Libreville, Gabon (PANA) - Gabonese Minister of Water Affairs and Forestry Gabriel Tchango announced Tuesday in Libreville the creation of 43 Gabonese small forest enterprises involved in a Central Africa’s large project for sustainable management of forests and poverty reduction. Full text...

Cape Town, South Africa (PANA) - The death toll in the flooding that has ravaged South Africa's Limpopo and Mpumalanga provinces as well as neighbouring Mozambique has risen to 69 by Tuesday, as relief efforts continue. Full text...

New York, US (PANA) - The UN General Assembly Wednesday in New York established an “open working group” consisting of 30 countries from the various regions to advance action to implement a Rio+20 recommendation to develop a set sustainable development goals. Full text...

Cape Town, South Africa (PANA) - 'Your Street Challenge', an initiative to improve the condition of streets around the world, is coming to Cape Town this weekend to coincide with the city’s Design Indaba. Full text...

Lusaka, Zambia (PANA) - A report released Tuesday by Greenpeace warns of an enormous increase in the impact on the global atmosphere resulting from the fossil fuel industry, which is planning 14 massive coal, oil and gas projects that would raise global carbon dioxide (CO2) emission from fossil fuels by 20 percent in 2020. Full text...

Nairobi, Kenya (PANA) - Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga has called on the national security machinery to help the wildlife body to deal effectively with the growing poaching in the East African nation. Full text...

Gaborone, Botswana (PANA) - The Botswana meteorological services department Wednesday said the northern and western parts of the country could get ''above-normal rainfall'' during the January to March 2013 period. Full text...

Nairobi, Kenya (PANA) - Kenya's Wildlife Services (KWS) has linked the upsurge in elephant poaching to international cartels waiting for the outcome of the upcoming global meeting on the conservation of endangered species. Full text...

Banjul, Gambia (PANA) - Gambia’ Minister of Forestry and Environment Fatou Ndeye Gaye said Thursday that the country needs to reduce its vulnerability to climate change by strengthening climate change adaptive capacity and the willingness to face the challenges of this global threat. Full text...

Cape Town, South Africa (PANA) - Raging fire, fuelled by a strong wind, left thousands of people homeless and forced planned celebrations to be cancelled in Cape Town, South Africa, on New Year's eve. Full text...

Nairobi, Kenya (PANA) - The death of four youngsters on Saturday night brings to 14 the number of people killed by landslide in western Kenya over the last two days. Full text...

Nairobi, Kenya (PANA) - Computer maker Hewlett Packard (HP) has established an electronic waste processing plant to deal with Kenya’s 3,000 tonnes of e-waste, including computer parts and mobile phone devices from other electronic companies in Africa, its top environmental executive said Friday. Full text...

Nairobi, Kenya (PANA) - Tanzania has withdrawn an application for the right to sell 100 tonnes of ivory stockpiles to Japan and China, in what conservationists feared could re-ignite fresh poaching of endangered elephants. Full text...

Dakar, Senegal (PANA) - The United Nations General Assembly has declared 21 March as International Day of Forests. Full text...

Dakar, Senegal (PANA) – A validatory workshop on a new project geared towards ''Enhancing resources of coastal areas and countries to climate change'', Wednesday got underway in The Gambia, PANA reported, quoting official sources. Full text...

Washington, DC, US (PANA) - Matthew Cassetta, currently the cultural affairs officer at the U.S. Mission to the European Union, has been appointed as the next facilitator of the Congo Basin Forest Partnership (CBFP). Full text...

Dar es Salaam, Tanzania (PANA) - Africa needs strengthened partnership within its youth organisations to implement Millennium Development Goals-based projects that are now threatened by climate change, the Coordinator of the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA), Mr Mithika Mwenda, said in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, Tuesday. Full text...

Nairobi, Kenya (PANA) - Amnesty International Saturday hailed the ECOWAS Court's ruling which found the Nigerian government and multinational corporations responsible for years of pollution in the Niger Delta. Full text...

Gaborone, Botswana (PANA) - Botswana has set up a web-based environmental Information System (EIS), as part of government’s commitment toward making environmental information accessible to planners, the public and decision makers. Full text...

Malanje, Angola (PANA) - Angolan authorities have expressed their satisfaction with the ongoing project to protect the extinction-threatened giant sable antelope in the Kangandala National Park, Angola’s northern Malanje province. Full text...

Doha, Qatar (PANA) – The UN Climate Change secretariat has called on countries to swiftly implement what has been agreed in Doha so that the world can stay below the internationally agreed maximum two degrees Celsius temperature rise. Full text...

Doha, Qatar (PANA) – The two-week UN Climate Change Conference ended here Saturday night, agreeing on an eight-year second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol, the only international-legally-binding instruction, but with no consensus on climate finance for developing countries and real cuts in emission targets. Full text...

Doha, Qatar (PANA) – President of the 18th session of the Conference of Parties (COP 18), Abdullah Bin Al-Attiyah, early Saturday urged government ministers and heads of delegations in Doha to come to a conclusion with a balanced package as the two-week climate talks scheduled to end Friday, dragged on into Saturday. Full text...

Doha, Qatar (PANA) – As negotiators meet Friday in Doha, Qatar, the final day of the UN climate change conference, ministers from developed countries have been urged to bring trust into the negotiations by committing US$ 60 billion in public finance for climate to developing countries to be made available by 2015. Full text...

Doha, Qatar (PANA) – With only a few hours remaining before the UN climate negotiations concludes in Doha, Qatar, some hundreds of campaigners on Friday called on countries to reject the draft text, PANA reported. Full text...

Doha, Qatar (PANA) - A new report by the African Development Bank (AfDB), in collaboration with Vivid Economics, has made concrete proposals that will facilitate access by African countries to the Green Climate Fund. Full text...

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (PANA) - Africa's top negotiator, Emmanuel Dlamini, has warned that failure to strike a clear treaty to govern future of climate change action around the world will result into a permanent loss of credibility. Full text...

Abuja, Nigeria (PANA) – The Nigerian government’s failure to produce promised funding to address the worst lead poisoning outbreak in modern history is leaving thousands of children to die or face life-long disability, the Nigerian Youth Climate Action Network (NYCAN) and Human Rights Watch said here Thursday. Full text...

Doha, Qatar (PANA) - The UN Climate Change Secretariat, in partnership with the Rockefeller Foundation, has launched a new initiative to recognise the critical role of women in fighting climate change. Full text...

Doha, Qatar (PANA) - The failure of developed countries to commit themselves to providing mid-term assistance to developing countries for climate change remains a crunch issue in Doha, with civil society groups Thursday calling on Qatar - which holds the presidency of the 18th Conference of Parties (COP 18) - to provide leadership and inject energy into the negotiations. Full text...

New York, US (PANA) - Award-winning MediaGlobal News, an independent news organisation based at the UN headquarters in New York, Thursday announced the online launch of UNEARTH News, a new and distinct voice reporting on the human dimensions of climate change, and its impact on developing countries. Full text...

Dar es Salaam, Tanzania (PANA) - Representatives of the African civil society groups coalescing under the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA) at the climate talks in Doha, Qatar, have asked the European Union (EU) member states to allocate at least 25 percent of Financial Transaction Tax (FTT) revenues to climate finance, especially targeting critically needed adaptation funding. Full text...

Khartoum, Sudan (PANA) - The UN-AU peace keeping mission in Darfur said it has launched numersous water projects in Darfur, where nomads and farmers have been fighting intermittently for decades over water sources and grazing lands. Full text...

Doha, Qatar (PANA) - African Union Commissioner in charge of Rural Economy and Agriculture Rhoda Peace Tumusiime has expressed doubts over whether developed countries now in Qatar for the international climate change negotiations will commit funds for climate change, as pledged three years ago in Copenhagen, Denmark. Full text...

Doha, Qatar (PANA) - In its effort to address the challenges of climate change, Qatar has signed a pact with the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) to establish a global forum for an alliance of countries committed to tackling climate change challenges. Full text...

Doha, Qatar (PANA) - The UN Climate Change secretariat and the Climate Group Wednesday announced the launch of a strategic partnership to encourage the mutually-reinforcing leadership of business and of government by combining the efforts of their respective global initiatives to help raise awareness on climate change. Full text...

Doha, Qatar (PANA) – With the apprehension surrounding concrete commitments to climate finance at the UN Climate negotiations in Doha continuing, the African Climate Policy Centre (ACPC) on Tuesday issued a report revealing that less than 11 per cent of climate finance pledged has been met. Full text...

Doha, Qatar (PANA) – African governments at the UN Climate Change Conference in the Qatari capital, Doha, have said that unresolved issues among different regions of the world should not be used as instruments at the negotiation tables to backslide from decision taken so far. Full text...

Dar es Salaam, Tanzania (PANA) – Expressing concern that Africa is on the frontline of a planetary emergency, representatives of the continent’s civil society at the ongoing climate conference in Doha, Qatar, Tuesday urged African leaders at the talks to demand deep cuts of greenhouse gas emission from developed countries. Full text...

Doha, Qatar (PANA) – UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has warned that countries are in a race against time to stay below the agreed threshold of two degrees Celsius to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. Full text...

Doha, Qatar (PANA) – As the UN Climate Change Conference entered its high-level segment Tuesday, non-governmental environmental groups have urged ministers in Doha to ensure that negotiators find a mandated decision on loss and damage through the Conference of Parties (COP) work programme agreed on two years in Cancun, Mexico. Full text...

Doha, Qatar (PANA) – Powerful developed countries, in particular the US, have been accused of making the Green Climate Fund a “Greedy Corporate Fund”. Full text...

Doha, Qatar (PANA) - Head of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) secretariat Christiana Figueres has assured that the ongoing climate talks in Doha, Qatar, will have necessary amendments to the Kyoto Protocol to go into a second commitment period. Full text...

Doha, Qatar (PANA) - Greenpeace has urged ministers (especially from European countries), who are due to open their meeting in the Qatari capital, Doha, for the climate change negotiations Tuesday, not to side with Poland and Russia on maintaining the Kyoto Protocol’s biggest loophole, and to make real progress on a deal to prevent catastrophic climate change. Full text...

Doha, Qatar (PANA) – Representatives of civil society in Africa, who are at the UN Climate Change Conference taking place in Doha, Qatar, have demanded that countries that have expressed intentions of opting out of the Kyoto Protocol (KP) must not be allowed to benefit from flexible mechanisms such as the Clean Development Mechanisms. Full text...

Dar es Salaam, Tanzania (PANA) - African climate change activists attending the 18th Conference of Parties (COP18) of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in Doha, Qatar, have said there is an apparent lack of ambition by the developed countries to lower the rate of temperature increases to the agreed level below 1.5 degrees Celcius. Full text...

Doha, Qatar (PANA) – The UN Climate Change Conference, taking place in the Qatari capital, Doha, seen as the last opportunity to secure agreement on ambitious emission targets and rules for the period 2012-2020, is expected to make significant progress on the Kyoto Protocol by Saturday. Full text...

Doha, Qatar (PANA) - The UN top climate change official has reminded governments meeting in Doha, Qatar, of the international commitments to cut greenhouse gases which she says are higher than they have ever been, but are insufficient to prevent the global average temperature rising beyond the 2 degree Centigrade target that governments themselves have agreed to. Full text...

Gaborone, Botswana (PANA) - Botswana has reiterated its plans to ban hunting by 2014, in favour for photographic tourism, amid concerns the move will deny government 8 million pula (US$988,000) revenue accrued from licence fees. Full text...

Doha, Qatar (PANA) - Greenpeace Central and Eastern Europe have expressed reservations at the prospect of Poland hosting the Conference of Parties (COP 19) climate talks next year. Full text...