ARMED conflicts across Africa are undermining the continent’s efforts to improve environmental management, a senior United Nations official said in Harare on Monday. But Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe, whose army is involved in a civil war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, charged that the blame lay with rich nations. “Social tension in Africa caused by poverty, wars and diseases is the major cause of poor environmental and natural resources management,” UN Environment Programme executive director Klaus Topfer said at a three-day environmental conservation conference. But, addressing the conference, Mugabe said that rich nations were conniving to destroy poor countries’ environment programmes through mean aid programmes, economic policies and attitudes. “The policies have made our natural resources excessively cheap while limiting our ability to export value-added natural resources,” he said.