More than 1,500 people took part in a march of Durban streets on 5 December to voice their concerns about climate change and agro-ecology. Banners and posters in hand conveyed messages like 'We are for cooling down the earth' as people from countries as far as Mali, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Germany, Brazil and The Philippines took part. The event was also to bring awareness to the food sovereignty campaign, which promotes principals such as equal participation, fights against greedy farm or agriculture owners, and a fair rewarding system for farm workers.

A hundred and sixty-three civil society organisations from 39 countries have released [PDF] ‘exposing an attempt led by the US, the UK and Japan to turn the Green Climate Fund into a “Greedy Corporate Fund” at UN climate talks in South Africa.’

'South African Bishop Geoff Davies has called on governments to end the era of "global apartheid" which is dictating the UN climate change negotiations in Durban, South Africa,' reports Oliver Meth.

The UN’s Clean Development Mechanism is ‘neither reducing emissions nor securing its promised sustainable development,’ write Patrick Bond and Michael Dorsey. COP17 must rethink how to compensate the victims of climate change.

The opening statements in the Durban climate talks sounded more like conclusions, writes Nnimmo Bassey on the New Internationalist blog. Negotiators will be grappling with two key issues - the first is whether to have a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol or whether to bury it and raise a Durban Mandate in its place. 'A whole lot of the foot dragging here is about money. Avoiding responsibility means holding tight to one’s money bag. And the rich countries, reeling from the financial crisis, do not want to take any step in the direction of doing the right thing.'

The blog has a photo gallery of the Global Day of Action Against UN Conference of Polluters (COP) in Durban, while the Durban Climate Justice blog has a

'We demand that climate change solutions put indigenous knowledge systems at the centre of policies to promote biodiversity, rehabilitate our ecosystems and rebuild the livlihoods destroyed by colonialism, apartheid and economic imperialism. Rural women are the holders of indigenous knowledge - our marginalisation from economic production, scientific knowledge generation and social systems has resulted in the steady loss of such knowledge to Africa, thereby making us more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.'

Evaluation of the health impacts of climate mitigation strategies is critical to informed decisions that will attain the greatest combined gain for health, well-being and sustainable development.
This report from the World Health Organisation considers the scientific evidence regarding possible health gains and, where relevant, health risks of climate change mitigation measures in the residential housing sector. The report is one in a Health in the Green Economy series led by WHO’s Department of Public Health and Environment. Other reports in the series focus on transport, household energy in developing countries, agriculture and health care facilities.

Brandishing a plea for developed countries to make good their promises to reduce carbon emissions, 300 farmers, youths and activists took the scenic route to the COP17 conference in Durban, travelling more than 7,000km from Burundi in 17 days, through 10 eastern and southern African countries, aboard a convoy of buses draped in various national flags. The aim of the Trans-African Caravan of Hope, organized by the Pan African Climate Change Justice Alliance, was to gather information about and raise awareness of the impact of climate change on those least responsible for causing it.

ANC supporters dressed in the COP17 volunteers' tracksuits tossed stones and water bottles at members of civil society organisations that were marching in protest against climate change, the corporate-funded lack of progress at COP17 and other green issues in Durban on Saturday. At around 11am, as the protesters were still congregating at Botha's Park near Warwick Triangle in Durban, a phalanx of volunteers joined the march, in 'support of COP17' and 'in defence of President Zuma', according to some of the 200 or so volunteers who spoke to the Mail & Guardian.

Protesting outside the Durban climate talks, members of the Southern African Rural Women’s Assembly are expressing their frustration with international inaction on climate: 'We’ve come to join other rural women farmers from the southern African region,' said Thandiure Chidararume, a member of ActionAid, an international organisation that helped bring together this meeting of the Southern African Rural Women’s Assembly. The assembly unites women’s farming and agricultural unions and movements from around the world. The protesters, who also have the support of women’s movements in Latin America, do not believe that government negotiators represent their interests.

The Global Water Partnership together with IHP-HELP Centre for Water Law, Policy and Science, under the auspices of UNESCO, at the University of Dundee, is looking to build on their successful 2011 International Water Law Programme (www.dundee.ac.uk/water/workshop), and offer scholarships for 30 participants to undertake a module in International Water Law, in Dundee 11-29 June 2012. Scholarship recipients are responsible for all travel (to/from Dundee) and subsistence (food/accommodation) costs. GWP is aiming at providing funding for travel and subsistence for a limited number of successful Scholarship applicants. Even though final funding is pending, GWP and the University of Dundee now invite applications from suitable candidates. Applications will be accepted from 24 November 2011 to 3 February 2012. Successful candidates will be notified at the beginning of March 2012 to allow as much time as possible to obtain visas, additional funding, etc.

This critical review of carbon trading in Africa includes analyses of the context and trends in the carbon market in Africa; offset projects in Uganda, Ethiopia and South Africa; and carbon finance and regulation. It shows how carbon trading provides new and different ways of profiting at the expense of a deteriorating climate.

As thousands assemble in Durban for this year’s climate talks, the countries of the global South hope for some listening as well as all the talking, says international climate campaigner, Nnimmo Bassey. Bassey’s new book ‘To Cook a Continent: Destructive Extraction and the Climate Crisis in Africa’ shows that the climate crisis confronting the world is mainly rooted in the wealthy economies’ exploitation and abuse of fossil fuels. Unless the connection is made between resource extraction, profiteering and climate change, the talks can not resolve the crises we all face.

The climate conference in Durban has led some observers to conclude that developed countries are engaged in a form of apartheid against the rest of the world. But Nnimmo Bassey hopes negotiators will heed the voices of the people.

Civil society in Mozambique has been actively engaging among themselves, with the state, and with investors to improve large scale land transfer governance. The initiatives underway range from: a land forum that brings together the various stakeholders to discuss land governance issues; community land delimitation initiatives by the Rural Mutual Support Organisation (ORAM); more extreme actions where communities have uprooted investors’ eucalyptus plantations and successfully renegotiated the return of their subsistence production land from an investor.

Nnimmo Bassey's new book 'To Cook a Continent: Destructive Extraction and the Climate Crisis in Africa’, published by Pambazuka Press, shows that exploiting Africa’s resources has delivered huge profits to the North and huge damage to Africa. Overcoming the environment and climate change crises means also addressing corporate profiteering and resource extraction.

Dirty Energy Week has come to an end, but the ‘unity started’ by the event ‘has a great potential to grow and be at the forefront of moving beyond fossil fuels”, says the South African campaign organiser, groundWork.

Fred Magdoff is professor emeritus of plant and soil science at the University of Vermont and adjunct professor of crop and soil science at Cornell University. As climate crisis threatens millions of people around the world, the latest round of climate talks, COP 17, began in Durban on 28 November. Farooque Chowdhury interviewed Fred Magdoff for about what strategies and tactics people can employ to tackle climate crisis at COP 17 and beyond.

The Sudanese Ministry of Petroleum has suspended the exportation of the South Sudanese oil through north Sudan till an agreement is reached between the two governments on transit fees, the acting Petroleum Minister in Sudan, Ali Ahmed Osman, has said.