The Department of Water Affairs and Forestry (DWAF) has embarked on a programme to incorporate the Non Governmental Organisations and Community Based Organisations sectors in the delivery of water and sanitation.

A third of the fish caught in many of the world most important fisheries are caught illegally, the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) have concluded. Such fish do not appear in official statistics and those that catch them threaten the future of the fisheries concerned. They also put at risk those whose livelihoods depend on legitimately caught fish. FAO calls this Fish Piracy.

Hundreds of business executives from Africa, Europe, America and further afield, squeezed into the main conference centre on Monday in the Senegalese capital, Dakar, to hear about possible commercial opportunities and to acquaint themselves with Nepad, the New Partnership for Africa’s Development.

Meeting increased demand for biomass energy has become a priority challenge for Lesotho Government. In this context afforestation has thus been singled out as the most realistic means of meeting the future energy demands of the mountain households, given the problems in extending the electricity grid and the prohibitive cost of fossil fuels.

Support for conserving biodiversity -- the wide variety of plants, animals, micro-organisms and ecosystems that make up the web of life -- is closely tied to global efforts to reduce poverty and achieve the Millennium Development Goals, and tightly integrated into UNDP programmes worldwide, UNDP have stated.

The Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee (SECC) says it will continue to demand free water and electricity, as promised by the ruling ANC during its previous election campaigns. This announcement was made by Trevor Ngwane, the SECC chairperson.

A rival meeting to the civil society forum of the World Summit for Sustainable Development (WSSD) is being planned, after a split in the South African committee organising the meeting of non-governmental and community organisations.

Zimbabwe's maize crop has failed and South Africans are starting to pay the price. Eastern Cape DA leader and Bedford farmer Athol Trollip warned that land invasions and political chaos in Zimbabwe has had a direct impact on the spiralling price of maize in South Africa.

The Exploration Company has released the Wide Ranging World Map, featuring ecological and cultural details never before shown in a world wall map. Its initial market-testing over, the map's wide-release is made to coincide with Earth Day, on April 22nd.

The Intl Network for Environmental Compliance and Enforcement has an unusually good website with excellent information that is important for anyone managing a regulatory environmental program. It includes two major publications available on online that provide good overviews of these complicated topics. These would serve as good primary references for program managers.

Ghanaian organisations have mobilised in recent months to prevent the privatisation of their country's urban water supply system. They have formed the Coalition Against the Privatisation of Water in Ghana which argues that the privatisation package is a bad deal both technically and financially. It says the reforms are largely imposed by external interests led by the World Bank and the IMF, which have imposed tough conditions.

Thousands of tonnes of fish are being dumped overboard by the large European Union fishing vessels trawling off the West African coast, according to leading environmentalists.

Friends of the Earth International (FoEI) have slammed governments gathered at UN Headquarters in New York for failing to respond to the widespread global concern over globalization. FoEI accused the United States, Canada, Australia and the OPEC countries of trying to ruin the historic World Summit on Sustainable Development to take place in Johannesburg, South Africa this August.

Africa must foster a political and economic climate that encourages the foreign investment its economies badly need for growth, Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien said on Sunday. Chretien is in Africa to discuss the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), which will be prominent on the agenda of the next Group of Eight leading nations (G8) summit in Canada in June.

With the State Department's announcement Tuesday that the U.S. government will sponsor an Indian scientist as the new chair of an international climate change group, the Bush administration took another swipe at efforts to understand and combat global warming. Dr. Rajendra Pachauri would replace Dr. Robert Watson, a widely respected American scientist who has warned of the human causes of climate change for almost six years.

Scientists are launching a major study of "living fossils" in deep waters off South Africa with the help of a small submersible craft that can probe to depths of 1,300 feet. It is hoped that the minisub, which can fit only two people, will shed light on the elusive coelacanth, a curious looking fish that has been swimming the seas for an astonishing 400 million years.

As governments meet in New York to prepare the Earth Summit in Johannesburg, Friends of the Earth International, Greenpeace International, Northern Alliance for Sustainability(ANPED), Sierra Club and Third World Network have issued a statement calling upon the Johannesburg Summit to ensure that Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs) are not subordinated to or undermined by the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

In the last 50 years, most of humanity has been transformed into urban dwellers, more at home in the city than any other environment. But this rapid rush towards urbanization has brought with it a host of problems, including air pollution, the consequences of which we are just beginning to recognize.

Swaziland's new Maguga dam, with its promise of regional benefits, is not merely the largest public works project in this tiny African kingdom's history. It seems a throwback to a time when dams were erected as an automatic answer to myriad problems.

The European Commission (EC) recently announced its decision to support a major programme, endorsed by both the government of Sudan and the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), to tackle the serious problem of land mines and unexploded ordnance (UXO) in the country.