FRONT PAGE

	The Danube: Environmental Monitoring of an International River
	Emerging Forces in Environmental Governance

Broadening Asia's Security Discourse and Agenda:
Political, Social and Environmental Perspectives
Edited by Ramesh Thakur and Edward Newman

The security discourse is dominated by the traditional state-centric paradigm which privileges the territorial defence of a country against armed attack from foreign countries.

For most people in Asia – a continent that counts for more than half of the world’s population – the greatest threats to security come from disease, hunger, environmental contamination, crime and localized violence. For some, a still greater threat may come from their own government rather than from an "external" adversary. The citizens of states that are "secure" according to the concept of traditional security can be perilously insecure in their everyday lives.

Going beyond military threats and state-centric analysis, this volume demonstrates the importance of a broad security agenda that incorporates political, economic, social and environmental dimensions as well as the many linkages between them.

It applies non-traditional security perspectives to a range of human challenges across Asia in the hope of encouraging a security discourse where humans are at the core. It also explores the potential conceptual and operational benefits of non-traditional security thinking in a continent confronted by both conventional and non-traditional security challenges.

• Ramesh Thakur is the Senior Vice-Rector of UN University.

• Edward Newman is an academic programme officer at UN University.

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The Danube: Environmental Monitoring of an International River
Libor Jansky, Masahiro Murakami and Neveline I. Pachova 

Focusing on the hydropolitics surrounding the disputed Gabçíkovo-Nagymaros project on the Danube between Hungary and the Slovak Republic, this book examines the progress of the dispute from the International Court of Justice to the subsequent agreement to joint monitoring and assessment of the environmental implications.

It uses a multidisciplinary methodology combining approaches derived from natural resources management, geography, international relations, political science and international law.

Environmental monitoring is essential to resolving transboundary water conflicts and the authors discuss the extensive monitoring programmes implemented by the two countries, the regular meetings of technical experts to improve monitoring and optimise the programmes, attempts to link various causes and effects of the project, and how monitoring can help enhance public participation for sustainable solutions.

The Danube examines the advantages and constraints of using environmental monitoring as a tool for decision-making in the sustainable management of shared freshwater resources in the context of international environmental conflict, and it proposes possibilities for optimising the environmental monitoring of the middle reaches of the Danube.

The authors conclude that in view of the recent eastward expansion of the European Union, the environmental monitoring programme developed in response to Gabçíkovo-Nagymaros should be integrated into the environmental management of the Danube basin to contribute to its sustainable development.

Based on original documents and research and including numerous maps, figures and authentic appendices, this book is an essential resource on the applications of environmental monitoring and data sharing for improving the management of international waters, and a useful reference book about the Gabçíkovo-Nagymaros Project.

• Libor Jansky is Senior Academic Programme Officer, Environment and Sustainable Development, UN University.

• Masahiro Murakami is Professor of International Development, Department of Infrastructure Systems Engineering, Kochi University of Technology, Japan.

• Nevelina I. Pachova is a research assistant in the UN University Environment and Sustainable Development Programme.

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Emerging Forces in Environmental Governance
Edited by Norichika Kanie and Peter M. Haas

International governance increasingly occurs through complex synergies between networks of actors across levels of international politics. 

While current governance arrangements remain a crazy quilt of overlapping activities, this book seeks to describe and analyze the activities of many new actors in international politics in the realm of sustainable development. It highlights many of their activities, difficulties, challenges and reviews their role in international governance, as well as raising new theoretical and empirical puzzles for the future study of globalization and the formulation of policies for global issues.

This book addresses the various new channels of multilateral environmental governance that have appeared within an increasingly globalized international system at the beginning of 21st Century. While states ultimately continue to make and enforce international law, they are increasingly dependent upon multilateral institutions, organized science, NGOs and social movements, and business and industry for formulating their views and for conducting policy. It is the emerging forces emanating from this multiplicity of actors that facilitate institutional synergisms in environmental governance. This book focuses on clarifying the key actors and the governance functions they perform in addressing environmental threats.

• Norichika Kanie is an associate professor of International Relations at Tokyo Institute of Technology.

• Peter M. Haas is Professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

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