Climate change in South Africa could force a safety review of the country's dams and reservoirs, Parliament's water affairs and forestry portfolio committee has been told. "In South Africa, because of our variable climate, we have to build our dams bigger, generally, than elsewhere, because we have really big droughts and really big floods," University of KwaZulu-Natal professor of hydrology Roland Schulze told MPs.

The Zimbabwean Government is expected to sign an agricultural agreement with China that could see vast tracts of land being ceded to the fast-growing nation. The deal, envisaged to boost agricultural production, should be signed on November 8 and will be guaranteed by the Ministry of Finance. The deal will be in two phases. The first component is a direct government-to-government agreement while the other has an element of private sector participation. Government is expected to enlist private sector participation under the Zimbabwe Development Company, represented by Zimbabwe Farmers Union vice-president Edward Raradza.

In central Mozambique it didn't rain for four years. The landscape in the drought-affected southern half of Mozambique is pocked with water holes; when one hole dries up, the villagers move on to another. People are malnourished, and due to unsafe water many people are suffering from cholera, says Sonia dos Anglos Faustino, a coordinator with the Mozambique Red Cross. Water holes are often shared with livestock, increasing the chances of contracting water-borne diseases. Piped water and even functioning water pumps are rare in the countryside, due to the civil war that ended in 1992.

There will not be additional funding for the Sondu Miriu hydro-power project, Japan's ambassador to Kenya said October 18, according to Nation Media. The envoy, Mr Satoru Miyamura said his government had given the nearly Sh22 billion initially needed to complete the two-phased project, which begun in 1998 but stalled two years later. Mr Miyamura said: "We have disbursed all the money we were to give. There are no plans for extra disbursement."

Ten years after the execution of writer and human rights activist Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight fellow activists, new evidence shows that the peoples of Nigeria's oil producing Niger Delta continue to face death and devastation at the hands of the security forces. A report issued by Amnesty International reveals how poverty-stricken communities, which protest against the actions of companies or are suspected of obstructing oil production, risk collective punishment. "It is an insult to the memory of Ken Saro-Wiwa and his fellow campaigners that those responsible for killings, beatings and rape are still allowed to escape justice. Their campaign for economic and social rights remains as relevant as ever with 70 percent of Niger Delta inhabitants continuing to live in absolute poverty despite booming oil revenues," said Kolawole Olaniyan, Director of Amnesty International's Africa programme.

Internet search giant Google has announced the launch of Google.org, its new charitable arm, which will focus its grantmaking on world poverty and the environment, the San Jose Mercury News reports. Over the next twenty years, the company will endow the umbrella organization with funds equivalent to three million shares of its stock — about 1 percent of the number of shares it controlled when the company went public more than a year ago.

According to the New York Times, with the vast majority of Malawi's population dependent on charcoal and firewood for cooking, the country's deforestation rate -- one of the highest in sub-Saharan Africa -- is taking a toll on the environment, yet yielding paltry economic rewards. Hundreds of thousands of rural Malawians rely on logging for income, but the sale of firewood and charcoal generates less than $8 million a year nationwide. Meanwhile, the World Bank estimates 20% of Malawi's forests were destroyed during the 1990s, and one forestry expert says the heavily populated southern region of the country has lost almost 80% of its tree cover.

Extra aid to help dig Africa out of poverty agreed in July by leaders of the world's main industrial nations could be eaten up by global warming unless urgent action is taken, a British scientist said on Monday. In an open letter to environment and energy ministers of the Group of Eight (G8), Lord May of Oxford, president of the Royal Society scientific think-tank, said the deal struck at the G8 summit in Gleneagles was flawed. "As long as greenhouse gas concentrations continue to rise, there is the very real prospect that the increase in aid agreed at Gleneagles will entirely be consumed by the mounting cost of dealing with the added burden of adverse effects of climate change in Africa," he wrote.

Ghana and Sino Hydro, a Chinese construction company, have signed a memorandum of understanding to undertake the construction of the Bui Dam. The government is currently funding the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) at a cost of $2 million to prepare the ground for the take-off of the project after ongoing negotiations on funding have been completed. The $500 million project, which has been on the drawing board for decades, is expected to augment the power supply production from the Akosombo dam and Aboadze Thermal Plant.

About 10 billion dollars would be required in the short to medium term to meet the investment requirements for power generation and transmission infrastructure under the West Africa Power Pool Project (WAPP), Energy Minister Mike Oquaye has announced. The amount would be used to rehabilitate and construct new generation plants and to upgrade and build new transmission lines over the next 10 years, including the establishment of interconnection infrastructure and development of hydropower plants such as Keleta in Guinea and Felou in Mali. The World Bank has already committed a 350-million dollar line of credit for the development of the WAPP out of which the Ghana Government and the Volta River Authority had secured 40 million dollars to implement the 330KV Aboadze-Volta Transmission Line.

When the giant Lake Kariba was built in the 1950s, authorities at the time celebrated its construction as one of the most sterling feats of engineering and human endeavour. The lake, whose construction was completed in 1958, provides hydro-electricity to Zimbabwe and Zambia and influenced the springing up of bustling commercial, fishing and tourism activity in Kariba town and on its shoreline thereby generating significant revenue and employment to the country. However, 47 years down the line thousands of people who were displaced on the Zimbabwean and Zambian banks of the Zambezi River to make way for the colossal water reservoir feel that they are entitled to compensation.

On World Habitat Day, the Housing and Land Rights Network launched a new and interactive website, whereby its members and the general public can report land and housing violations.The website has built a simple database with a list of basic information on the world's most common housing and land rights violations.

Humanitarian groups assisting Sudanese refugees in eastern Chad have redeployed staff to camps in the Hadjer Hadid area despite a breakdown in talks between army deserters and the government. UNHCR and other aid groups a few days ago cut back their presence amid tension in the region, where the government said dozens of deserters had fled.

This research briefing considers the growth of non-Development Assistance Committee (DAC) donors in providing assistance during crises and natural disasters. A growth in the number of non-DAC donors has challenged views that only rich industrialised countries provide such aid. The Briefing found that a growing diversity of non-DAC donors remains under-appreciated in debates on humanitarian action, as well as in broader developmental agendas; this growth has led to a revision of fundraising and partnership strategies within operational agencies, as donors such as the Gulf States add a new dimension to the politics surrounding aid.

Rumours swirl about a military coup in the offing, police are bracing for protests, well-heeled Ivorians have booked flights out of the country, and there is a story doing the rounds about the birth of a talking baby who warned of violence within days. The nervousness is the end-product of the collapse of a peace plan that provided for elections to be held on Sunday 30 October when President Laurent Gbagbo’s five-year mandate runs out.

Dear Friends,

I am writing on behalf of a number of Bolivian, Uruguayan and Brazilian activists to you to ask your support, suggestions and advice in the next 6 months for building together a global campaign calling for water to be taken out of the WTO as well as bilateral trade and investment agreements...there is also growing worldwide resistance to treating water as a “commodity.” We therefore feel that co-ordinating our different actions together with different networks of activists could build a large global campaign which has a chance of getting the theme of water out of different free trade agreements. Please follow the link for more information.

Take profits from billions of barrels of offshore oil, divide them among a population of just 150,000, and this dirt-poor archipelago of flimsy wooden shacks could be transformed into one of the world's affluent petro-states. Factor in the potential for war, conflict or corruption - painful realities in many oil-rich African nations - and the dream of development can quickly become a nightmare, reports Associated Press.

Water levels of Lake Victoria are extremely sensitive to moderate changes in rainfall over the lake and rain catchment basin, with the lake's large surface area making it the largest recharge source. The lake's only outlet is at Ripon Falls, located near Jinja Uganda, which is the natural topographic control that originally formed the lake. In 1954, Owens Falls Dam (later renamed Nalubaale) was commissioned downstream of Ripon Falls to generate hydroelectricity along the Victoria Nile river and became Uganda's largest power station.

Africa's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases — South Africa — unveiled plans for a research and development strategy to address climate change this week at a national conference in Midrand. But, although South Africa's Department of Science and Technology says the strategy will help the country produce locally relevant findings on climate change that can feed into national policies, some local scientists are unimpressed with the conference.

Although it was initially interested, the Japanese Kajima finally did not reply to the call for tenders issued by the Ethiopian Electric Power Corp. (EEPCo) for the construction of a hydroelectric dam for a 96 MW power station on the river Neshi, in the East Wollega region of Oromia Regional State. Only 3 firms submitted bids: the Turkish Enka, the Italian Salini and the Chinese Gezhouba Water and Power Group. Salini is already very active in Ethiopia. The group built, with funding from the European Investment Bank and the Italian government, the Gilgel Gibe Dam (184 MW) and is currently building the second phase of the project, which will have a capacity of 428 MW. This summer, Salini also penned an agreement with EEPCo to build a 46 MW hydropower dam at Beles in the Amhara region in the northern part of the country.