One of the last pristine rainforests in Africa will not be logged by a German timber company. Known as the Goualogo Triangle, the 100 square mile forest in the Republic of Congo contains some of the highest densities of gorillas, chimpanzees and forest elephants in central Africa.

At the twenty-first session of the Governing Council of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)/Global Ministerial Environment Forum, held in Nairobi from 5 to 9 February 2001, the Council adopted decision 21/21 entitled
"International environmental governance", in which it outlined a process for the review of the current state of international environmental governance and the submission of the results of the review to the World Summit on Sustainable
Development, to be held in Johannesburg in 2002. The Civil Society Consultations on International Environmental Governance were held on 22 and 23 May 2001 at UNEP headquarters in Nairobi in order to enable representatives of civil society organizations to give their views on international environmental governance. If you are interested in receiving the report on the civil society consultation on international enviromental government, please email Dorothy Kello at Wougnet.

Convened by the Programme for Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS), School of Government, University of Western Cape and the Centre for Applied Social Sciences (CASS), University of Zimbabwe. Course dates: 10-14 September 2001.

The World Bank's support of the oil, gas and mining industries fuels pollution, devastates the enviroment and perpetuates poverty. Oil, gas and mining projects enable multinational corporations to extract resources and profits from poor countries, leaving poverty in their wake. More than 200 organizations from 55 countries have called on the World Bank to phase out financing for oil, gas and mining. For further information, visit the FoE website.

The national organised crime head of the detective service, Assistant Commissioner Albert Eksteen, was arrested at the department's headquarters in Pretoria on Tuesday for fraud involving about R40 000.

Save the Earth International is an International Organization involved in the Campaign " A Healthy and Safe Environment is a Human Right", and this should be included in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of The United Nations. We have handed over a memorandum on this issues with more than one million signatures from all over the world to the Under Secretary General of the United Nations, Mr. Nitin Desai on April 24, 2001 in New York. Add your name to the list!

A thorough knowledge of energy and climate change issues and work experience in the NGO sector are essential. Remuneration and incentives negotiable, subject to skills, experience and performance; Closing date: 28 July - Send CV and a letter of motivation via email or Fax (011) 339 3270. For more information e-mail or phone (011) 339 3662.

Five people are reported dead and some 139,000 others have been affected by flooding and waterlogged conditions caused by recent downpours in Ghanaian coastal towns, including the capital Accra, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said on Monday. The southern districts of Adoagyir, Nsawam, Zongo, and the Odaw Channel have been the worst affected by the flooding, OCHA said.

Oil giant Shell suffered another major spillage at the weekend in the eastern division of the Niger Delta, 'The Guardian' reported on Tuesday. The leak, at Ogbodu village in the Ikwerre Council area, spread through the Choba River to the Calabar Creek because of the fast flow of the river, the Lagos-based newspaper said. Dead fish could be seen floating on the surface of the water, it added.

Chiefdoms in southern and eastern Sierra Leone will soon receive tens of thousands of dollars as their share of proceeds from the sale of diamonds mined in their region, Mineral Resources Minister Mohammed Deen told IRIN on Thursday.

The meeting of COP-6 of the UNFCCC, scheduled to be held in Bonn, Germany during the last two weeks of July of this year, will address a conflict that has pitted the United States against most if not all the countries of the world and threatens to upset the international effort to curb global warming.

About a year ago both the World Bank and the European Investment Bank approved a loan for the controversial Chad- Cameroon Oil and Pipeline Project. A brand new report that outlines all commitments made and not lived up to by the banks, the governments and the oil companies. The project has been selected as one of FoEI's (Friends of the Earth International) 'showcases' to illustrate the call for a phase out of public financing for oil, mining and gas projects.

Mzee is 42, headstrong and notorious for crashing through the electrified fence that surrounds a sprawling ranch in north central Kenya. On Thursday, the 4.2-ton bull elephant stumbled out of a truck, shook off his stupor and flapped his ears, ambling free in his new, fenceless home following the most intensive elephant relocation effort to date in eastern Africa.

New proposals on rules for operating the Kyoto Protocol create a good opportunity for finally agreeing the climate treaty at next month's global climate summit, according to WWF, the conservation organization.

If governments do not act quickly to discourage the building of cities for cars, the international effort to control global warming will become much more difficult, reports a new study by the Worldwatch Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based research organization. Sprawling urban areas are helping to make road transportation the fastest growing source of the carbon emissions warming the earth's atmosphere.

The newly-created International Consortium for Cooperation on the Nile (ICCON) held its first meeting on 26 through 28 June in Geneva, bringing together the international donor community and NGOs in support of the Nile Basin Initiative, a cooperative programme to address poverty, environmental degradation and instability.

Are people in low-income areas aware of the risks of drinking dirty water? What can be done to improve the quality of drinking water for poorer people? Researchers from Population Services International and the Zambian Society for Family Health report on the results of a survey in low-income neighbourhoods in Lusaka, Zambia.

Environmentalists in Kenya have threatened court action to stop the filming of the American television show "Survivor Series III" that formally begins on July 1 and runs to September 30. They accuse the filmmakers of damaging the fragile ecosystem of Shaba National Reserve in the semi-arid eastern province of Kenya.

The moon’s shadow raced across southern Africa today delighting residents, tourists, and scientists. At 9:09 a.m. the moon totally blocked the sun over Lusaka for three minutes and 14 seconds, providing a spectacular show of light that drew cheers from Zambians and visitors gathered on rooftops and fields across the city.

The effects of prolonged regional drought have hit pastoralist communities in Djibouti hard, and have resulted in drought-displaced populations congregating in areas with little infrastructure, health, water and shelter.