Mr Gummer storms out of Africa

The News from Nairobi is that Britain and the US have withheld their funding from the world's top environmental protection body, threatening it with bankruptcy. This was the culmination of an exceptionally acrimonious negotiating session here at the end of which the two governments, the biggest donors to the United Nations Environment Programme, have effectively issued it with an ultimatum: reform or die.

Both governments hope that their ultimatum will produce a reborn organisation, leading a new drive to protect the world's deteriorating environment. If this happens, they say they will resume their funding. But they are prepared to see it go under if it does not change.

One immediate consequence of this week's row is that Elizabeth Dowdeswell, executive director of UNEP, announced an unprecedented step for a UN chief. She is to voluntarily step down at the end of the year. She told me yesterday that she was sad at having seen "the worst of diplomacy" at the meeting, and angry that the organisation was being "held hostage" while governments worked out their differences.

A seven-hour, last-ditch negotiating session degenerated into farce with delegates shouting at each other and Asian and African ambassadors openly laughing at environmental ministers. John Selwyn Gummer, the British Environment Secretary, told the Council before angrily leaving the meeting: "This is a terribly sad occasion."

The UK will withhold its contribution, but since that comes to only about pounds 4.3m, this is more of of a symbol than a saving. Gummer said he was "totally committed" to the organisation but added that it might not survive to hold another Council meeting unless it reformed. This would be a shame, because UNEP has been responsible for many of the most important breakthroughs in environmental protection over its 25-year history.

8 TRUNDLING down here on the red-eye (bucket shop ticket, Kenya Airways, since you ask) is, in a sense, coming home. For, pace the likes of Lord Tebbit, we are all Africans. Discoveries, as by the Leakey family, suggest that our ancestors originated in this part of the world - perhaps on the very north Kenyan plains we fly over. According to Richard Leakey, the most celebrated of the palaeontological family, this may explain why we are so drawn to the area and its wildlife. But humanity's cradle is now turning into a coffin. Drought is strangling northern Kenya: parts have not had a single drop of rain for two years. People are digging 20ft deep pits in dried-up river beds in search of water.

At least half a million people face famine. Some have already died, including Mama Mwethya Kitanyo's two-year-old daughter, Katuku. The single mother just managed to earn enough to feed her family by working in a sisal plantation, but then cut her hand on a thorn. The wound turned septic, disabling her. Deprived of income, she watched her daughter starve.

The government long turned a blind eye. Six ministers declared last month: "It is not true that people are dying. No one is in trouble." Finally the president, Daniel arap Moi, appealed for international help, which could yet prevent widespread tragedy. But he also took the chance to invoke draconian emergency provisions, ostensibly to help fight hunger, but perhaps also to stifle opposition in the run-up to this year's presidential election.

EARLY yesterday morning I stood by a huge pile of ash on a hill in Nairobi's national park. It is all that remains of 12 tonnes of ivory burned by President Moi in July 1989, in a successful campaign to end the world trade in it and save the elephant from poachers.

It was Richard Leakey, then director of the Kenya Wildlife Service, who urged the dramatic - and expensive - gesture on the President and led the drive for the trade ban. When he fell out with the government and resigned - ending up as an opposition leader - many conservationists feared the worst. In fact things have got much better, and not just because poaching has continued to decline. When I called on him on Friday morning Dr David Western, Leakey's successor, had just heard that only 19 elephants were killed nationwide last year, the fewest ever (compared to 5,000- 10,000 a year before the trade ban).

More important, Western is building support for conservation among ordinary Kenyans for the first time. Reserved and pragmatic where Leakey was flamboyant and controversial, he has instituted a more people-centred approach. For little can be done unless the country people themselves want to conserve wildlife - not least because the animals range well beyond the artificial boundaries of national parks on to private land.

Under Western, the service is helping ordinary Kenyans benefit from conservation. Villagers at Mwaluganje, near the coast, have set up their own elephant reserve, which brought in a million Kenyan shillings (pounds 12,500) to their poor community last year. Thirty landowners' associations now conserve wildlife in return for being allowed to cull an annual quota of animals like zebra, buffalo and gnu for meat and hides: in places, animal numbers have soared by 20 per cent. And Kenyans are increasingly visiting the game parks. On two December days, marking the 50th anniversary of the park system, they outnumbered foreigners for the first time.

8 AT LEAST someone was in the money here last week. Wesley Wycliffe Omondi, a poor sugar cane farmer, won the lottery and became an overnight shilling millionaire. He said he would spend the money on a new tractor but had decided, after some thought, not to take a second wife. His ambitions were modest: "One million shillings, three children and one wife is all I need."