This report, from 2010 and published by the Interagency Working Group on Climate Change and Health, highlights 11 key categories of diseases and other health consequences that are occurring or will occur due to climate change. The report also examines a number of cross-cutting issues for research in this area, including susceptible, vulnerable, and displaced populations; public health and health care infrastructure; capacities and skills needed; and communication and education efforts.

Sudan has agreed to bring some former rebels into the its army and the south played down a northern threat to shut oil pipelines, as the country's halves scramble to prepare for the south's looming secession. South Sudan is due to become the world's newest independent state in less than two weeks, but the two parts of the country have yet to iron out tough issues, from the mutual border to how they will share oil revenue and divide $38 billion in debt.

For the past five years, water has been seeping out of the ground beneath parts of Nouakchott, undermining foundations and transforming some areas of the Mauritanian capital into uninhabitable marshes. Recent studies by the government suggest that nearly 80 per cent of the overall surface area of Nouakchott could be submerged in less than a decade - in 20 years at most. One scenario predicts the disappearance of the city by around 2050.

In this Policy Brief PLAAS Senior Researcher Ruth Hall argues that Africa, a continent plagued by chronic food insecurity, is now considered to be the future breadbasket of the world, and is expected to help meet its rising food needs. In the process of cashing in on the opportunities offered by cheap land and water, large-scale investors are displacing land uses and land users in ways that could aggravate the already severe challenges of rural poverty and hunger.

Bushmen living in Botswana's Central Kalahari Game Reserve will receive a crucial new water supply next month after winning a lengthy court battle, the diamond firm mining the area said. Botswana's highest court ruled in January in favour of the Bushmen who had fought for years for the right to re-open a crucial water well that supplied their village.

At the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations in Cancún in December 2010, the World Bank was granted the interim trusteeship of the newly established Green Climate Fund (GCF). Recent events indicate that the Bank and other multilateral development banks (MDBs) will also have an influential role in the design of the fund. The Climate Investment Funds (CIFs), a collaborative MDB climate finance initiative housed at the Bank, are being pointed to as ‘a best practice’ model for the GCF. This paper critically assesses the appropriateness of the CIFs as a model for a global climate finance fund. It finds that in terms of institutional arrangements the CIFs have achieved some notable progress that acknowledges some of the critical issues raised by civil society groups. However, in operations and performance there are serious concerns.

In what is being hailed as a victory for conservationists and the wildlife of the Serengeti, the Tanzanian government has cancelled plans for a controversial highway that would have dissected the Serengeti National Park. According to scientists, the road would have severed the migration route of 1.5 million wildebeest and a half million other antelope and zebra, with indirect impacts, such as poaching and new development, exacerbating the situation.

Oil worth billions of dollars is set to start flowing in Uganda, but the existing framework fails to protect Uganda from being plundered by multinational corporations, Jason Hickel writes.

Omar al-Bashir, the Sudanese president, has threatened to shut down pipelines carrying oil from South Sudan if there is no deal on oil before its independence next month. 'I give the south three alternatives for the oil. The North is to continue getting its share, or the North gets fees for every barrel that the South sends to Port Sudan,' Bashir said in a televised speech. 'If they don't accept either of these, we are going to block the pipeline,' he told his supporters in Port Sudan, the main terminal for all of Sudan's oil exports.

The Burkina Faso authorities have sounded the alarm over the increased rate of degradation of forests in this Sahelian country. According to a study by the Ministry for the Environment and Sustainable Development, some 110,550 hectares of forest are destroyed each year, just over four per cent of the country's total wooded area – around three-quarters of this annual loss linked to farming. The data covers forest loss between 1992 and 2002, but the trend continues, according the ministry.

Farmers in the eastern districts of Uganda that constitute the Elgon zone have rejected a proposal by Arthur Makala, the executive director at Science Foundation for Livelihoods and Development, to start engaging in the cultivation of genetically modified crops that are supposed to be drought resistant and give high yields. Makala had suggested that farmers should embrace the Genetically Modified Crops [GMC] for better yields but the farmers rejected it saying GMCs are contaminated with chemicals that may be harmful to their health.

A climate of non-disclosure pervades the sharing of basic school related information despite policies and pronouncements to the contrary. In a research brief titled 'Funding of Dar es Salaam Primary Schools: How accessible is school level information?', Uwazi at Twaweza shows that because of a climate of non disclosure, 80 per cent of the teachers interviewed could not correctly state the capitation grant amount entitlement per pupil, which is pegged at US$10 per year according to the Primary Education Development Programme.

With a crucial conference on climate change taking place in Durban, South Africa, in December, Patrick Bond cuts through the elite conspiracy that will result in a no deal scenario and a continued rise in global temperatures. 'The strongest possible stance will be needed to finally address the mess,' he writes.

Hundreds of civil society organisations, including farmers' movements, women's groups and non-governmental organisations, will launch a global appeal against farmland grabbing during the G20 meeting on agriculture in Paris on 22 and 23 June. Over 500 organisations from around the world have joined the 'Dakar Appeal Against Land Grabbing' that was originally drawn up at the World Social Forum in Dakar last February. While agriculture ministers from the world's 20 richest countries are discussing what to do about food price volatility and the growing hunger crisis, millions of hectares of fertile land, along with their water resources, are being grabbed from peasants, pastoralists, herders, fisherfolk and indigenous peoples to be converted into massive agribusiness operations by private investors who want to produce food supplies or agro-fuels for international markets. As a consequence, millions of peasant families and other rural and indigenous folk are being thrown off their lands and deprived of their livelihoods.

Climate campaigners have raised the alarm at the direction of the UN climate negotiations as the latest round of talks came to an end in Germany last week. Speaking after the talks closed on Friday, Dr. Sivan Kartha of the Stockholm Environment Institute outlined the current 'gap' between emission reduction pledges and possible 'safe limits' of emissions of global-warming causing gases. 'In the race to stop climate change which will destroy homes, crops, and entire lives across the world, it is developing countries that are first out of the blocks. It is developing countries that have made pledges that add up with the science. Developed countries seem to be skulking away, trying to avoid picking up the tab for the pollution they've caused,' Chair of the panel, Asad Rehman, Head of International Climate at UK Friends of the Earth said.

At the climate talks in Bonn in the past fortnight, the deadlock over the Kyoto Protocol continued, with a real prospect that the global climate regime will unravel, writes Martin Khor in this article. '...both the climate situation and the prospects for the global climate regime have become more grim...Most significantly, the Bonn meetings saw the continuation of the deadlock on the future of the Kyoto Protocol (KP), the legally binding regime that commits developed countries to cut their emissions by certain percentages.'

The Okavango delta in Botswana has suffered 'catastrophic' species loss over the past 15 years, researchers have announced, in the latest sign of a growing crisis for wildlife in Africa. Some wild animal populations in the delta, one of the wonders of the natural world, have shrunk by up to 90 per cent and are facing local extinction, according to the most comprehensive aerial survey yet undertaken there.

'The chances of a climate change deal in COP17 that will actually seal a deal that will do something about the problem of rising global greenhouse gas emission are becoming increasingly remote by the day. Why? It seems that vested high-carbon emission interests are capturing the process. In effect, those who financially benefit from high carbon emissions, such as energy companies, are involved in the actual negotiations to reduce emissions. This is only too evident in the South African negotiating team, where both petrochemicals giant Sasol and national electricity utility Eskom are official representatives.'

Nigeria's national biosafety bill has been passed by the country's upper house. But those opposing it say that this month's enactment of the bill - two days before the end of Nigeria's sixth national assembly - results from a hidden foreign agenda to legalise GM organisms. Mariann Bassey, food and agrofuels programme manager for the Nigerian advocacy group Environmental Rights Action, called for a transparent process that includes the views of all stakeholders, 'not one that is shoved down our throats by biotech agents'.

The economics of foreign aid...