Zambia has shut down a Chinese-run mine because of its contribution to air pollution which threatens the health of hundreds of residents of nearby townships, an official said on May 14. Chiman Manufacturing Limited, which mines manganese, was indefinitely closed on May 11 for failing to put in place air pollution control mechanisms, said Justin Mukosa, spokesman of the Environmental Council of Zambia (ECZ), a statutory regulator.

The ministry of education in Zimbabwe is panicking amid reports that over 10 000 teachers are missing after going AWOL when government schools opened for the second term last Tuesday. The Progressive Teachers Union of Zimbabwe (PTUZ) revealed to ZimDaily that the situation in the ministry has reached alarming levels and ministry officials were in panic mode after the discovery that thousands of teachers were absent without official leave from their stations since schools opened a week ago.

For the first time South Africa's top 40 listed companies, which includes Telkom and MTN, have been asked to make available information on their greenhouse gas emissions and their responses to environment-related business trends by the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), the secretariat for a grouping of more than 250 institutional investors from around the world with $41-trillion under management.

Deputies and experts attending the Pan African Parliament on Monday called for Western countries to help reverse the environmental damage to the continent that they had helped create. "This problem is generated by countries in the West," said the African Union Commission's rural development and agriculture commission director Babagana Ahmadu.

Kenyan 2004 Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai’s Green Belt Movement is one of the most prominent women’s civil society organizations, based in Kenya, advocating for human rights and supporting good governance and peaceful democratic change through the protection of the environment.

The South African government has a dilemma: it is constitutionally and morally compelled to redress the past injustices of land ownership, but, by its own determination, its agrarian reform programme will fail if it does not also achieve economic success. For that reason, agrarian reform in SA was more than the transfer of land, Deputy Agriculture and Land Affairs Minister Dirk du Toit told a media briefing at the start of a tour of land-reform projects near Bloemfontein at the weekend. “We have to ask: Did we contribute to poverty reduction?” he said.

Amidst calls from all corners of the political divide to return to the drawing board on the land reform issue, the Namibia Farm Workers Union recently concluded its land conference, entitled ‘Give the Land Back to the People’. This was possibly the first broad-based platform that has dealt exclusively with the land issue since the seminal National Land Conference in 1991 that resulted in the development of policies and legislation to direct the land reform programme adopted by the Government of Namibia.

Rising temperatures in Africa are blamed for droughts, floods and storms while the continent's fabled wildlife is struggling to adapt to shifting ecosystems that could lead to mass extinctions. Scientists say Africa -- the world's poorest continent -- is already paying a high price for global climate change and must now figure out what it can do itself to slow the transformation.

The European Union (EU) has donated Sh24 million for the conservation and management of Mau forest, Lake Nakuru’s main catchment area. The money was given to the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) and the communities living near the forest as part of KSh430million EU has set aside for development projects across the country.

Daniel Wegwa, elder in the village of Mbodo Aluu says: You ask me what we’ve gotten from all the oil here in Aluu? I tell you: nothing. We know that the pumping station that the oil company has on our land, which they call Agbada 1, pumps 30,000 barrels a day. But the oil company uses our land and gives us nothing for it; and the government gives us nothing either.

The country is losing an area of green belt equal to two football fields a day in the wake of massive electricity shortages, Newsreel learned on Thursday. Since the beginning of the year the country’s urban areas have experienced rampant deforestation as a result of persistent power cuts by the Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority.

Lesotho’s billion-dollar Highlands Water Project involves the construction of a series of massive tunnels and dams to take water from the Senqu/Orange River to South Africa’s industrial heartland, Gauteng province. Lesotho receives annual royalties from the sale of its water, and some hydro-electric power. The first testimonies from a highland community due to be submerged under the waters of one of the dams were gathered in 1998 as part of Panos' mountains project

The Boran, Gabra and Orma pastoralist communities share a common ancestry, having gradually moved from southern Ethiopia to Kenya’s Eastern and Coast provinces. In this report, Panos finds that over the last few decades, many of these pastoralists have experienced resettlement and a change of lifestyle. The causes are varied but irrigation schemes and other development projects, as well as conflict and drought, are the primary reasons.

In the late 1950s, the Tonga people of Zambia and Zimbabwe were subject to forced removal on a massive scale, to make way for the construction of a huge hydro-electric dam across the Zambezi River in Southern Africa. The Kariba Dam was the largest man-made dam in the world at that time. It was a powerful symbol for technological achievement and international cooperation. However, little attention was paid to the implications for the 57,000 Tonga who had to leave behind their homes and fertile land along the banks of the Zambezi, according to this Panos report.

East African scientists have united in a bid to protect the region's ecology and biodiversity from changing climatic conditions, the invasion of pests, and unsustainable development. The newly formed Ecological Society of East Africa (ESEA) involves 200 of the region's scientists, who will lead scientific investigations and provide policy advice on these threats.

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/broadcasts/patterson-ogon.jpgIfieniya Lott, a women's rights activist, and Patterson Ogon from the Ijaw Council for Human Rights speak to Sokari Ekine from Pambazuka News about environmental justice issues in the Niger Delta. As the recent elections have been criticised for widespread rigging, particularly in the Niger Delta region, this podcast reflects on the problems people are encountering and what the future holds. For more information see and Environmental Rights Action.

For Katienéfoha Yéo, two decades of cotton farming that resulted in nothing but debt were enough to get him on the road, out of Tanikaha in northern Côte d'Ivoire to Sarala in the west. "At Tanikaha I worked the land for more than 20 years without ever managing to own the least thing. Almost all my agricultural seasons ended with significant (harvest) shortfalls because the soil was no longer good (fertile)," he told IPS.

When it comes to environmental sustainability, South Africa talks green but opts for dirty coal, according to Mathabo le Roux of Business Day. As concerns about climate change grow, the global trend is to diversify away from finite fossil fuels towards renewable energy in an effort to mitigate the impact on the environment.

The Congolese government has recommissioned the biggest hydro-electrical dam of Moukoukoulou, in the south-west, which was damaged during the 1999 civil war. 'We have just rehabilitated all four turbines', said President Denis Sassou Nguesso, who visited the structure.

Reverend William Kebeney is a cleric working with the Full Gospel Churches of Kenya in Kipsigon, Kopsiro, one of four administrative divisions in the strife-torn Mt Elgon district, near the Kenyan border with Uganda. Kebeney deals with the spiritual and health needs (the church runs a health centre) of the affected people but talked to IRIN about the other needs, those not often addressed.