Eight African countries were selected for the first phase of the project. Activities which are national in character have commenced in Burkina Faso, Malawi, Mozambique and Sao Tome and Principe. The project’s work has also commenced in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, except that here the focus is on issues of sub-regional character and the concentration is on harmonization of laws and standards to deal with the priority subjects, identified by the respective countries together. Except for consultations with UNDP, Pretoria mainly no activities have commenced in South Africa where national concern hitherto has been the evolution of the new constitution and the development of a national environmental policy, both essential for subsequent work on the structure of the national and provincial environmental laws.The necessity for the compendium has been increasingly evident during the foregoing activities, particularly given the modus operandi in the project. The approach seeks to operationalize the concept of capacity building by involving the nationals of the projects countries in the assessment of their environmental problems, review of the existing environmental laws and drafting of new and streamlined statutes consistent with the modern philosophy and enforcement of environmental law.In this process, there have been frequent enquiries for the supply of environmental laws for the countries to provide analogies and inspiration for the national teams. It is often the case that laws from the developed countries of Europe & North America are readily available while one will only occasionally find such texts from other African countries. To date, there have been several efforts to collect laws related to environment and natural resources in Africa. An outstanding collection is at the IUCN Environmental Law Centre in Bonn. But there has been no collection which is published and readily available to prospective users in the region.Sharing of comparative texts of national statutes will have the significance of promoting development of environmental laws and countries outside the region would also benefit from recent environmental legislation from Africa. But it may, in addition, lead to gradual harmonization of the respective laws, which may, in turn, be a powerful path to avoidance of conflicts. The 1996 Edition of the Compendium produced only five volumes. The first volume contains the framework environmental laws and EIA Regulations only. The remaining volumes are sectoral laws, organized country by the country in alphabetical order.