A judicial committee set up by Nigeria's parliament had asked Anglo-Dutch oil firm Shell to pay $1.5 billion in compensation to a community in southern Nigeria, officials said. The panel, headed by former chief justice Mohammed Bello, was set up in December 2000 by the house of representatives after the Ijaw people of Bayelsa state filed a petition demanding compensation from Shell for "the harmful impact of its oil production and exploration activities for  over 60 years".

Over 45,000 large dams have been built to meet the world’s water, energy and flood management needs. However, dams have failed to live up to expectations and have devastated communities and ecosystems. This briefing kit exposes the myths behind large dams and promotes equitable and sustainable solutions for meeting the world’s needs. This briefing kit was created for the Third World Water Forum in Kyoto, Japan by Friends of the Earth Japan and International Rivers Network.

A raging fire - suspected to have been started by arsonists - has now burned over 4,000 hectares (15 square miles) of Mount Kenya forest and is threatening the Mount Kenya ecology and some 882 rare plant species, unique to the area, government officials here say. The fire came weeks after the new government of President Mwai Kibaki announced tough measures to stop illegal logging, encroachment of the forest by neighbouring communities, and growing of narcotics inside the forest.

Sixteen years of civil war, cyclic floods and severe drought have collectively caused much hardship in Mozambique. But the current drought, affecting about 600,000 people, alongside the devastating impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, are together pushing a growing number of families to the brink of survival.

Sixteen years of civil war, cyclic floods and severe drought have collectively caused much hardship in Mozambique. But the current drought, affecting about 600,000 people, alongside the devastating impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, are together pushing a growing number of families to the brink of survival.

A Nigerian government panel on Monday confirmed allegations of $197-million fraud in a state-run oil firm before it was privatised two years ago. The government last August set up the panel to investigate allegations that management of African Petroleum Limited (AP) failed to disclose the true financial status of the company before it was sold off to an indigenous oil firm, Sadiq Petroleum Nigeria Limited.

Wildlife authorities in Kenya have made their biggest seizure of ivory for three years. Five men were arrested in northern Kenya with a load of 33 elephant tusks.

Time is running out for Swaziland to sell eleven ''orphaned'' elephants to zoos in the United States, even if the sale means incurring the wrath of powerful animal rights organisations. The position of the Big Game Parks of Swaziland, a private collection of three animal reserves whose unofficial but powerful patron is King Mswati III, is that too many elephants are ruining the habitats of other wildlife, including some endangered species.

A national crop survey conducted this week by the UN's World Food Programme and the Food and Agriculture Organisation has found widespread crop failures in the most impoverished areas of Swaziland.

The head of the Intergovernmental Committee on Climate Change (IPCC), R. K. Pachauri, has claimed that there is insufficient knowledge about the threats of climate change within the developing world, and that as a result developing countries are facing “a real education deficit”.

The biggest wind farm in sub-Saharan Africa, producing clean power from the force of the wind, is up and running at Klipheuwel in the Cape. The farm, funded by Eskom at the cost of R42 million, consists of three huge wind turbine towers.

Maps from the Botswana Government's own Department of Geological Survey show a massive increase in diamonds exploration concessions on the ancestral land of the Gana and Gwi Bushmen and Bakgalagadi, just months after the government evicted them from the region.

The key to restoring climate stability is shifting from a fossil fuel based energy economy to one based on renewable sources of energy and hydrogen. Advancing technologies in the design of wind turbines that have dramatically lowered the cost of wind generated electricity to the point where it can be used to produce hydrogen from water, along with the evolution of fuel cell engines, have set the stage for a dramatic restructuring of the world energy economy.

Amnesty International charges in a new report that corporate interests are inflicting a devastating worldwide toll on human rights and the environment. The report, Environmentalists Under Fire, cites the US for failing to use its influence to protect environmental defenders around the world, and highlights cases in Russia, Ecuador, Mexico, Indonesia, India, Chad and Cameroon.

A blowout at an abandoned Shell Oil well in southeast Nigeria spewed crude oil, gas, and water hundreds of yards (meters) in the air, polluting farms and streams, activists and company officials said Thursday.

A non-governmental organisation has sued the Kenya government to compel it to make public the report of the Environmental Management Plan (EMP) for a titanium mining project in Kwale District of Coast Province. The case against the National Environmental Management Authority (Nema) was filed in the High Court by George Mulama Wamukoya on behalf of the Centre for Environmental Legal Research and Education (CELRE) on February 6.

With 95 percent of Niger's 10 million people depending on firewood as their main source of household fuel, there has been growing pressure on the remaining forests in the semi-arid nation.

Large-scale protectionist programmes have increasingly been abandoned in favour of community-based wildlife conservation. But the huge range of initiatives makes it difficult to assess the value and impact of these. A new review of community conservation efforts in East Africa finds that much remains to be done, particularly at policy, legal and institutional levels.

As populations rise in the Sahel and arable land degrades, is conflict inevitable? Why are reforms of tenure law, decentralisation and the creation of new land institutions failing to reduce disputes over access to and ownership of land? Could innovative forms of arbitration bring together stakeholders to settle lasting disputes and develop sustainable forms of natural resource management?

Locals get almost nothing out of conservation accrued benefits. There is much talk on the need for wildlife neighbouring communities to share the benefits of wildlife conservation. This loud cry is neither supported by enforceable legislation nor by clearly spelt out Government policies. To Government functionaries, it is enough to proudly talk of the earnings from wildlife and highlight it as a percentage of the national income. But if the successes of conservation in terms of the welfare of rural people in and/or adjacent to wildlife-protected areas are gauged, obviously they are failure. Yet the villages in and around protected areas have little or almost no Government-supported infrastructures, argues this commentary.