Okrika in Nigeria, Freetown in Sierra Leone, Bathurst in the Gambia and Tanga in Tanzania, are especially vulnerable.

Botswana’s government sent trucks full of police and wildlife scouts into the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR) to confiscate goats from Bushmen who have returned to their ancestral homes. The Bushmen, whose goats had been confiscated in 2002 when they were unlawfully evicted from the reserve, only received their livestock back in recent weeks.

The deafening silence from the unity government on the ongoing and increasingly violent land invasions has continued, despite promises by government leaders that the rule of law will be respected in Zimbabwe. The Prime Minister’s media conference on Thursday, to provide details about agreements reached during talks about the Global Political Agreement, was an ideal platform to denounce the ongoing attacks.

As funds begin trickling in for Zimbabwe"s reconstruction efforts, the rebuilding of infrastructure battered by years of neglect is set to gobble a huge chunk. As Zimbabwe's national unity government approaches 100 days in office, Finance Minister Tendai Biti - tasked with wooing donors to pour resources into support for the fragile coalition - has said it will take some time for the country to return to 1996 standards, before what was once southern Africa"s second largest economy went into a tailspin.