AlertNet: Whether rotating her crops, sowing seed from previous harvests or gathering rainwater, Susan Gama is pulling out all the stops in an attempt to keep her livelihood going. Subsistence farmers like Gama in this southern African nation are reverting to traditional farming knowledge and local experimentation to cope with the challenges of poor and unpredictable rainfall, which experts believe is linked to climate change. That is producing mixed results -- and considerable frustration for government...

New York Times: Weary of waiting for the authorities to alert residents to the city?s most pernicious air pollutant, citizen activists last May took matters here into their own hands: they bought their own $4,000 air-quality monitor and posted its daily readings on the Internet. That began a chain reaction. Volunteers in Shanghai and Guangzhou purchased monitors in December, followed by citizens in Wenzhou, who are selling oranges to finance their device. Wenzhou donated $50 to volunteers in Wuhan, 140 miles inland....

New York Times: In yet another sign that New York has slowed efforts to green-light fracking of natural gas, officials at the state Department of Environmental Conservation canceled a meeting of a drilling advisory panel this week for a second time. Officials said they were delaying the meeting, which had been scheduled for Thursday, because the department`s staff was concentrating on sorting through more than 40,000 comments received on proposed state regulations and an environmental impact statement on high-volume...

Hundreds of irrigators along the Murrumbidgee River will have to pay up to $620 a year for a new water management tool.

A local irrigators' group says it needs more warning about community consultations on the Murray-Darling Basin Plan.

The SA Government says it will make submissions to the Murray-Darling Basin Authority before deciding on court action against the draft basin plan.

In November, Premier Jay Weatherill said the Government had sought legal advice and was preparing to be ready to appeal to the High Court.