The University of Milan’s SHuS (Interdisciplinary Research Centre for Sustainability and Human Security: Co-operation and Governance agendas) offers a collection of high standard contributions and testimonies of good practice analyzing the complex subjects of access to rights and resources worldwide. This to a world looking to the future and projecting its goals of sustainable development. The thirty three contributors took part in the Milan University sessions of the International Conference dedicated to Land, Water and Resources Rights, organized by the Editor under the auspices of the EU-Joint Research Centre Expo 2015 and the City of Milan Scientific Committee for Expo 2015. With no claims to being exhaustive, the multi-disciplinary approach and the inter-disciplinary perspectives adopted to the topics are enforced by suggestions for political and legal approaches that a regional structure like the EU should be adopting to prevent legitimization leading to severe forms of injustice against communities and individuals. SHuS has chosen open access to this e-book in order to create a seamless connection between scientific communities and the wider civil society. Thus it underscores one of the priorities of the Centre by ensuring the greatest possible impact of much needed multifaceted scientific approaches to society and the problems afflicting it.

This work aims to be the definitive exploration of the possibility to conceptualize permanent sovereignty over natural resources vested in indigenous peoples rather than in States under international law.

This book focuses on trend-setting judgments in different parts of the world that impacted on the rights of persons belonging to minorities and Indigenous people. The cases illustrate how the judiciary has been called upon to fill out the detail of minority protection arrangements and how, in doing so, in many instances the judiciary has taken the respective countries on a course that parliament may not have been able to navigate. In this book authors from various backgrounds in the practical application of minority protection arrangements investigate the role of the judiciary in constitutional arrangements aimed at the protection of the rights of minorities and Indigenous peoples.

This paper focuses on how to improve the development and management of water resources while providing the principles that link resource management to the specific water-using sectors. In 1993 the Board of the World Bank endorsed a Water Resources Management Policy Paper. In that paper, and this Strategy, water resources management is seen to comprise the institutional framework; management instruments; and the development, maintenance and operation of infrastructure. The paper looks at the dynamics of water and development. It builds on the 1993 policy paper, evaluating current scenarios and looking at future options and their implications both for government policy and the World Bank.

Legal mechanisms for the management, development and protection of water resources have evolved over the years and have reached unprecedented levels of complexity and sophistication. This phenomenon is largely in response to the global community’s sustainable development agenda, to the challenges and limitations imposed by climate variability, and to scientific and technological advances. Bringing together diverse experiences from across the world, this book analyses existing water law and governance solutions, their shortcomings, as well as developments and trends in the light of changing circumstances. The legal mechanisms examined range from international treaties, agreements and arrangements on cooperation over transboundary water resources, to the onset of novel issues arising out of technological advances, and from domestic regulation of water abstraction and groundwater management, to domestic regulation of the water industry. The articles in this book were originally published in the journal Water International, following the XIV and the XV World Water Congresses of the International Water Resources Association (IWRA), which were held in 2011 and in 2015, respectively. The chapters originally published in Water International.

Written in easy to follow language, the book presents cutting-edge agriculturally relevant plant biotechnologies and applications in a manner that is accessible to all. This book introduces the scope and method of plant biotechnologies and molecular breeding within the context of environmental analysis and assessment, a diminishing supply of productive arable land, scarce water resources and climate change. Authors who have studied how agro ecosystems have changed during the first decade and a half of commercial deployment review effects and stress needs that must be considered to make these tools sustainable.