This book calls for the conditions of transition to sustainability: How to take into consideration new global phenomena such as and of the dimension of climate change, the depletion of natural resources, financial crises, demographic dynamics, global urbanization, migrations and mobility, while bearing in mind short-term or local place-based issues, such as social justice or quality of life? Meeting this challenge requires an inclusive approach of sustainability. It is a matter of designing a new social contract: Sustainability requires more than developing the right markets, institutions and metrics, it requires social momentum. To do so, many issues need a clear and complete answer: How to link social justice with sustainability policies? What governance tools to do so? What linkage between one decision-making level and the other? These are major issues to design sound transitions to sustainability.

In recent years the topic of environmental management has become very common. In sustainable development conditions, central and local governments much more often notice the need of acting in ways that diminish negative impact on environment. Environmental management may take place on many different levels - starting from global level, e.g. climate changes, through national and regional level (environmental policy) and ending on micro level. This publication shows many examples of environmental management. The diversity of presented aspects within environmental management and approaching the subject from the perspective of various countries contributes greatly to the development of environmental management field of research.

This book presents the results of research cooperation between the Departments of Geography of the University of São Paulo, the University of Damascus and the University of Cambridge. It serves to refute the widely spread Malthusian paradigm—which forecasts conflicts due to water scarcity—by showing that this perspective has neither an empirical nor conceptual basis. It begins from the hypothesis that both sharing water politics and the use of technology can annul the water scarcity-conflict paradigm. To corroborate this hypothesis, the book uses two variables illustrated by two contexts: the Euphrates River basin was utilised to study the first variable of the hypothesis (sharing water), and to show that agreements on international river basins have assured fair use of water by avoiding conflicts, not only in the Middle East, but also in the vast majority of international basins throughout the world. The second context, the Persian Gulf and Arab Peninsula, was used to corroborate the second variable of the hypothesis—the use of technology to assure water supply; again, not only in the Middle East, but all over the world as well.