Although the earth is awash with water, the world is facing a global water crisis. Global freshwater supplies are dwindling fast. Climate change, rapid urbanisation, environmental degradation, the growth of industries that either pollute water sources or consume vast water volumes like agro-business and hydro generation of power, climate change and our very modern lifestyle are contributing to an increase in demand that outstrips supply. For instance, 'Lake Chad has shrunk to 20% of its size in 1962', and 'one flush of a toilet takes as much water as a person in 30 of the world’s poorest countries'. It is expected that inter-state violent conflict in future will be waged to secure water supplies.

The environmental degradation that is characteristic of many urban areas necessitates water supply networks, and anything in short supply, and therefore high demand, is fodder for profit maximisation. Thus enters water privatisation and its attendant failures.

World Water Crisis: A Challenge to Social Justice brings together articles by various authors from different fields and backgrounds, offering wide perspective on the world water crisis. Including economic, sociological and theological reflections on water, the articles also propose solution to the supply and management of water in ways that address the crisis sustainably.

Poor planning, maintenance and technical support are amongst the factors threatening to undermine an ambitious effort to electrify Senegal’s remote Sine Saloum Delta using solar energy. Another major problem is people’s lack of willingness or ability to pay the fees for the photovoltaic systems.

As seasonal rains start to fall across the Sahel, climatologists warn that the region is entering a cycle of unpredictable heavy rains that could destroy crops and leave thousands of people homeless. “It’s raining more now in the Sahel than it was in the 30 years before,” said Sylwia Trzaska, a climatologist at Colombia University’s International Research Institute for Climate and Society in New York.

While one US company this week announced a new oil discovery offshore Equatorial Guinea this week, other oil companies announced an internal dispute that will delay the exploitation of at least two offshore wells. With last year's new Equatoguinean Hydrocarbons Law, the "crazy years" of sky-high revenues have come to an end.

One solution to South Africa's land-reform problem is to make available some of the "huge tracts" of state-owned land around the country, says Democratic Alliance (DA) leader Helen Zille. "This land is currently unproductive, under-utilised and under-resourced," she said in her weekly newsletter, published on the DA's SA Today website on Friday.

Sylvestre Munyalibanje has been accustomed to farming in the Rwandan district of Rutsiro, on the shores of Lake Kivu. But now, he's facing the end of an era. The 40-year-old father of six has had almost all his land expropriated as part of a government initiative to clear the surrounds of the lake to protect it from pollution. In all, 364 families comprising some 1,800 people who had previously been living or farming on the banks of Kivu left the area earlier this month.

Faith- and community-based organisations say they are disappointed with the lack of progress in land reform as mapped out at the government’s National Land Summit two years ago and have urged the government to halt the evictions of people living on farms.

In Mozambique, land policies are now put higher up on the agenda as provincial authorities in Maputo have started implementing national land tenure legislation. Maputo authorities have now followed up on a longstanding threat to cancel the land tenure rights of investors who fail to use the land allocated to them.

The Institute for European Environmental Policy (IEEP) is looking for a an experienced researcher to join our five person Agriculture and Rural Development policy team, managing and contributing to a variety of projects and advisory work in this field. Currently the team is working on the issues surrounding the transition to a more sustainable agricultural policy model running up to the expected reform of the CAP before 2013. Deadline for applications is July 6, 2007.

Through personal stories, songs and their memories, these Ethiopian narrators talk about the sharp contrast between the past and present. Their key concerns are conflict, deforestation, the decline of pastoralism, and the impact of agriculture.

These Panos testimonies from Sudan leave you in no doubt of the devastation brought by desertification. The loss of their animals and dramatic decline in crops has left whole villages dependant on migrant labour.

Kenya is set to receive oil from Libya at preferential rates according to a bilateral agreement signed earlier this month between the leaders of the two countries. Insiders in the oil industry say this makes it likely that Kenya will award the contract for the establishment of a petroleum facility of 45 million US dollars and a truck and rail loading project worth 22 million US dollars to a Libyan-connected investor.

In the southern Togolese village of Yoto Kopé, Akoua Amouzouvi and several other women emerge from the bush with bowls of charcoal balanced on their heads -- hands and faces smeared with black dust. They have been burning trees to make charcoal for sale. "It's our daily activity," says Amouzouvi.

Four people were killed and at least 10 wounded when police dispersed residents in north Sudan protesting a dam project which they say will destroy their community, local press reported on Thursday.

‘‘Today we are here to say never again shall our people lose their land rights because they are black,'' said Lulama Xingwana, South Africa's minister of agriculture and land affairs. She was speaking at the handover of a section of land in the Hluhluwe-Imfolozi National Park about one hour's drive from the mining and industrial town of Richards Bay. Richards Bay is about eight hours by car from South Africa's commercial hub of Johannesburg.

A section of the world heritage site the Greater St Lucia Wetland Park, Africa's largest estuary, has been returned to its rightful owners, who have in turn undertaken to manage the land in accordance with the country's environmental laws. The park, situated in South Africa's KwaZulu-Natal province adjacent to the Indian Ocean, was proclaimed in 1999 as a world heritage site by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).

Kenya and Uganda have banned the use of thin plastic bags in an effort to curb environmental damage. Ugandan Finance Minister Ezra Suruma banned the importation and use of the thinnest bags and imposed a 120% tax on thicker ones in his new budget. The Kenyan finance minister imposed similar restrictions in his budget, following Rwanda and Tanzania.

If the "human cost" of climate change is calculated, countries will be forced to sit up and take notice, according to a former senior United Nations official. "Most people are unable to relate to the projections of increase in temperature or the impact of climate change on the economy, but if the climate change forecasts are linked to possible deaths, then countries will be forced to contemplate prevention plans," said Yvette Stevens, the former UN Assistant Emergency Relief Coordinator.

Firewood has become Zimbabwe's hottest seller, with demand shooting up since the introduction two weeks ago of widespread and prolonged power outages to give the irrigation of winter wheat fields a priority allocation of dwindling energy supplies.

The residents of Umkhanyakude, a poor rural district in northeastern South Africa, say they have been producing less food over the past few decades because the rains have become more erratic. Unable to grow enough food, many have been forced to seek work away from home for long periods of time. HIV then rose, said development agency Oxfam Australia, which has been working with the community since 2005, and has tried to help the people of Umkhanyakude understand the link between their altered lifestyle and climate change.