The Congress is being held in the Eastern Cape city of Port Elizabeth during November 2001. While local income generation is combined with conservation, Julie Church is content, managing a WWF project in the Kiunga Reserve under rough conditions. The World Bank is appointing a special committee to oversee a controversial oil pipeline project in Chad and Cameroon, in response to critics who warn that the project will harm rainforests and may worsen an already violent human rights situation. Not enough, repeat environmentalists, calling for a moratorium on the construction of the pipeline. He was responding to media reports that some 68,000 hectares of remaining indigenous forests, including those in part of the Mount Kenya forest reserve, may be cleared to settle landless people.
Agriculture is bound to decline in an Africa that becomes dryer.
The process has already started. Community groups do not agree. Many dead flamingos have been seen since the first eruption about two weeks ago, while flocks of curlew sandpipers have been noticed in gardens looking for food. The hunters and gatherers have already managed to change the mind of the UN refugee agency, and their voices are starting to get heard in Namibia as well. But there is hope for many people in the rural areas with the coming of the solar energy system.