This week we invited Transformation Resource Centre (TRC) to join the APN representing Lesotho and you can look forward to meeting Miss. Matšeliso Ntsoelikane (Director, TRC) in Kampala where you can learn more about her organisation.
Last week I inserted an article that gave a glimmer of hope in Sudan as scientists had discovered an ancient lake. The lake is now also reported to have since dried up, but nevertheless there is still hope and a project to sink in 1,000 wells has already begun. In fact, for a million dollars you can save lives, reduce conflict, and have a well named after you for life. Whilst on Sudan, Professor Jeffrey Sachs also gave his supporting reasons as to why you should read the ‘Sudan: Post-Conflict Environmental Assessment’ report if you haven’t already.
The new Nigerian president Mr. Yar'Adua promises to be hard on pollution and corruption however a report from the Economist reveals that he may already be hamstrung.
Go-to-hell policy
Zimbabwean government launches a new stroke of genius ‘Operation Dzikisa Mitengo’ – reduce prices – that is worsening food shortages. President Robert Mugabe has in the past told the IMF and Christopher Dell (the US Ambassador to Zimbabwe), to, “… go to hell” and now South Africa has been invited to join them in the inferno. Bishop Pius Ncube was also once warned that 'Bishops can go to hell...' and Bishop Desmond Tutu told he was '...an angry, evil and embittered little bishop.' Is the go-to-hell policy growing senile? Will the rising inflation (nearing 5,000%) drive out the old for the new? Enock Chinyenze, TVE Regional Coordinator - Africa
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Transformation Resource Centre: http://www.trc.org.ls/
Transformation Resource Centre (TRC) is an ecumenical and non-governmental organization. TRC serves as a resource centre for all those committed to work for Peace, Justice and Participatory Development in Lesotho and through out the region. The TRC was formed in 1979 as a resource centre for apartheid exiles from South Africa to offer them information, education and moral support. It is based in Maseru at No1 Oak Tree Gardens, old Europa
Mission statement: Transformation Resource Centre is striving for the enhancement of the poor and the marginalized people’s participation for democracy, development and justice through information dissemination, education, advocacy and lobbying with other institutions in Lesotho, regionally and internationally.
In order to realize its mission, TRC operates the following four programmes: information and communication, democracy and human rights, resource centre, and the Lesotho Highlands water monitoring, advocacy and empowerment project.
BBC NEWS. 20 July 2007. Ancient Darfur lake 'is dried up'. Jeffrey D. Sachs
A vast underground lake that scientists hoped could help to end violence in Sudan's Darfur region probably dried up thousands of years ago, an expert says. Alain Gachet, who used satellite images and radar in his research, said the area received too little rain and had the wrong rock types for water storage. But the French geologist said there was enough water elsewhere in Darfur to end the fighting and rebuild the economy. Analysts say competition for resources such as water is behind the unrest. More than 200,000 Darfuris have died and two million fled their homes since 2003.
UN backing
On Wednesday, Boston University's Farouk El-Baz said he had received the backing of Sudan's government to begin drilling for water in the newly-discovered lake, in North Darfur. He said radar studies had revealed a depression the size of Lake Erie in North America - the 10th largest lake in the world. But Mr Gachet, who has worked on mineral and water exploration in Africa for 20 years, said the depression identified by the Boston researchers was probably full of water 5,000 to 25,000 years ago.
"This lake was at the bottom of a broad watershed feeding the Nile above Khartoum," he said. "This watershed is completely dry today on the southern border of Egypt, Libya and north-western border of Sudan - one of the worst areas in the world." He accepted that the Boston researchers had a slim chance of being right, but he said he was not optimistic.
'Root cause'
Further south, in the rebel-controlled Jebel Mara area of Darfur, Mr Gachet said he was helping a UN-backed project to drill for water. "There is enough water within these aquifers to bring peace in Darfur... and even more - enough to reconstruct the economy of Darfur." Earlier in the week Hafiz Muhamad, from the lobby group Justice Africa, told the BBC the "root cause" of the conflict was lack of resources.
He said "drought and desertification" in North Darfur had led the Arab nomads to move south, where they came into conflict with black African farmers. Last month, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) said there was little prospect of peace in Darfur unless the issues of environmental destruction were addressed.
Anyone interested in peacemaking, poverty reduction, and Africa's future should read the new United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) report Sudan: Post-Conflict Environmental Assessment. This may sound like a technical report on Sudan's environment, but it is much more. It is a vivid study of how the natural environment, poverty, and population growth can interact to provoke terrible human-made disasters like the violence in Darfur.
When a war erupts, as in Darfur, most policymakers look for a political explanation and a political solution. This is understandable, but it misses a basic point. By understanding the role of geography, climate, and population growth in the conflict, we can find more realistic solutions than if we stick with politics alone.
Extreme poverty is a major cause, and predictor, of violence. The world's poorest places, like Darfur, are much more likely to go to war than richer places. This is not only common sense, but has been verified by studies and statistical analyses. In the UNEP's words, "There is a very strong link between land degradation, desertification, and conflict in Darfur."
Extreme poverty has several effects on conflict. First, it leads to desperation among parts of the population. Competing groups struggle to stay alive in the face of a shortage of food, water, pasture land, and other basic needs. Second, the government loses legitimacy and the support of its citizens. Third, the government may be captured by one faction or another, and then use violent means to suppress rivals.
Darfur, the poorest part of a very poor country, fits that dire pattern. Livelihoods are supported by semi-nomadic livestock-rearing in the north and subsistence farming in the south. It is far from ports and international trade, lacks basic infrastructure such as roads and electricity, and is extremely arid. It has become even drier in recent decades because of a decline in rainfall, which is probably the result, at least in part, of man-made climate change, caused mostly by energy use in rich countries.
Declining rainfall contributed directly or indirectly to crop failures, the encroachment of the desert into pasturelands, the decline of water and grassland for livestock, and massive deforestation. Rapid population growth - from around one million in 1920 to around seven million today - made all of this far more deadly by slashing living standards.
The result has been increasing conflict between pastoralists and farmers, and the migration of populations from the north to the south. After years of simmering conflicts, clashes broke out in 2003 between rival ethnic and political groups, and between Darfur rebels and the national government, which in turn has supported brutal militias in "scorched earth" policies, leading to massive death and displacement.
While international diplomacy focused on peacekeeping and on humanitarian efforts to save the lives of displaced and desperate people, peace in Darfur can be neither achieved nor sustained until the underlying crises of poverty, environmental degradation, declining access to water, and chronic hunger are addressed. Stationing soldiers will not pacify hungry, impoverished, and desperate people.
Only with improved access to food, water, health care, schools, and income-generating livelihoods can peace be achieved. The people of Darfur, Sudan's government, and international development institutions should urgently search for common ground to find a path out of desperate violence through Darfur's economic development, helped and supported by the outside world.
The UNEP report and experiences elsewhere in Africa suggest how to promote economic development in Darfur. Both people and livestock need assured water supplies. In some areas, this can be obtained through boreholes that tap underground aquifers. In other areas, rivers or seasonal surface runoff can be used for irrigation. In still other areas, longer-distance water pipelines might be needed. In all cases, the world community will have to help pay the tab, since Sudan is too poor to bear the burden on its own.
With outside help, Darfur could increase the productivity of its livestock through improved breeds, veterinary care, collection of fodder, and other strategies. A meat industry could be developed in which Darfur's pastoralists would multiply their incomes by selling whole animals, meat products, processed goods (such as leather), dairy products, and more. The Middle East is a potentially lucrative nearby market. To build this export market, Darfur will need help with transport and storage, cell phone coverage, power, veterinary care, and technical advice.
Social services, including health care and disease control, education, and adult literacy programs should also be promoted. Living standards could be improved significantly and rapidly through low-cost targeted investments in malaria control, school feeding programs, rainwater harvesting for drinking water, mobile health clinics, and boreholes for livestock and irrigation in appropriate locations. Cell phone coverage could revolutionize communications for sparse populations in Darfur's vast territory, with major benefits for livelihoods, physical survival, and the maintenance of family ties.
The only way to sustainable peace is through sustainable development. If we are to reduce the risk of war, we must help impoverished people everywhere, not only in Darfur, to meet their basic needs, protect their natural environments, and get onto the ladder of economic development.
Nigeria First. 19 July, 2007. Nigeria Oil Companies to Pay Heavily for Spills - President Yar'Adua. Abuja
President Umaru Musa Yar'adua has said that oil companies operating in Nigeria must be made to pay heavy fines for spills caused by them. He was responding to a presentation by the National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA) at the State House, Abuja on July 18. In his comments, President Yar'adua pointed out that in view of the widespread negative impact of oil spills on the environment, the regulatory authorities must ensure that stiff penalties were imposed on companies that defaulted in cleaning up the spills.
He directed NOSDRA to liaise with other government and non-governmental agencies in order to effectively discharge its roles as a policing body of oil spills and get service providers to clean up the environment.
In the course of making the presentation, NOSDRA Director-General, Dr. Bamidele Ajakaiye, highlighted some effects of oil pollution on the environment as including contamination of ground and surface water sources, disruption of balance in the ecosystem, reduction in the economic potentiality of the affected communities, and the high cost of remediation of contaminated sites NOSDRA, a parastatal under the Federal Ministry of Environment, Housing and Urban Development, was established in 2006 by an Act of the National Assembly. Its purpose is to "create, nurture and sustain a zero-tolerance oil spill incident in the Nigerian environment." Its functions include "surveillance and ensuring compliance with all existing legislation and the detection of oil spills in the petroleum sector," and coordinating responses to such incidents throughout the country.
The Economist. 19 July, 2007. Shilly-shally: The new president is looking hamstrung even before he gets going. Lagos
WHEN Umaru Yar'Adua took his presidential oath on May 29th, he promised to be a “servant leader” and to move speedily towards solving Nigeria's most pressing problems: insurgency and gangsterism in the oil-producing Niger Delta region, an appallingly erratic supply of electricity, and massive endemic corruption. Almost two months later the former chemistry teacher, one of only three post-colonial Nigerian rulers not to have hailed from a military background, has yet to announce his full ministerial team to help him run one of Africa's most troubled and important countries.
EPA What's under Yar'Adua's hat?
The process is tortuously slow because the beleaguered Mr Yar'Adua is under pressure to serve the interests both of Nigeria's powerful political factions and of the allies of Olusegun Obasanjo, his predecessor and mentor, who is still pulling strings as the ruling party's chairman.
Choosing a government is even harder. Mr Yar'Adua lacks legitimacy in the eyes of many Nigerians because the elections in April were so patently rigged. He must pick good people to regain some legitimacy, but lacks a strong enough political network of his own to resist the pressure to pay off some of his more venal backers. Hence the prevarication and delay.
Mr Obasanjo has already compromised Mr Yar'Adua by foisting on his successor two of his well-known sycophants as Senate president and speaker of the House and, with days to go before stepping down, by naming as the army's new chief of staff a general considered divisive in military circles. Nor has Mr Yar'Adua helped himself by appointing a police chief with a poor reputation who previously headed the police contracts division.
The infighting over top jobs is taking its toll. The new president, who has a kidney ailment, has shown how fed up he has become with the demands being made on him by publicly asking political delegations to stop making congratulatory visits until a “more auspicious” time.
Since then, he has tried to bring opposition members into a national unity government, but this has divided the opposition parties and made some of their factions still more determined to challenge his election victory in court. Earlier this month the new president listed 35 people for ministries but would not say which ones they would get, forcing the Senate to screen the nominees without knowing their responsibilities.
While the horse-trading goes on, the servant leader cannot get to grips with Nigeria's most urgent problems. The Delta region's lawlessness is worsening. This month armed gangs stooped lower than ever by kidnapping toddlers for ransom, including a three-year-old Briton and the son of a prominent chief. Elsewhere a crime wave is spreading; armed robberies are getting more numerous, especially in Lagos, Nigeria's huge commercial capital.
Joseph Makoju, who advises the president on electricity, says he has already lowered the figure Mr Yar'Adua set for boosting power generation by the end of this year from 10,000MW to 8,000MW. That may drop again if the president fails to find a good minister for power soon.
Hurry up before things get worse
The delay in forming a government may also start to threaten Nigeria's macroeconomic stability. The state governors, many of whom also lack legitimacy following the election, want the central government to dish out oil-windfall savings. But without tough new legislation, the windfalls, worth more than $10 billion, may be used as political slush funds. Nonetheless, the government is advertising its success in charging three former state governors with embezzlement and money-laundering: a sign, perhaps, that Mr Yar'Adua is getting tough on corruption.
Yet many other former governors close to the former president seem to have got away with looting their state coffers for the past eight years. With their own protégés now in power in many places, it is hard to imagine Mr Yar'Adua taking them on, particularly since he has ruled out pushing for an amendment that could have stripped them of their constitutional impunity.
IRIN (UN). 25 July, 2007. Price controls devastating rural economy: Monitors are forcing farmers to sell meat products at low prices. Harare
Price controls are having a ruinous effect on Zimbabwe's rural economy, according to small-scale farmers and civil society. Since government launched "Operation Reduce Prices", compelling businesses to slash prices by fifty percent in a bid combat the rampant inflation of over 4,000 percent - and imprisoning businesspeople who did not comply - basic commodities have been fast disappearing from shop shelves and wholesale suppliers. The Cold Storage Commission (CSC), the almost dormant parastatal wholesale beef supplier and meat processing company, is being resuscitated and given the sole mandate to slaughter cattle and distribute meat directly to butchers. When the price control operation commenced, abattoirs argued that it would be unprofitable to sell meat at the government's new prices.
Price-control monitors are forcing farmers to sell meat products to the CSC at low prices; in a similar scenario, maize farmers are being forced to sell their harvests to the Grain Marketing Board (GMB) at well below prevailing market prices. A kilogram of beef is now supposed to sell at Z$87,000 (US$0.58 at the parallel market rate of US$1 to Z$140,000), a sharp decrease from the Z$500,000 (US$3.57) retail price before President Robert Mugabe's government announced the price controls. Before the new prices were announced, cattle sold for about Z$40 million (US$285) per head, but are now selling for Z$8 million (US$57). Since the Zanu PF government launched its fast-track land-reform programme in 2000, resulting in the compulsory acquisition of more than 4,000 white-owned commercial farms for redistribution to landless blacks, diseases and culling have drastically reduced the national herd from around 1.4 million head of cattle to about 250,000 at present.
In 2001 the European Union (EU) cancelled its 9,100 metric tonne (mt) beef quota, worth an annual US$38 million, or about four percent of foreign currency earnings, because of Zimbabwe's failure to control livestock diseases: for the past seven years the recurrence of foot-and-mouth disease has become an almost annual event. Cattle are valued as a symbol of wealth in rural communities, and are also used as draught power for tilling the land to grow crops. Samuel Shereni, a small-scale farmer in the Beatrice area of Mashonaland East Province, about 70km southwest of Harare, the capital, said he had lost more than Z$159 million (US$1,140) after having to sell cattle to the CSC instead of putting them on auction. "I was taking five cattle to an auction when a group of people, comprising police officers, some youths and men from the ministry of industry, stopped my truck and told me that I could only sell to a government abattoir, since private auctions had been outlawed," Shereni told IRIN.
"When they said that, I thought they were just joking, but when they took down my name and vehicle registration number, and told me to sell the cattle at Z$8 million (US$57) within four days, I could tell they meant business. I made a loss of Z$32 million (US$228) on each animal," he said. Shereni, who rears cattle and grows maize on a farm inherited from his father ten years ago, had intended to use the profit to buy dipping chemicals for his other livestock. "Rearing cattle is an expensive business, considering that stock-feed is scarce and I have to buy it from a person who imports it, using foreign currency obtained on the black market. Besides, it beats me why someone can just tell me how and when to sell my products," said Shereni, who is struggling to recover from the drought that slashed his crop yields last year. His fear is that with meat becoming increasingly scarce in butcheries, the price-monitoring team will compel him to sell his cattle to the CSC, "but that would certainly mean throwing me out of business".
In nearby Mhondoro, in Mashonaland West Province, Mairosi Madenga, 57, is in a quandary as to what he would do if he were ordered to sell his cattle. The cattle actually belong to his son, who is teaching in Namibia, and any sale would require his consent. The communal dip-tank supervisor maintains records of the number of cattle each villager owns. He recently called a meeting, at which he told the gathering that government officials had ordered him perform an audit of the herd in the village. "He [dip-tank supervisor] told us that government officials would be visiting the villages to buy cattle, and he hinted that those that owned more than seven animals would be forced to sell the excess," Madenga told IRIN. He felt that Zanu PF, which came to power in 1980 after the country gained independence from Britain, was using the price-control policy as an electioneering strategy ahead of parliamentary and presidential elections, scheduled for next year.
Villagers were being herded to evening meetings, where they were told that "we should vote for Zanu PF because it has shown that it cares for the people by reducing prices", Madenga claimed, but he and others had yet to benefit from the price-control blitz, because they had no money to buy the commodities, even at the reduced prices. "In any case, since the price teams started their operation, it is those in urban areas who have benefited from whatever could be found in rural shops because they are in the habit of following the monitoring officials and buying commodities in bulk," he commented. Pedzisai Ruhanya, of the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition, a grouping of civil society organisations, told IRIN that "the operation [Reduce Prices] itself was ill-advised - considering the ramifications it has had on commerce and industry - but that the government is failing to give a semblance of sanity calls for wholesome condemnation."
The country is in the throes of a hyperinflation environment, with unemployment levels of above 80 percent and constant shortages of power, fuel and other basic commodities. Shops in urban as well as rural areas have been left virtually empty by the operation, and most businesses have been adversely affected. In one village shop belonging to a local businessman, who preferred to remain anonymous, only packets of salt, bags of tea, sweets and cigarettes were left. "Ruling party youths and three policemen visited me and ordered me to sell to them, but said they would pay me later. They said without that [paying later] they would make sure that I never operated again, and I complied out of fear," he said. "What pained me even more was that the youths, who said they were part of the price-monitoring team, went and sold those commodities at even higher prices to those who were willing to buy, mostly local teachers, and I am yet to receive my money from them," the shop owner told IRIN. A number of government officials, among them police officers and an employee of the information ministry, have been arrested for abusing their powers during the nationwide operation. IRIN was unable to reach a government spokesperson for comment.
Other Environment News
The Economist. 19th July, 2007. Zimbabwe: Getting horny. Harare
Discouraging a trade that is still rife
ALTHOUGH an extension of the worldwide ban on ivory exports to discourage the illegal killing of African elephants was recently greeted with much fanfare, the rhinoceroses of southern and eastern Africa are still paying with their lives for their horns, which remain prized by the Chinese for their medicinal and aphrodisiac qualities, and by Yemenis for making dagger handles.
According to TRAFFIC, a group that monitors the wildlife trade, the illegal business is on the rise. Last month the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, better known as CITES, called for stronger co-operation along smuggling routes and a more secure management of legal horn stocks. Zimbabwe, which has a lot of poaching, has embarked on a more radical route: it says it will start dehorning its rhinos.
Only five species of rhino survive, in Africa and Asia. They were slaughtered on a large scale, mainly by white hunters, in the 19th and 20th centuries. By the 1960s fewer than 70,000 black rhinos were left in Africa, and over the next two decades poachers wiped out 96% of them. But since 1995, thanks to vigorous conservation efforts, the number of black rhinos has gone up again, to around 3,700. The number of white rhinos has nearly doubled over the same period, to over 14,500.
Yet poaching and illegal trading are rife in Zimbabwe and Congo. According to TRAFFIC, poachers have killed 60% of Congo's rhinos in the past three years. In Zimbabwe, poachers have been responsible for most rhino deaths in the same period. Nearly all the private ranches in Zimbabwe that harboured rhinos and deterred poachers have been confiscated. Both countries, with weak and corrupt governments, have a poor record in recovering horns destined for the illegal trade: Congo's government recovered 13% of them and Zimbabwe only 8%, compared with more than 40% across Africa. Dehorning should, in theory, help protect rhinos for a few years—until the horns grow back.
IPS: ENVIRONMENT-NIGERIA. 23 July, 2007. Rich in Oil, Dependent on Firewood. Toye Olori, Lagos
It is a paradox of note: the fact that while Nigerians live in the world's sixth-largest oil producer, most of them still rely on wood for their fuel. Of the country's population of over 140 million, about 70 percent live in rural areas and are directly or indirectly dependent on forest resources -- especially wood -- to meet their domestic energy needs, says Musa Amiebinomo of the national Department of Forestry. This is leading to destruction of forest cover, a situation aggravated by illegal commercial logging. Figures from the 2005 ' State of the World's Forests' report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) indicate that between 1990 and 2005, Nigeria lost 35.7 percent of its forest cover.
Boniface Egboka, an environmentalist and dean of the School of Postgraduate Studies at Anambra State University in south-eastern Nigeria, blames the continued use of firewood on corruption. "Nigeria is still dependent of firewood when we have abundant oil and gas because our so-called leaders are fraudulent and corrupt. They care less about the welfare of the citizens and so they allow the forests to be mowed down," he told IPS. "We have no reason to be using firewood. We have the financial and human resources to pipe gas into homes for domestic use… We are deforesting the whole of the north through harvesting of wood for fire, and now we are shifting the savannah southwards into the rain forest through logging."
Nigeria's first forestry act was passed by the British colonial authorities in 1937. It established a forest reserve system under which certain areas could be exploited for timber by firms and individuals granted licenses to do so. Replanting was expected to prevent these areas from becoming depleted. The 1988 National Agricultural Policy further sought to ensure sustainable use of forests, and to expand wooded land to 20 percent of the country's territory. According to the FAO report, 12.2 percent of Nigeria's land is currently forested. While there is currently no law against the felling of trees for firewood except in protected areas, chopping of oil palms and of mango, cashew, cocoa and cola-nut trees is controlled through by-laws because of the economic value of such trees.
But, legislation alone has proved unable to protect Nigeria's forests. "There are forests called priority areas or nature conservation areas, which means logging is not permitted at all. But…even where you have these laws, people do not obey them -- and nothing happens to illegal loggers," said Peter Nwilo, co-ordinator of the Regional Centre for Environmental Information Management System at the University of Lagos. Even loggers who obtain felling licenses are known to act illegally, harvesting trees of all sizes, including those considered too young to be chopped down. However, certain officials in the state forestry departments, where permission to log is usually obtained, continue to renew the yearly licenses of these loggers, allegedly as a result of bribes from logging firms.
Notes Philip Asiodu, president of the Nigeria Conservation Foundation, a non-governmental organisation based in the financial hub of Lagos: ''It is not the lack of good laws or policies and programmes (that is at issue), but simply the lack of will and discipline to observe and implement them by a compromised, corrupt bureaucracy." Illegal loggers mostly ship timber abroad, particularly to Asia. Some of the logs are also sold to local lumber mills, which produce planks for sale to Nigerian furniture companies, and builders. The depletion of forest cover has been especially severe in central and northern Nigeria, opening the door to soil erosion and desertification. It is widely reported that 350,000 hectares of land in the country are lost to desertification annually.
So, where does the solution to all these problems lie? A government blueprint for developing Nigeria in the period until 2010 -- 'Vision 2010' -- has suggested measures that include a ban on the export of logs, incentives for private investment in forests, greater community participation in forest management -- and the encouragement of reforestation with species yielding fruit, gum, and other crops that are of economic value to communities. 'Vision 2010' also calls for the development and promotion of other energy sources, such as solar and wind power, and the use of gas and coal, as alternatives to wood.
In 1999 authorities initiated plans to pipe Nigeria's abundant natural gas for commercial and domestic use. But to date, only a few industrial areas in Lagos have benefited from this project. ''We are presently trying to link industrial estates with gas…Domestic users will come on stream much later because we need to plan the network. Most residential areas in Lagos are not well planned, and this will make the piping of gas into residential houses for domestic use a bit difficult. But it will be done eventually,'' says an official from Gaslink, a subsidiary of the OANDO petroleum company, which is carrying out the gas piping project in Lagos.
This means that people who want to use gas in their homes are still obliged to buy cylinders at about 21 dollars each to use on portable gas stoves that sell for between 80 and about 165 dollars -- prices beyond the reach of many. "I cannot remember when last I used my gas stove. I still have the two gas cylinders in my store, hoping for a day when gas will be cheaper," Caroline Akande, a school teacher in Iwaya, a suburb of Lagos, told IPS. "Presently I use a kerosene stove, and an electric stove whenever there is electricity."
According to the 2006 Human Development Report, produced by the United Nations Development Programme, 70.8 percent of Nigerians live on less than a dollar a day -- and 92.4 percent on less than two dollars per day. In the absence of effective measures to safeguard Nigeria's forestry resources, an increasing number of areas are likely to go the way of Ogori village, in central Kogi state.
"When we were growing up in the sixties, we used to go into the dense forests that surrounded our village to collect snails or set traps for rodents and other animals," John Atere, another teacher, told IPS. "But today the forests are no longer there, and snails and wild animals have disappeared."
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | |
| Enock Chinyenze Regional Coordinator for Africa Television Trust for the Environment (TVE) United Nations Environment Programme Division of Communications and Public Information P. O. Box 30552 Nairobi, Kenya Phone: +254 20 762 1551 Mobile: + 254 723 562900 Fax: + 254 20 762 3927 www.tve.org www.unep.org | |
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | |
