French Ambassador Aurélien Lechevallier is calling for a repeat of the international stamina that brought about the Paris Climate Change Agreement five years ago.

The envoy was speaking at a reception marking the event and calling for a renewed international commitment to save the planet.

“The next year is going to be very important,” he said, “because  we will have to determine the next steps we must take to end the climate disruption.

“Last month was the hottest November in Europe ever.

“We are experiencing dramatic climatic events like fires, floods and hurricanes.

“We require collective effort to save the planet.

“We achieved this in Paris five years ago with 195 countries in the same room.

South Africa played a decisive role coordinating the African position,” said Lechevallier.

“We saw a new way of negotiating multilaterally with all the stakeholders joining the government representatives.

“We are hoping this spirit will be carried to the climate summit in Glasgow next year so the expectations of the planet can be met.”

British High Commissioner Nigel Casey said the light at the end of the tunnel of the COVID pandemic was seen this week with the first vaccines being administered in Britain.

The Glasgow climate summit is being designed to bring similar relief on financing, mitigating and adaptation on global warming

A virtual summit on Saturday, the fifth anniversary of the Paris agreement, will see the leader of 81 countries improve on their pledges to fight climate change.

The leaders of Kenya, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo are due to participate from Africa.

“Britain’s original undertaking was to achieve zero greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2050,” he said.

“We are now undertaking to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 68% by the year 2030.

“We are hoping that similar bold initiatives will be made by other participants in next years Glasgow summit. 

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With Prince William as the eloquent and passionate Royal Patron of its comprehensive programmes , the Tusk organisation has become a poster child for wildlife conservation around the world.

Well, hardly a child. It has been operating for 30 years and currently manages more than 50 projects in 20 countries.

It has attracted muscular sponsors like Land Rover and British Airways to support high-profile campaigns like #EndWildlifeCrime and its annual awards ceremony is an envied opportunity for glitterati and conservationists to clink glasses.

So when Tusk CEO Charlie Mayhew talks about the devastating impact of the COVID 19 pandemic on saving endangered species, it has to be taken seriously.

Mayhew reckons the evaporation of tourism caused by the pandemic and the lockdown has set back conservation efforts by three decades.

Tusk is losing at least two million dollars because of  cancelled fundraising events.

The collapsed tourism industry employs more than nine million people around the planet .

They are engaged in conservation, guiding maintaining and servicing lodges and hotels and physically protecting wildlife.

No less than half the revenue stream of wildlife reserves comes from tourism.

As these profitable 62-million visitors – who bring in almost $40 billion –  stay away the extra eyes and ears they contribute to watching over the animals also disappear and the poachers move in.

Tim Davenport of the Wildlife Conservation Society says tourist presence is sometimes as strong as a deterrent as that of rangers to poachers.

Some of the animals are killed for profit with their tusks, horns, scales and hides sold to organized crime.

Many other poachers  are simply the local population desperate for food.

Nico Jacobs of Rhino 911, protecting the endangered species in the north of South Africa, says at least nine rhino have been poached in NorthWest Province since the start of lockdown, adding that those are simply the ones he knows about.

Ryan Tate,a  former US Marine heads Vet Paw, an organisation of military veterans fighting poachers in South Africa.

He should be in the bush right now but finds himself in lockdown back in the US.

Also stuck in South Carolina is Map Ives, the founder and director of Rhino Conservation Botswana who has lived in the Okavango Delta for the past four decades. 

He calls the rise in poaching a “bloody calamity, and absolute crisis.”

Before the lockdown, Africa was losing 35 000 elephants to patchers every year.

Black rhino numbers are down 97,6% since 1960.

The lion population has decreased by 35 000 these past 21 years.

In Africa’s oldest game reserve, Virunga National Park on the Democratic Republic of Congo’s border with Rwanda and Burundi, 12 rangers were were killed last week by Rwandan rebels.The rangers were protecting a convoy of civilians five of whom were killed by the rebels.

The rangers guard the mountain gorillas that number barely more than 1 000. 

The figures are horrifying.The reality is even more stark.

Things cannot possibly improve until mankind is no longer threatened by COVID 19.

Government and donor organisations cannot be seen to be giving money for conservation when people’s lives are threatened.

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On World Press Freedom day it is apposite that we show concern and solidarity with colleagues under the thumbs and worse of oppressive regimes.

On our continent, I think of those bravely trying to speak truth to power in Eritrea, Rwanda, Morocco and Zimbabwe among others.

We may justifiably take a modest bow when told that we are an integral part of democracy by giving  people the facts that enable them to make crucial decisions about their futures.

It is all very reminiscent of the apartheid days when South Africa’s independent media could explain their mission statement in a paragraph.

It was all about ending one of the greatest evils of the 20th century.

We used to hand off compliments about our courage by saying to our readers and listeners that it was in fact they who were being brave.

We had the information and were able to get it to them by driving a coach and horses through the oppressive machinery of the apartheid regime.

It was the people who had to act on that information.

So important as we liked to think we were, it was about them, not us.

Things have changed dramatically since then.

The democratic government in South Africa has lamentable failed to keep its promises as a liberation movement.

Corruption, greed and inefficiency have enriched a thin strata at the top of society and destined the majority who voted them into power to perpetual suffering.

The independent media, which always was a business operation, has been forced to make deeply compromising choices to secure their very survival.

The economic downturn has put them on the back foot.

The COVID 19 pandemic has already pushed some outlets over the edge and threatens to send others into the precipice.

This is reflected in the coverage of what is unquestionably the story of our generation.

Young and inexperienced journalists, who are the reporters that proprietors can afford, are doing their level best to keep their viewers, listeners and readers abreast of developments.

They cover virtual media briefing and try to make sense of the utterances of ministers who are often as much in the dark as they are.

The analysis, both positive and critical, is largely left to the small band of foreign correspondents.

Surely this is the job of the South African media.

Even with the relaxations that came last Friday, our lockdown is one of the most draconian on the planet.

We make the United Nations roll of shame for excessive action by security forces policing the enforced stay-at-home.

We are also in the top ranks of countries suffering gender-baed-violence during the enforced confinement .

What happened to the moral high ground of 25 years ago?

Ministers have allowed their personal ambition and prejudices to impact on their decisions.

A perfect example is continuing on plainly spurious grounds to deny the sale of tobacco products. This was clearly designed, among other things,  to embarrass President Cyril Ramaphosa who now has to countermand the inveterately anti-smoking Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, whom he has put in charge of this process, if he wants to keep the word he gave last week.

As to the continued alcohol ban, we can be assured of heavy-handed enforcement under Police Minister Bheki Cele.

On World Press Freedom Day surely we should be doing our job by shining  the light on these inequities.

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Special envoy of the United Nations Secretary General to the Great Lakes Huang Xia urges the international community not to let up on its support for the region.

Huang Xia says the number of coronavirus infections in the Great Lakes approaches 5 000. COVID 19 has killed 131.

The strict travel restrictions and quarantine has brought agriculture, mining and transportation to a standstill in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda and South Sudan. 

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This is heavy loss for the species number just over 1 000.

Conservationists in the Mgahinga National Park in Uganda found the bodies of the four gorillas -a male and three females, one of them pregnant – with gross lesions that showed they died of electrocution by a lightning strike.

They were part of a group of 17 known as the Hirwa family. 

Mountain gorillas are spread in heavily protected areas in Uganda, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The Greater Virunga Transboundary Collaboration says it will take several weeks to confirm the post mortem finding.

The loss is particularly sad became of the potential of the females to contribute to the population of the endangered species.  

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There have been two million cases of the mosquito borne disease in Burundi this year that have left 2700 people dead.

Back in August the United Nations was saying that malaria in Burundi has killed more people than the EBOLA outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Burundi authorities contested the figures and denied that it has reached epidemic proportions.

The government has yet to respond to the latest figures from the UN that list 1,5 million cases of malaria in the past two months.

Many of the 11-million Burundians have sought refuge in Rwanda where there has been considerable success in preventing cases and treating the  disease.

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They will go to any country the United Nations decides is safe for them.

Compatriots in Cape Town of the demonstrating Congolese refugees has asked to be sent to a Australia, New Zealand or Canada.

In Pretoria, spokesman for the organization Women and Children in Crisis Alex Nkoy says they’re in no position to make any requests.

Asked if they would go to Rwanda, which is currently taking in African would-be migrants held in Libyan detention centers, Nkoy says they will go where the UNHCR decides to send them. 

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A nine-year-old girl who crossed the border with her mother seeking treatment has been confirmed to be infected with the deadly hemorrhagic disease and will be repatriated.

In June, three cases of EBOLA from the Democratic Republic of Congo were confirmed in Uganda.

The virus has infected more than 3000 people in the DRC and killed more than 1800.

Ugandan authorities say the girl is being treated while she awaits repatriation.

A specialist team is expected from the DRC to take her home in secure conditions where, the Ugandans say, she will be receive better treatment.

The EBOLA outbreak in the DRC has been declared a public health emergency of international concern having crossed into Uganda and Rwanda.

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Two people died in the central African countrry in June after returning from the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo where a year-long outbreak of the deadly hemorrhagic disease has killed more than 1800 people.

Uganda’s trying out a double dose anti-Ebola vaccination on 800 people.

The vaccination was deemed unsuitable in neighboring Congo because there was no way of ensuring patients would pitch up two months later for the second dose.

The EBOLA outbreak in the DRC has been declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, having spread into the eastern capital Goma which is hard by the frontier with both Uganda and Rwanda.

DRC EBOLA coordinator Jean-Jacques Muyembe reckons it will take two years to end this latest outbreak. 

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More than 1600 people have died in this year-long outbreak.

Health authorities in the Democratic Republic of Congo say they’ve undertaken mass vaccinations in Goma, the city of more two million people on the border with Rwanda.

The EBOLA victims is a pastor to who came from the city of Butembo where he was receiving treatment.

The passengers on the bus with him have been identified and isolated.

Assurances that the local health authorities have the situation under control must be seen against similar statements  made a year ago when the EBOLA outbreak began.

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