Major oil companies are still making secret payments to repressive regimes, one year after Tony Blair put his personal authority behind a British-led voluntary disclosure code for the industry, according to a new report from London-based lobby group Global Witness. Corruption is flourishing in desperately poor countries such as Congo Brazzaville, Equatorial Guinea and Angola as the dividends from oil continue to be appropriated by rich and powerful elites.

Donors have been invited this week by the WTO in Cotonou to discuss funding to support the African cotton sector, whose survival is threatened by massive cotton subsidies in rich countries. On the very same week, agricultural negotiations are restarting in Geneva and Europe is discussing its own reform of the cotton sector. West and Central African countries, such as Benin, Chad, Cameroon, Burkina Faso and Mali, face direct losses of income of $250m a year because rich country subsidies are depressing world prices.

Diarrhoeal diseases claim the lives of around two million children each year- 5,000 per day, and cause countless more to fall ill. Children already suffering from poor diets and the ravages of other diseases are the first to get sick and die from water and sanitation-related diseases such as diarrhoea, cholera and typhoid, UNICEF says. Diarrhoea spreads most readily in environments of poor sanitation where safe water is unavailable – often areas that have been hit by human made or natural disasters. Water-borne diseases are one of the major cases of under-five mortality, along with pneumonia, malaria, and measles.

As most people who've seen them will attest, Gabon's leatherback turtles are a majestic sight. "The leatherback turtles of Gabon are the largest sea turtles in the world. They can be seen on the open sea, and they can grow as long as three metres and weigh 850 kilogrammes,” says Guy Philippe Sounguet, President of Adventures Without Borders (ASF) - a non-governmental organisation. The females lay about 120 eggs on the beach during the breeding season, which lasts from January to March. Only half of these eggs hatch, and up to 45 percent of the hatchlings are eaten by predators before they make it to the relative safety of the sea. Turtles have managed to survive this natural rate of attrition for years. But, human intervention is now upping the odds against them substantially.

No other place on Earth boasts such a wide variety of wild animals so close to a bustling metropolis. Lions, giraffes, and ostriches roam freely against a backdrop of skyscrapers and jets landing at Kenya's international airport. But because of people moving in and fences going up in areas around the Nairobi National Park, zebras and wildebeest - and the lions who stalk them - may soon have no way of migrating to southern grasslands during the rainy season and back into the park, where water is plentiful during the dry season. Now the government and wildlife foundations are paying the Maasai, the famed warrior tribe of central Kenya, to not farm or fence in some land as a way to keep the migration corridor clear.

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has used this year's observance of World Water Day to announce the establishment of an Advisory Board on Water and Sanitation, which aims to galvanize global action on these issues as part of international efforts to eradicate poverty and achieve sustainable development.

Two teachers have appeared in court charged with causing the deaths of nine students in Iringa, southern Tanzania. The primary school children were buried in a landslide while collecting sand to build their classrooms. Regional police chief Omar Mganga told the BBC the teachers contravened laws barring students from taking part in projects other than studies.

One of Burundi's ecological jewels, Lake Gacamirinda, is in danger of disappearing. The circumstances of this problem provide a case study in what can happen when human and environmental factors combine to affect a natural resource. Philippe Njoni, Governor of the north-eastern Kirundo province where the lake is located, says the factors causing it to dry up include the drought that ravaged Burundi between 1998 and 2001.

Communities who depend on plant and wildlife resources for their livelihood often contribute to stresses on vulnerable natural resources. An approach known as community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) sees management of human and natural resources as part of the same equation: when communities are able to increase their incomes through improved agricultural practices and alternative economic activity, precious natural resources are sustained.

Poor nations that are home to some of Africa's most arid corners will push for a fairer share of Nile waters this week, exploring joint ventures in energy and irrigation to spread the river's bounty more equitably. Organizers of the meeting of water ministers from 10 Nile Basin countries have played down reports that they will negotiate a replacement to a controversial colonial-era treaty that gives Egypt control of the river.

Zimbabwe's fast-track land reform has had a bad press. Reports of violence and intimidation have obscured the reality that formal procedures used to settle black farmers in model villages bear a striking resemblance to earlier colonial procedures. Whilst colonial myths about African farmers as subsistence oriented and inefficient live on, evidence from south-eastern Zimbabwe suggests that the reforms have benefited some poor black farmers.

Prominent personalities may lose large tracts of land and plots if President Kibaki acts on a report that is currently being compiled by the Commission of Inquiry into illegally allocated land. In an exclusive interview with the East African Standard, the chairman, Mr Paul Nderitu Ndungu, said among those who may surrender land include former Cabinet ministers, Provincial Commissioners, District Commissioners, Parastatal chiefs, church leaders, military and police bosses and businessman.

A couple of iron sheets cover the tiny shelter where Virginia Njeri and her family live in the heart of Deep Sea. Before Father Franco Cellana showed up in this Nairobi slum four years ago, she had no idea who owned the land. She only knew she had to pay Sh3,000 to the chief before she could put up her structure. Fr Cellana, the priest-in-charge at Consolata Shrine, organised a team of people to educate Virginia and her neighbours on their civil rights. The first job was to find out the landlord's name.

Farming communities in Okakarara are caught up in a Catch-22 situation. Wild dogs are killing their livestock in growing numbers. Yet they may not kill the wild dogs because they are one of the world's most endangered species. Wild dogs have all along been a problem in the area but this year, says conservancy co-ordinator Gemon Kaapehi, the situation is so bad that farmers are losing cattle, sheep and goats on a daily basis.

Project Stop The Sahara is embarking on a grand design to plant 14 million Mahogany trees over a 350-kilometre stretch along The Gambia's northern borders with Senegal, as an ecological answer to the southward advance of the Sahara desert. Its founder and coordinator Beppie Smits says Project Stop The Sahara is an uncompromising attempt to check the rapid and relentless encroachment of the Sahara Desert southwards into the Senegambia region.

Central Africa is the region having the richest rainforest resources on the continent, and its Congo basin is second only to the Amazon among the world's rainforest regions. How these resources are used and who controls their "development" are issues that deserve wide debate. Yet new legislation to permit rapid expansion in logging is being introduced in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), on the advice of the World Bank, without significant consultation with civil society or people living in forest areas. The latest issue of the AfricaFocus Bulletin features a report from the Rainforest Foundation on new threats to the forests of the DRC.

Despite a worldwide rise in consumption, there would still be adequate water on planet Earth for everyone if waste was ended, says a new report by an independent research group. According to the WorldWatch Institute in Washington the world faces a problem of "over-consumption" and "under-consumption" of water rather than the more clichéd image of a planet suffering from water scarcity. "There is more than enough water, but so far the political will and financial commitments to provide the poor with access to it have not been sufficient," says the U.S. non-governmental organisation (NGO).

The plight of birdlife in Africa and other parts of the world is being highlighted at a meeting that is currently underway in the South African port city of Durban. ”Empowering People for Change”, a global conservation conference hosted by BirdLife International, attracted about 350 delegates from over 100 countries. BirdLife International is an umbrella organisation for conservation groups around the world.

The High Court in Pietermaritzburg has been asked to make a ground-breaking ruling to protect the interests of all landowners in South Africa whose constitutional rights are said to be threatened by an ongoing illegally "orchestrated mass land invasion" at Mangete in northern KwaZulu-Natal. The application is being brought by Durban human rights advocate and civil rights activist Jenny Wild and the Mangete Landowners' Association. The latter is involved in a dispute, dating back to 1993, with members of the Macambini tribe led by Chief Khayelihle Mathaba, over the alleged illegal settlement of land claimants on property owned by the descendants of English settler John Dunn.

One of the world's great centres of primate diversity is now a national park, created in one of Africa's smallest and most densely populated nations. With the help of the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), the government of Rwanda has recently established Nyungwe National Park, a rich landscape that contains 13 different types of primate, along with 260 bird species, and more than 260 species of trees and shrubs.