DEVELOPMENT: Report Details Toll Taken by Lack of Water, Sanitation

The 2006 Human Development Report, 'Beyond Scarcity: Power, Poverty and the Global Water Crisis', focuses on the ongoing problems that surround provision of potable water and sanitation. The document is being launched Thursday in Cape Town, South Africa, by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

DEVELOPMENT: Pipe Dreams Over Private Water Supply

As the only country to have totally privatised water supply, Britain can lay some claim to the triumph of privatisation of water supply. But this is still not the unqualified success privatisation lobbyists can uphold, experts say.

WATER: Local Customs the Way of the Future – or a Thing of the Past?

For generations, African farmers have relied on local knowledge to manage and conserve water.

DEVELOPMENT: NGOs to Challenge Water Meet

Civil society groups will challenge water privatisation policies at the World Water Forum later this week.

KYRGYZSTAN: Illnesses Flow from Dirty Water

In a middle school in Burghandy village in south Kyrgyzstan, pupils come to school with their own bottle of boiled water or tea, clearly labelled with their names.

DEVELOPMENT: NGOs Turn Up Pressure Against Water Privatisation

An alliance of development groups is challenging the European Union and developed countries over their plans to promote water privatisation in developing countries at a key international meeting later this year.

WORLD WATER DAY: EU Urged to Stop Privatisation

Civil society groups are calling for a change of course in the European Union's approach to water and sanitation in developing countries.

ENVIRONMENT-UGANDA: A Rough Passage for Lake Victoria

Lake Victoria has long been a name to conjure with. The world's second-largest fresh water lake, and the largest in Africa, it stretches out endlessly - rippled by the breeze that characteristically blows over the lake.

ENVIRONMENT-VENEZUELA: Ecotourism in the Tropical Andes

Irene Sánchez's smile is as warm as the hot chocolate she serves her guests at her El Trigal guest house, located 3,380 metres above sea level in Venezuela's tropical Andes mountains.

DEVELOPMENT-KENYA: A Preventable Disaster?

Should Kenyan authorities have been better prepared for the drought that has ravaged most of the country, prompting widespread food shortages? It's a question that elicits a mixed response from analysts.

SUSTAINABILITY: Can Planting Trees Be Harmful?

What's wrong with planting trees? ask the promoters of commercial monoculture forestry, an industry that is gaining ground throughout South America. In Uruguay, there are no definitive answers, but all signs indicate that it is a problem of scale.

/CORRECTED REPEAT/NEPAL: Communities Protect Fruits of Nurturing Forests

When the monsoon rain started three years ago, inhabitants of lower Kharang village in Sankhuwasava district in eastern Nepal decided to sow bamboo saplings on the nearby landslide-prone slopes.

SUSTAINABILITY: Do ‘Water Wars’ Still Loom in Africa?

When water affairs ministers from countries along the Nile met recently to discuss the fate of the river, Boutros Boutros-Ghali was not in the room with them. But the lingering memory of his comment that future wars would be fought over water probably was.

SUSTAINABILITY: More Rehabilitated Wetlands in South Africa, More Water Supply

As South Africa's new government braces itself for the task of extending clean water supplies to more people, environmentalists are warning there may soon be little water to distribute if conservation efforts are not stepped up.

HIMALAYAS: Endangered Snow Leopards a Peril to Yak Herders

It's a blustery morning here at Khicho Lake, four hours' steep climb from the village of Manang in the Himalayan rain shadow in north-western Nepal. The sky is blue, sunrays bright, and the Himalayan peaks are glistening.

AGRICULTURE: Seed Treaty Boosts Farmers, Fails to Weed Out GM Crops

Poised to come into force in June, the international seed treaty represents the best hope for the protection of farmers' rights and to stem the tide of patents on seeds, according to activists.

SUSTAINABILITY-PAKISTAN: Water is Villagers’ Most Urgent Need

Residents in the Pakistani village of Pulosa here quickly identified water as their most urgent need, while preparing their area development plan with the help of a public interest group this month.

SUSTAINABILITY: Water Woes Cloud Philippine Campaign, Poor Bear Burden

''We won't make our life more difficult paying for something we can't even have,'' Edita Mallorca, a resident of the Tondo slums here says, referring to services for clean water that have become an election issue in the Philippines.

SUSTAINABILITY: ‘Conspiracy’ Looms Over South American Aquifer – NGOs

The placid waters of the Guaraní Aquifer, an enormous underground reservoir beneath 1.2 million square km of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, are at the centre of turbulent debate.

SUSTAINABILITY: A River Becomes a Bridge

The Danube is to many 'The Blue Danube', that waltz of happy romance composed by Johann Strauss. But to people in 11 countries through which the river flows from the Black Forest in Germany down to the Black Sea, it means much more.

SUSTAINABILITY: Water ‘Scarcity’ Can be Fixed – Report

Despite a worldwide rise in consumption, there would still be adequate water on planet Earth for everyone if waste was ended, says a new report by an independent research group.