With SA 'barely managing' the mountain of plastic waste generated within the country – the life-time cost of which runs into billions of rands – government's plan to import more plastic waste and reportedly not support a global plastic ... Read More

Four of the world’s richest nations will send a delegation to SA to seek a deal to begin closing the country’s coal-fired plants. A Mining Weekly report notes that officials from the US, UK, France and Germany are looking for ... Read More

The Gauteng High Court (Pretoria) has scrapped government notices that proposed amendments to existing alien and invasive species regulations and lists, which included listing brown trout and rainbow trout as invasive species. In its judgment, the court ordered that government ... Read More

Four years after the last tap ran dry, a number of Eastern Cape villages that fall under the Mnquma Local Municipality and get their water from the Amathole District Municipality have turned to the courts for help after their attempts ... Read More

The deadline for input on a draft policy for ‘the conservation and ecologically sustainable use of elephant, lion, leopard and rhinos’ has been extended. A Policy Watch report notes that proposing a ‘mechanism’ for giving practical effect to recommendations in ... Read More

In an open letter published last week, 200 organisations call on donors to stop supporting industrial agriculture and instead listen to farmers' visions for an equitable food system. Writing in an analysis on the allAfrica site, the groups write: ‘We ... Read More

The heat is on as the world approaches the much-anticipated 2021 UN Climate Change Conference, COP26, where each participating country – including SA – is expected to set more deliberate and ambitious climate change goals. ‘These include committing to reduce ... Read More

The Rwandan Minister for Environment, Jeanne d'Arc Mujawamariya, has revealed a plan by government to plant over 43m tree seedlings across the country as a way of fighting desertification. According to a New Times report, these are to be ... Read More

Securing and restoring livelihoods should be top of the agenda in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, an African Ministerial Conference on the Environment (AMCEN) has resolved. According to an SA News report, it is against this backdrop that an ... Read More

SA is looking to ramp up investment in green hydrogen to fuel a cleaner energy future, with the government and private sector collaborating to build the sector. A Daily Dispatch report notes that experts, however, argue that to develop a ... Read More

Australia’s 2019-2020 bushfire season was unprecedented, even in a country used to seasonal wildfires. A report in The Independent notes that over 46m acres of land were burnt, 36 people were killed, and another 445 died indirectly, following smoke inhalation ... Read More

A record number of activists working to protect the environment and land rights were murdered last year, according to a report by a campaign group. BBC News notes that 227 people were killed around the world in 2020, the highest ... Read More

Britain’s biggest supermarket group Tesco launched a trial last week that allows customers to buy food, drink, household and beauty products in reusable packaging, part of its strategy to cut plastic waste. According to a Moneyweb report, Britons have become ... Read More

* Egypt and Sudan have expressed readiness to resume talks with Ethiopia on its controversial Nile dam after the UN Security Council urged the three governments to swiftly reach a binding deal. The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, set to be Africa’s ... Read More

Underwater museumAfrica’s first underwater museum, where scuba divers can explore shipwrecks that have been sitting on the ocean floor for up to 600 years, will soon be launched near Mombasa, Kenya. It will span 137km of coastline, from Lamu in ... Read More

Dung beetles show the wayAn art installation that was meant to inspire young people to find solutions to the plastics crisis has demonstrated its potential to turn the waste plastic problem into an electricity or energy solution. In the same ... Read More