The next major global climate change negotiations will take place in Durban, South Africa between November and December 2011, but the politics that sidelines developing regions of the world from shaping final agreements remains unchanged, writes Hewa Nzuri.

As the world heads for the next climate change meeting, the politics around climate change negotiations is getting more complex and murky as rich countries dig in their heels to preserve their economic competitiveness, writes Lim Li Lin.

The first international farmers’ conference, whose objective is to strengthen the fight against land grabs in Africa and other parts of the world, will be held in Sélingué from 17 to 19 November 2011, and will bring together almost 200 farmers affected by land grabs as well as numerous other participants, including researchers, political figures, and NGOs resisting the unprecedented land-grab offensive by large businesses and hedge funds, among others, that compromises the ability of people to feed themselves.

The occupy movement is spreading, and in more ways than one, says this article from which notes that environmentalists and climate campaigners have linked up with Occupy Wall Street protests in New York. 'The coming together of the two movements is a good sign because there is no way out of our ecological crises as long as the world’s richest 1 per cent keep control over the economy and our political systems.'

The tiny mountain kingdom of Lesotho is to harness the power of wind and water in a $15-billion green energy project, the biggest of its kind in Africa. The Lesotho highlands power project (LHPP) will generate 6,000 megawatts (MW) of wind power and 4,000MW of hydropower, equivalent to about 5 per cent of South Africa's electricity needs.

Preparations for the Rio+20 meeting that could decide whether humans survive or not are hotting up. 1 November 2011 is the deadline for official contributions to its Zero Draft document but over the next seven months decision-makers and campaigners will need all the facts they can lay their hands on. 'Earth Grab - Geopiracy, the New Biomassters and Capturing Climate Genes' - essential, cutting-edge climate science in everyday language - is published this week (27 October 2011). The authors reveal information that the large corporations who profit from climate change do not want the public to know.

Indian, Chinese and US companies are among many inking land-investment deals in Africa, including Ethiopia, Tanzania, South Sudan, Mali, and Mozambique. According to a study by the US- based Oakland Institute, foreign investors bought or leased a land area in sub-Saharan Africa about the size of France in 2009 alone. On this episode of Al Jazeera's The Stream, a discussion takes place between
Indian author and media commentator Anand Giridharadas, the Oakland Institute’s Executive Director, Anuradha Mittal and Christine L. Adamow, Managing Director of Africa BioFuel, a US company invested in farmland in Kenya and Tanzania.

‘Where men seeking to grab power once looked to acquire territories and slaves, now the entire globe and its productive capacity’ is up for grabs, writes Vandana Shiva, in the foreword to Pambazuka Press’ latest title, ‘

The briefing from the Arid Lands Information Network discusses how climate change is complicating the energy situation in many parts of Africa. For example, changing rainfall patterns have led to droughts, affecting hydropower generation in many countries. Countries need energy to increase economic production, which improves livelihood options for women and men. Energy is also needed to increase agricultural productivity, provide clean water and improve human health, and energy enables girls and boys to go to school.

A third of humanity, mostly in Africa and South Asia, face the biggest risks from climate change but rich nations in northern Europe will be least exposed, according to a new report. Bangladesh, India and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are among 30 countries with 'extreme' exposure to climate shift, according to a ranking of 193 nations by Maplecroft, a British firm specialising in risk analysis. Of 30 nations identified in the new report as at 'extreme' risk from climate change, two-thirds are in Africa and all are developing countries.

In this brief, researcher William Odendaal of the Land, Environment and Development Project at the Namibian Legal Assistance Centre, examines some emerging trends and dynamics in changing power relations in rural Namibian communities due to emerging new elites and the threats to subsistence farmers’ access to communal land and natural resources. 'Land enclosures mean that powerful individuals have appropriated communal land for personal use at the expense of many communal farmers who do not have sufficient access to grazing land.'

Nigeria's drive to boost the quality and processing of cassava, launched two months ago as part of a larger plan to turn the country into a powerhouse for food production, now has a leading cassava scientist at its helm. But the approach to agriculture being adopted by Nigeria has been criticised by a board member of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) for failing to acknowledge the needs and capabilities of peasant farmers. John Pickett, an IITA board member and a researcher at the UK-based agricultural research centre Rothamsted Research, was concerned that industrialising Nigeria's agriculture could have 'disastrous' consequences for its farmers. 'By and large it is just about making money out of industrial agriculture. I am not in any way convinced that the green revolution has much to offer the large majority of farmers in Africa.'

This year, 44 journalists have already been murdered, says the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA), which launched a review of press freedom around the world during World Newspaper Week, held from 10 to 15 October in Vienna, Austria. During the events, which included its Congress and World Editors Forum, WAN-IFRA presented the Golden PEN of Freedom to Dawit Isaak, jailed in Eritrea since 2001. The Golden Pen of Press Freedom 2011 was accepted by Esayas Isaak on behalf of his brother, who has not been heard from since 2005. The Golden Pen of Press Freedom 2011 was accepted by Esayas Isaak on behalf of his brother.

The year 2010 endured 950 natural disasters, 90 per cent of which were weather-related and cost the global community well over 130 billion dollars. From wildfires in Brazil to record rainfall in the United States to the severe drought and famine in the Horn of Africa, it has become clear to many that quick and radical decisions need to be made about the world's future. One of the biggest advocates of this position has been the Washington-based World Resources Institute (WRI) which, in partnership with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Bank released a report recently calling on decision makers to enact quick and efficient resolutions to multiple and chronic environmental crises.

Iowa-based investor Bruce Rastetter and fellow investors in the industrial agricultural corporation AgriSol Energy have their sights on 800,000 acres (325,000 hectares) of land in Tanzania that is home to 162,000 people. The proposed site is inhabited by former refugees from neighboring Burundi. Most of the residents, several generations of families who have successfully re-established their lives by developing and farming the land over the last 40 years, will be displaced against their will. They will lose their livelihoods and their community. Once they are gone, Agrisol Energy will move in. Despite rising international criticism of the proposed plan to evict the residents in the proposed lease areas for foreign investors, the Tanzanian government plans to move forward with the project. We need your help today to make sure that won’t happen. Please send a message to Bruce Rastetter, other principal investors, and the Prime Minister of the United Republic of Tanzania, to urge them to drop this project.

After a three and a half year legal battle, Canadian publisher Les Éditions Écosociété has reached an out-of-court settlement with multinational mining company Barrick Gold. Écosociété has now ceased publication of the book ‘Noir Canada’, which analyses the controversial activities of Canadian companies in Africa, in order to end the $6m proceedings the corporation had launched against it.

The South African government will enact an emissions cap and new energy industry regulations in an effort to spur development of alternative, clean and renewable energy and mitigate climate change. The new regulations will penalize heavy polluters that don’t comply with greenhouse gas emission limits with fines.

Earlier this year, the Blue Planet Project launched Maude Barlow's report: ‘’. The Blue Planet Project is calling for domestic right to water plans that will form a local sixth chapter to Maude Barlow's five-chapter report.

'From Kyoto, Copenhagen, Cochabamba, Cancun and to Durban: will Africa be incinerated?' is a document issued as a tool for popular education and mobilisation. Of the four documents set out one has been in the centre stage of official negotiations since its origin at the Kyoto Conference of 1997.
At COP15 held in Copenhagen the so-called Copenhagen Accord was contrived by a handful of countries with the aim of truncating accountability in efforts to fight climate change and instead promoting an era of voluntary emissions reduction targets that is not based on science.

A on World Food Sovereignty Day