"The Europe 2020 strategy is the European Union's strategy for economic growth in Europe over the next decade. This strategy envisages the development of a 'greener', more environmentally friendly economy in Europe. Sustainable water management is a critical element of this green economy because healthy and resilient ecosystems provide the services needed to sustain human well-being and our economy. For this reason, we need to ensure that other economic sectors, such as agriculture, energy and transport, also adopt management practices that can keep water ecosystems healthy and resilient. Some improvements in water quality have been made in the past two decades with e.g. the implementation of the urban waste water treatment directive. Nevertheless at present, the ecological status of water ecosystems is not good enough. Under the Water Framework Directive, countries were obliged to publish so-called River Basin Management Plans, which detailed the status of the water bodies in their countries. The results of the first round of these River Basin Management Plans show that more than half of Europe's surface water bodies are in less than good ecological status."--Editor.

Authoritative reviews on the wide-ranging ramifications of climate change, from an international team of eminent researchers.

Global trends such as urbanization, demographic and climate change that are currently underway pose serious challenges to sustainable development and integrated resources management. The complex relations between demands, resource availability and quality and financial and physical constraints can be addressed by knowledge based policies and reform of professional practice. The nexus approach recognizes the urgent need for this knowledge and its interpretation in a policy- relevant setting that is guided by the understanding that there is a lack of blueprints for development based on integrated management of water, soil and waste resources in the Member States. Generation and application of knowledge is both a priority for individual but also institutional capacity development.

Human activities are depleting ecosystems at an unprecedented rate. In spite of nature conservation efforts worldwide, many ecosystems including those critical for human well-being have been damaged or destroyed. States and citizens need a new vision of how humans can reconnect with the natural environment. With its focus on the long-term holistic recovery of ecosystems, ecological restoration has received increasing attention in the past decade from both scientists and policymakers. Research on the implications of ecological restoration for the law and law for ecological restoration has been largely overlooked. This is the first published book to examine comprehensively the relationship between international environmental law and ecological restoration. While international environmental law (IEL) has developed significantly as a discipline over the past four decades, this book enquires whether IEL can now assist states in making a strategic transition from not just protecting and maintaining the natural environment but also actively restoring it. Arguing that states have international duties to restore, this book offers reflections on the philosophical context of ecological restoration and the legal content of a duty to restore from an international law, European Union law and national law perspective. The book concludes with a discussion of several contemporary themes of interest to both lawyers and ecologists including the role of private actors, protected areas and climate change in ecological restoration.

Following the conclusion of the latest round of reforms to the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in 2013, the Research Handbook on EU Agriculture Law provides an up-to-date discussion of these reforms and the changing landscape in which the CAP now operates. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, and with international contributors from across Europe and the United States, the Handbook commences with analyses of the legal instruments which implement the reformed CAP, before moving on to consider questions of land use, the role of agriculture within the wider food chain and the international dimension. In these contexts, particular issues identified include: the environmental impact of past, present and future farming practices; the ability of the food chain to accommodate consumer preferences and scientific innovation; and the hurdles to be cleared before international consensus can be reached on a whole range of agricultural imperatives. As well as providing a state-of-the-art point of reference for academics, this comprehensive book will be of great interest to students, scholars and policymakers dealing with these new challenges faced by agriculture in the EU.

Integrated water resources management advocates a coordinated approach for managing water resources in a way that balances social and economic needs with concern for the environment. While potentially useful, integrated water management is also controversial. Supporters believe that the multi-dimensional nature of water can only be understood and managed from a holistic perspective, while critics often argue that integrated water management lacks suffi ciently well-defi ned rules for its practical implementation. This book, written by academics, users and practitioners, provides a down-to-earth approach to the ideal of integrated water resources management, drawing from conceptual frameworks and real-life practice to identify the key aspects that are yet to be resolved. As such, it examines the role of water accounting, food trade, environmental externalities and intangible values as key aspects whose consideration may help the water management community move forward. Overall, integrated water resources management is perceived to be a useful utopia, whose value lies more in the steps that need to be taken to make it a reality than in achieving its ever-elusive end goal.

Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) has become a global paradigm for the governance of surface, coastal and groundwaters. This Special Issue contains twelve articles related to the transfer of IWRM policy principles. The articles explore three dimensions of transfer—causes, processes, outcomes—and offer a theoretically inspiring, methodologically rich and geographically diverse engagement with IWRM policy transfer around the globe. As such, they can also productively inform a future research agenda on the ‘dimensional’ aspects of IWRM governance. Regarding the causes, the contributions apply, criticise, extend or revise existing approaches to policy transfer in a water governance context, asking why countries adopt IWRM principles and what mechanisms are in place to understand the adoption of these principles in regional or national contexts. When it comes to processes, articles in this Special Issue unpack the process of policy transfer and implementation and explore how IWRM principles travel across borders, levels and scales. Finally, this set of papers looks into the outcomes of IWRM policy transfer and asks what impact IWRM principles, once implemented, gave on domestic water governance, water quality and water supply, and how effective IWRM is at addressing critical water issues in specific countries.