The Civil Society Committee for COP17 (C17) is calling on the global community to unite against climate change by participating in this year’s Global Day of Climate Action (GDA). The GDA is a traditional and important event during the United Nations climate change negotiations and takes place at the Conference of the Parties (COP) each year. The primary action – a mass march of international and national community, labour, women, youth, academic, religious and environmental organisations and activists – demonstrates civil society’s common determination to tackle climate change.

Governments of the world's richest countries have given up on forging a new treaty on climate change to take effect this decade, with potentially disastrous consequences for the environment through global warming, reports this article on Most of the world's leading economies now privately admit that no new global climate agreement will be reached before 2016 at the earliest, and that even if it were negotiated by then, they would stipulate it could not come into force until 2020.

President Eduardo dos Santos said Angola was prepared to invest its burgeoning petrodollars in Portugal, which has been ordered to privatise struggling state-owned firms under a €80bn (£70bn) International Monetary Fund bailout. Visiting Portuguese prime minister, Pedro Passos Coelho, said the country was looking to privatise [state utility company] Energias de Portugal and [national grid] REN. Other state-owned entities up for grabs include the national airline Tap and the Banco Português de Negócios. Banco BIC of Angola is set to buy the distressed bank for €40m – less than a fifth of its original market value. Isabel dos Santos, daughter of the long-serving president, is a part owner of BIC. Some Angolans have criticised the growing financial ties between Lisbon and Luanda, amid worries of capital flight and Angola's own yawning poverty gap. In 2008, two-thirds of Angolans lived on less than €1 a day, while only 25 per cent of children are enrolled in primary school.

More than 250 participants, mainly representatives of farmers’ organisations, from 30 different countries, gathered in Nyéléni Village, a centre for agro-ecology training built in a rural area near Sélingué, in Mali, to participate in the first International farmers’ conference to stop land grabbing. The Nyéléni village is a symbolic place, where the first international conference on Food Sovereignty was held in 2007. For three days, from 17 - 20 November, participants exchanged their experiences and created alliances to stop the global land grab.

A group of African farmers, pastoralists and campaigners just left on a road trip to South Africa for the 17th Conference of Parties discussions in Durban. Organised by the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance, this group will pass through 10 African countries creating awareness on climate change. This will culminate in a petition being presented to President Jacob Zuma expressing Africa’s concerns about climate change. Kenya’s position in the talks is not clearly defined. In fact, Kenya is not known to have a position of its own as far as climate change discussions go.

This week's French edition is a translation of the special issue on COP17, .

The 'real solutions to the climate crisis are also our best hope of building a much more enlightened economic system – one that closes deep inequalities, strengthens and transforms the public sphere, generates plentiful, dignified work and radically reins in corporate power,' writes Naomi Klein.

Guinea-Bissau conservationist Ms Augusta Henriques has won a Ramsar Wetland Conservation Award for Management, for her central role in the foundation of NGO Tiniguena (‘This land is ours’) and her long-term leadership and work with communities towards the creation of a Community Marine Protected Area at Urok Islands – the first marine protected area recognised by the Government of Guinea-Bissau.

Onyango Oloo reports that, when the Trans-African Caravan of Hope reached Nairobi, there was song and dance, poetry and speeches on the theme of climate change and the need for African governments and the people to take appropriate action.

Damietta locals have vowed to continue their sit-in against MOPCO petrochemicals company despite a decree by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) to shut down the plant. One protester was killed in a military crackdown on the sit-in, according to eyewitnesses. Protesters are demanding that governorate officials finally heed their calls to shut down the factory, which they say is 'deadly and hazardous' to residents, marine life, as well as agricultural.

This durbanclimatejustice.wordpress.com website is designed to provide logistical support for climate justice activists attending the COP17. With information on events, venues, actions, and essential activist advice on a cheap curry and decent beer after a long days changing the world.

Climate change is likely to lead to increased average rainfall in the world's major river basins but weather patterns will be fickle and the timing of wet seasons may change, threatening farming and foodstocks, experts say. Furthermore, some river systems in Africa - southern Africa's Limpopo, north Africa's Nile and West Africa's Volta - are set to receive less rain than they do at the moment, hitting food production and fuelling international tensions.

Tanzania's 1999 land reform has decentralised land administration to the rural local village governments, but implementation so far has been slow and uneven. The local authorities rarely get the support they need to make it work. As a consequence, the benefits promised by the reform - economic growth and improved tenure security - do not happen. There has already been an abundance of donor driven projects to implement the reform, but they have been short-sighted and have tended to forget the local authorities that carry out the actual implementation. Much could be achieved if higher level authorities and NGOs systematically strengthened the village authorities and enabled them to deliver their services.

With reference to the fuel subsidy debate in Nigeria, where government plans to scrap fuel subsidies, resulting in a substantial increase in the price of fuel, Nnimmo Bassey argues in The Guardian of Nigeria that the real debate should be on the true cost of crude oil. 'And this is not just about how much is currently spent in refining a litre of petrol in a Nigerian refinery or whether we can justify any plan to raise the pump price of a litre of petrol to N144 or more. The true cost of oil must include the environmental costs that have been externalised and dumped on the poor communities of the Niger Delta.'

The controversy over Marange diamond fields in Zimbabwe has received much global attention. This new report by Sokwanele brings together a wide-ranging overview of events, meetings, human rights abuses and environmental degradation rampant in the mineral-rich area.

Congo's President Denis Sassou Nguesso has launched the national afforestation and reforestation programme (PRONAR) that will cover one million hectares over 10 years. President Nguesso launched the programme on Sunday in Yie, some 60km north of Brazzaville, the nation's capital.
The programme, to be financed by the government and the private sector, aims at reducing human pressure exerted on natural forests by reducing deforestation and soil degradation.

Writing about the decision by US President Barack Obama to send 100 troops to Uganda in order to combat the Lord's Resistance Army, Steve Horn, a researcher and writer for DeSmogBlog, concludes: 'Do not be surprised if, months from now, ExxonMobil or another US oil industry superpower walks away with drilling rights in the Lake Albert region and CNOOC, the current main possessor of Uganda's Lake Albert oil resources, is sent packing.' These are not only likely scenarios, but probable ones, he states. 'Joseph Kony and his LRA allies might be taken down, but the people of Uganda, on the whole, will not benefit...'

'People feel this is like the return of colonialism,' says Athumani Mkambala, chairman of Mhaga village in rural Tanzania. 'Colonialism in the form of investment.' A quarter of the village's land in Kisarawe district was acquired by a British biofuels company in 2008, with the promise of financial compensation, 700 jobs, water wells, improved schools, health clinics and roads. But the company has gone bust, leaving villagers not just jobless but landless as well. The same story is playing out across Africa, as foreign investors buy up land but leave some of the poorest people on Earth worse off when their plans fail.

Deeply concerned by the threats posed by climate change and continued government inaction in the face of these threats, civil society representatives from across Africa have issued a statement calling on leaders and people all over the world to ensure outcomes from the Durban climate change conference that help ‘to keep Africans and all peoples safe’ from ‘the growing threat’ the climate crisis poses.

Chinese-run copper mining companies in Zambia routinely flout labour laws and regulations designed to protect workers’ safety and the right to organise, Human Rights Watch says in a new report. The 122-page report, '"You’ll Be Fired If You Refuse"': Labor Abuses in Zambia’s Chinese State-owned Copper Mines,' details the persistent abuses in Chinese-run mines, including poor health and safety conditions, regular 12-hour and even 18-hour shifts involving arduous labour, and anti-union activities, all in violation of Zambia’s national laws or international labour standards.