Greening the RDP: people, environment, development: report of proceedings [of the] Environmental Justice Networking Forum Constitutive Conference, Kempton Park Conference Centre, 25-27 November 1994

The Environmental Justice Networking Forum’s first national conference had three major objectives: to constitute the organisation on a national basis; to make policy recommendations regarding the implementation of the RDP both for submission to government and as a guide to action by EJNFparticipants; to build and disseminate the workof thelDRC/ANC/ COSATU/ SACP/ SANCO International Mission on Environmental Policy (referred to here as the Mission). EJNF was in itiated at the Earthlife Africa International Environment Conference in 1992 at Pietermaritzburg. That conference mandated an interim national steering committee to guide a process of establishing an organised voice within civil society for environmental justice. It stipulated that the organisation should be formed on a regional basis leading up to the national constitution of EJNF at a national conference. The EJNF conference is thus the culmination of a two year process. During that time, meetings were held to establish EJNF in six regions: Gauteng, Northern Transvaal, Western Cape, Eastern Cape, KwaZulu- Natal and OFS. Participating organisations include women’s, rural, youth, religious and environmental organisations, unions, civics and service NGOs. Each region sent delegations to the national conference. Two other regions, Eastern Transvaal and Northern Cape, also sent delegations which will form the focus groups for establishing EJNF in those regions. Regional EJNF participant organisations also elected members to the national steering committee. They took office at the constitutive conference. The minutes of the constitutive session of the conference are not included here but are available from the EJNF national office. The EJNF delegates were joined by a number of guest delegates for the conference on Greening the RDP. They included members of national organisations which represent or work with the constitutuencies which EJNF is developing and researchers working in the sectors covered by the conference. Government was represented by Ministers Kader Asmal (Water Affairs) and Derek Hanekom (Land Affairs), by provincial MECs, by members of standing committees in parliament and provincial legislatures andby ministry or department officials

Viral escape from HIV-1 neutralizing antibodies drives increased plasma neutralization breadth through sequential recognition of multiple epitopes and immunotypes.

Identifying the targets of broadly neutralizing antibodies to HIV-1 and understanding how these antibodies develop remain important goals in the quest to rationally develop an HIV-1 vaccine. We previously identified a participant in the CAPRISA Acute Infection Cohort (CAP257) whose plasma neutralized 84% of heterologous viruses. In this study we showed that breadth in CAP257 was largely due to the sequential, transient ppearance of three distinct broadly neutralizing antibody specificities spanning the first 4.5 years of infection. The first specificity targeted an epitope in the V2 region of gp120 that was also recognized by strain-specific antibodies 7 weeks earlier. Specificity for the autologous virus was determined largely by a rare N167 antigenic variant of V2, with viral escape to the more common D167 immunotype coinciding with the development of the first wave of broadly neutralizing antibodies. Escape from these broadly neutralizing V2 antibodies through deletion of the glycan at N160 was associated with exposure of an epitope in the CD4 binding site that became the target for a second wave of broadly neutralizing antibodies. Neutralization by these CD4 binding site antibodies was almost entirely dependent on the glycan at position N276. Early viral escape mutations in the CD4 binding site drove an increase in wave two neutralization breadth, as this second wave of heterologous neutralization matured to recognize multiple immunotypes within this site. The third wave targeted a quaternary epitope that did not overlap any of the four known sites of vulnerability on the HIV-1 envelope and remains undefined. Altogether this study showed that the human immune system is capable of generating multiple broadly neutralizing antibodies in response to a constantly evolving viral population that exposes new targets as a consequence of escape from earlier neutralizing antibodies