Anthony Kimani Muhia is as ambitious as he is entrepreneurial. The 32-year-old farmer from central Kenya has figured out much of what's wrong with the country's farming system, and he's determined to change it, starting with himself. His plot of land feels not much bigger than a handkerchief – about ¾ of an acre – but he’s been using it to find new ways of farming that might help him, his family and his community escape the poverty trap.

“Black cloud”, a mass of polluted air which darkens the skies of the Egyptian capital in October-November, is less severe this year, but efforts to reduce the pollution that leads to this phenomenon should continue if a disaster is to be avoided, an environment official said. “Last year the cloud appeared for 20 hours [in October-November] compared with more than 100 hours in 1999.

Somali pirates have accused European firms of dumping toxic waste off the Somali coast and are demanding an $8m ransom for the return of a Ukranian ship they captured, saying the money will go towards cleaning up the waste. The ransom demand is a means of "reacting to the toxic waste that has been continually dumped on the shores of our country for nearly 20 years", Januna Ali Jama, a spokesman for the pirates, based in the semi-autonomous region of Puntland, said.

The trial of nine people in Ivory Coast accused of involvement in the dumping of 500 tons of chemical waste around the port of Abidjan has been suspended. Five defence lawyers walked out in protest at the fact that no one from the Dutch firm Trafigura which transported the waste was in court.

With the start of the rainy season in Uganda, Livingstone Chinyenya should be tending to the farm which he says his family has lived on for four generations. Instead, the 64-year-old now lives as a squatter along the edge of the land where he was born and raised. He is one of more than 17,000 people who were evicted from their farms in Kayunga District, about 200km (124 miles) north-west of the capital, Kampala.

Health officials say air pollution in Benin’s economic capital, Cotonou, is an often-overlooked, undiagnosed killer that is as much of a health threat as the country’s leading cause of death, malaria. “People banalise pollution because no one ever made the link…between pollution, illness and death,” said UN Development Programme coordinator Mathieu Houinato.

Attempts to coerce developing countries to take on commitments on climate change will not work and they will instead dangerously create a reaction that will make the climate change negotiations more complex. This was stated by the WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy at the first plenary session of the WTO's Public Forum 2008..

The South African government has withdrawn from parliament a bill that would have empowered it to expropriate land and other property and to unilaterally determine the compensation to be paid to owners.

A24 Media is Africa’s first online delivery site for material from journalists, African broadcasters and NGO’s from around the Continent. A24 Media’s business model ensures that all contributors receive a wide and previously unknown exposure to their content, thereby generating sustainable and generous revenues from the sale of their stories on a 60:40 basis in favour of the contributor. Most importantly, the contributor will continue to OWN the copyright of the original footage.

At least six countries in Southern Africa could receive poor rainfall during the critical planting season starting next month, says an early forecast for the 2008/09 agricultural season. Lesotho, Swaziland, most of Namibia, parts of Angola, Madagascar and South Africa are likely to receive "normal to below-normal" rain in the first half of the season from October to December, said the forecast by the Drought Monitoring Centre of the Southern African Development Community (SADC).

After years of calling on the owners of South Africa's oil refineries in Durban to upgrade their facilities to reduce pollution, local residents of the eastern port city have decided to take their case to the courts to secure a legal remedy.

Trade Union affiliates of Public Services International (PSI) in Southern Africa, Africa Water Network and Civil Society working on water met in Johannesburg, South Africa in a workshop organised as per the PSI project on Water.

This latest policy briefing from the International Crisis Group, examines the political and economic implications of the Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) departure from Ogoni land and gives recommendations on resuming peaceful oil operations in the economically strategic and politically volatile region. “If handled carefully, this transition could persuade some of the Delta’s armed groups that non-violence can produce progress on their demands”, says François Grignon, Crisis Group’s Africa Program Director.

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/396/climatec_change_uganda_l.j… in Uganda, whose contribution to global warming has been minuscule, are feeling the impacts of climate change first and worst. On the one hand there is more erratic rainfall in the March to June rainy season, bringing drought and reductions in crop yields and plant varieties; on the other hand, the rainfall, especially in the later rains towards the end of the year, is reported as coming in downpours that are more intense and destructive, bringing floods, landslides, and soil erosion.

Sediment cores drilled from one of East Africa's Great Lakes show that rainfall in the region is highly sensitive to climate changes in the Northern Hemisphere. Analysis of the cores — collected from the bottom of Lake Tanganyika in East Africa's Rift Valley and dating back 60,000 years — suggest that rainfall is sensitive to changes in winter winds in northern Asia and sea surface temperatures in the Indian Ocean.

Climate change is a real and current threat to households and communities already struggling to survive in east Africa. Global climate modelling results indicate that the region will experience wetter and warmer conditions as well as decreases in agricultural productivity.

Environmental Rights Action / Friends of the Earth Nigeria (ERA/FoEN) has condemned the September 2 arrest and detention of a group of around 25 people including journalists attending a community forum on gas flaring at Iwherekan community (Delta State). The arrests were made by Nigerian soldiers at the Iwherekan community gas flaring site operated by oil giant Shell.

We stand at a crossroads. The facts are clear. Global climate change, caused by human activities, is happening, threatening the lives and livelihoods of billions of people and the existence of millions of species. Social movements, environmental groups, and scientists from all over the world are calling for urgent and radical action on climate change.

The IUCN Academy of Environmental Law at the University of Ottawa would like to announce an upcoming conference: "Climate Law in Developing Countries Post-2012: North and South Perspectives" from September 26th to the 29th. This conference will examine the legal and policy challenges that developing countries face in mitigating and adapting to climate change while meeting their social and economic needs.

Rising sea levels have destroyed hundreds of homes, hotels, roads and harvests, and threaten to engulf large areas of Cotonou, Benin’s capital. A government-commissioned study about a year ago recommended urgent action to hold back the rising tides, and save the city’s ports, airport, and coastal communities, but political infighting has blocked funding.