At Kalma, the largest camp of displaced people in the area with a population pushing 100,000, local police officers are not allowed inside. After violent clashes broke out last year between camp dwellers and local government officials, the police moved their substation out of the camp to a patch of sand nearby. Resources are thinner for the Sudanese police force. Even those officers committed to policing frequently find it hard to do their jobs. Some police posts lack vehicles, while victims must sometimes provide their own pen and paper to fill out a report.

Five years ago when Lake Victoria water levels started to fall, nobody thought it would turn out into a national crisis. Even as the fishermen, whose livelihood is wholly dependent on the water, raised an alarm, few expected the current outcry on power outages, rationed water supply and international environmental crisis threatening the livelihoods of over 30 million people.

This World Bank report examines the impact of ambiguous and contested land rights on investment and productivity in agriculture in Akwapim, Ghana, showing that individuals who hold powerful positions in a local political hierarchy have more secure tenure rights, and that as a consequence they invest more in land fertility and have substantially higher output.

Government ruffled some feathers among renewable-energy advocates yesterday (January 30) when it said it had been toying with the idea of nuclear power as a potential energy source for Namibia. But Mines and Energy Permanent Secretary Joseph Iita was quick to add that to date the subject had enjoyed only minimal attention and that at present Government was only informing itself about such an option. It has, however, informed Namibia's biggest uranium mine, Roessing, that a small nuclear power plant was up for discussion.

Farmers in Mali, the fourth poorest country in the world, have told their government they do not want to see genetically modified crops being grown on their land, after Africa's first "farmers' jury" debated the issue. Their verdict comes as the Mali government decides whether to allow trials of genetically modified crops to begin in the country. During the five-day meeting in Sikasso, in the south of Mali, where two thirds of the country's cotton is produced, farmers heard arguments for and against the introduction of GM technology.

In 1994 war and genocide in Rwanda left almost one million people displaced. Resettlement villages were constructed in the rural areas to shelter refugees and to provide the basic necessities. Rwindalectric Inc is a new non-profit organisation that has been established to assist in addressing Rwanda's energy deficit, in particular through the provision of wind energy. The organisation believes this to be the best option for the country, being an economically sound renewable resource which produces no environmentally harmful waste or emission and working well in
conjunction with existing hydropower.

Decentralisation and devolution have become dominant themes in the management of natural resources in the less developed countries. The process of decentralisation in the Kenyan forestry sector has been going on since the 1930s, and has primarily focused on administrative decentralisation whose main objective was to ensure effective management of forests by the forest department.

A land dispute that resulted from a river changing its course due to heavy rains some 50 years ago continues to vex neighbouring agricultural communities along the Burundi-Rwanda border. The latest incident in the Sabanerwa land dispute occurred in early January when Burundian farmers crossed to one side of the River Kanyaru in a bid to cultivate land at Sabanerwa. During the incident, Rwandan troops, accompanied by the governor of Rwanda's Butare province, massed at the riverbank to prevent Burundians from cultivating the land.

With just months to go before construction of a hydroelectric dam gets underway along Cameroon's Lom river, environmentalists are raising concerns about the initiative. "While laudable, the Lom project in its present form could accelerate the decline in living standards of local populations," Dieudonné Thang, executive secretary of Global Village Cameroon, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) based in the capital of Yaoundé, told the Inter Press Service.

Uganda is expected to shut down the two hydroelectricity stations on the River Nile in Jinja, as water levels drop and the combined output from the complex falls to a five-year low of 170 MW. The crisis is projected to last for the next four years, until additional hydropower capacity becomes available either at Bujagali or Karuma Falls in 2010. Already, the government, the World Bank and Acres International, which jointly built the Kiira Hydropower Station, are being accused of using faulty technical calculations and ignoring warnings that it would never produce the projected power and would lead to a drop in the level of Lake Victoria.

According to the Environment News Service, the relentless drought across East Africa is deepening because of global climate change as well as the continuing destruction of forests, grasslands, wetlands and other critical ecosytems the UN environment Programme (UNEP) is warning. "Drought is no stranger to the peoples of East Africa," said Klaus Toepfer, the executive director of UNEP, which has compiled a number of reports on the state of Kenya’s forests. "It is a natural climatic phenomenon".

This practical manual from the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research specifically addresses what small island countries should do in order to develop adaptation strategies to changing weather patterns, and is posted from Eldis.

Cocoa, coffee, oil palm and rubber among others are important tree crops for many sub-Saharan countries, but is there more to be gained from these high-value export commodities? This NRI report examines the conditions under which these crops are produced as well as the constraints that can arise - particularly those affecting smallholder farmers. It further reviews the impact of policy and market liberalisation, and suggests that targeted investment and the formation of producer organisations could go a long way to more than doubling the current marketable output.

Hope Ogbeide paid a field visit to Minna, Niger State on 17th January 2006 and wrote a report on an interview he had with Noma Usma, Secretary Coalition of Dam-affected Communities and President, Borgu Youth Council. The claims of Noma Usman were corroborated by the Chairman of Borgu Local Government Area, which hosts the Kainji hydroelectric dam.

In the forests of northern Republic of Congo, the Mbendjele are a hidden people. Living entirely on forest resources, they have co-existed with their environment for thousands of years. Their impact on the forest is so minimal that from satellite images it is impossible to detect any evidence of these people's hunter-gatherer activities. But their 'hidden existence' is under threat as logging concessions are allocated and logging companies move in to claim the timber.

In the forests of northern Republic of Congo, the Mbendjele are a hidden people. Living entirely on forest resources, they have co-existed with their environment for thousands of years. Their impact on the forest is so minimal that from satellite images it is impossible to detect any evidence of these people's hunter-gatherer activities. But their 'hidden existence' is under threat as logging concessions are allocated and logging companies move in to claim the timber.

Climate change is not merely a threat - it's a reality. And it's the world's poorest people who already feel its devastating effects. Changing rainfall patterns are causing crops to fail and communities to go hungry; increasingly severe floods and storms are devastating families' homes and livelihoods year after year. Poor communities who are already struggling with the burden of poverty have to cope with more and more frequent extreme weather events. Around the world, the organisation Practical Action is working together with communities, helping them adapt to the impacts of climate change.

Militants behind attacks aimed at disrupting Nigeria's oil exports said they will target all producers in the country, in a message singling out US-based Chevron. The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, which has caused major disruption at Royal Dutch Shell and kidnapped four foreign oil workers, said it has also attacked installations run by France's Total and Italy's Agip, a unit of ENI. "We have decided not to limit our attacks to Shell oil as our ultimate aim is to prevent Nigeria from exporting oil," the militant group said in an email statement to Reuters.

Water ministers from the Nile Basin countries meet next month to conclude a new agreement on governing the use of the river's waters. The question of whether a country should notify other Nile basin states before starting a project on the river was unresolved after the seventh round of talks by the technical negotiation panel, which met in Uganda last September. The issue will be top on the agenda at the Nile Council of Ministers meeting due in Addis Ababa.

London's Guardian on Saturday examined the spread of HIV in the region surrounding northern Zambia's Lake Mweru, which in recent years has seen an influx of young men who have migrated to the region to start fishing. Although the area was sparsely populated 30 years ago, the closure of Zambian copper mines, increasing poverty and conflict in the neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo have contributed to the region's recent population growth.