UNEP: Kenya’s Mau Forest under siege

The Mau Complex forms the largest closed-canopy forest ecosystem of Kenya, as large as the forests of Mt. Kenya and the Aberdare combined.  It is the single most important water catchment in Rift Valley and western Kenya. Through the ecological services provided by its forests, the Mau Complex is a natural asset of national importance […]

Quarter of Zimbabwe's rhinos killed by poachers in three years

HARARE: Zimbabwe has lost about 200 rhinoceroses — a quarter of its total population — to rampant poaching over the last three years as security and the economy deteriorated, state media reported on Tuesday. The southern African country has been badly damaged by an economic crisis, which critics blame on President Robert Mugabe’s seizure of […]

Kenya's heart stops pumping

By James Morgan, BBC News, Kenya At the edges of Kenya’s Lake Nakuru, Paul Opiyo picks up a dead flamingo and warns some eager tourists not to touch it, just in case. He points down to his feet – the brown earth is speckled with brittle white feather shafts. “We should be underwater, standing here,” […]

Kenya: Panic in Mau as eviction nears

Nairobi — With exactly a week to go before a deadline for those settled in a section of the Mau Forest complex expires, thousands of anxious settlers are grappling with the inevitability of eviction. A two-pronged plan in the past week has cleared any doubts on the government’s determination to get the settlers out and […]

Goodbye, snows of Kilimanjaro

By Jeremy Hance, www.mongabay.com, November 02, 2009 The most recent survey among the ice fields atop Mount Kilimanjaro found that the ice atop Africa’s most famous mountain could be gone in twenty years—and maybe even sooner. Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science the study [pdf] was conducted by a team of […]

Kenya: Floods Displace Hundreds of Families

Posted Thursday, October 29 2009 at 14:13 More families were displaced in Mandera Central district as heavy rains continue to pound the area for the last three days in row. Millions of property including food rations were destroyed in flash flood that also cut off many roads in the North-Eastern Province. The displaced families who […]

Kenya: after drought comes deluge of floods and destruction

By Standard Team Flooding has claimed three lives, displaced hundreds and cut off towns following heavy rainfall, even as meteorologists warn it would get worse. The most affected areas are Coast and North Eastern provinces, which have seen a sudden increase in rainfall in line with the Meteorological Department’s forecast in August that flooding, would […]

Fleeing drought in the Horn of Africa

A new kind of refugee has arrived: Those forced from their home regions not by war or persecution, but by the climate. A Kenyan camp is bursting with the displaced, some of whom share their stories. By EDMUND SANDERS, October 27, 2009 DADAAB, Kenya: For centuries, Adam Abdi Ibrahim’s ancestors herded cattle and goats in […]

Ethiopia demands urgent food aid for 6.2 million people

By Staff Writers, Addis Ababa (AFP) Oct 22, 2009 Twenty-five years after Ethiopia’s famine killed a million people and spurred a massive global aid effort, the government appealed Thursday for help for more than six million facing starvation. State Minister for Agriculture Mitiku Kassa said the drought-stricken country needed 159,000 tonnes of food aid worth […]

2008 saw at least 700,000 new climate refugees in Africa

African leaders recognised climate change as a major cause of human displacement during a two-day summit on the plight of the continent’s refugees which closed Friday in Kampala. Several African nations adopted a document on the rights of the continent’s 17 million internally-displaced persons (IDP), refugees and returnees. “The important thing about this convention is […]

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