Reading the available evidence on the implementation of the European Water Framework Directive (WFD), one gets the impression that some countries anticipate implementation problems by starting off pragmatically and with relatively low ambitions, while others make a quick and ambitious start and tend to slow down in later phases of the process. Inspired by Lundqvist's classical study of air pollution policy in the USA and Sweden, we assess the importance of some general characteristics of the respective political-institutional systems to explain differences in WFD implementation in four EU countries: Denmark, France, England/ Wales and the Netherlands. We conclude, among other things, that visibility of the policy process, accountability of politicians and policy makers vis-a`-vis their stakeholders and the EU, division of responsibilities for policy formulation vs. implementation and the involvement of the public explain the level of ambition in EU implementation to a considerable extent. Thus, the Lundqvist variables turn out to be useful for both classifying and explaining differences in EU implementation processes.

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Joint Venture schemes based on the floppy irrigation technology are being promoted in the post-Apartheid South Africa's Limpopo Province. Access to land and water resources in South Africa are largely viewed as a mechanism for re-dressing the Apartheid injustices. This research was part of a broader applied research to help inform irrigation practise in the Limpopo Province. The research used literature review, key informant interviews and a questionnaire survey. The overall research question sought to understand how the Joint Venture Schemes had benefited the smallholder farmers. This paper argues that the joint venture partnership created a new injustice. Firstly, the Joint Venture Scheme design is fundamentally a bad idea which disempower farmers not only to water access but also land as well. The choice of the ‘efficient’ floppy irrigation technology was made by the state and entailed that land had to be managed as a single unit. In order to make more effective use of this highly sophisticated new technology, the smallholder farmers also needed to go into a joint venture partnership with a white commercial farmer. By virtue of signing the Joint Venture agreement the farmers were also forfeiting their land and water rights to be used for crop production. The smallholder farmers lost access to their water and land resources and were largely relegated to sharing profits – when they exist - with hardly any skills development despite what was initially envisaged in the Joint Venture partnership. Secondly, the implementation of the JVS has been skewed from the start which explains the bad results. This paper further shows how the negative outcomes affected women in particular. As the smallholder farmers argue the technological options chosen by the state have excluded both male and female farmers from accessing and utilising their land and water resources in order to improve their livelihoods; it has entrenched the role of the state and the private interests at the expense of the smallholder male and female farmers in whose name the irrigation funding was justified. The paper concludes by offering recommendations on how joint venture schemes can be genuinely participatory and meaningfully address the rural livelihoods

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Du fait de leur forte concentration dans certaines zones en France, les productions avicoles et porcines sont associées à de nombreux problèmes environnementaux dus à l’épandage de leurs rejets. Outre la quantité brute de rejets, leur composition, notamment en azote, phosphore et oligoéléments, est une source de pollution des eaux et des sols. Jusqu’ici, les solutions envisagées pour réduire ces rejets portaient soit sur le traitement a posteriori des rejets, soit sur la réduction des rejets en amont, essentiellement en modifiant les régimes alimentaires des animaux. La sélection d’animaux produisant moins de rejets n’était en revanche envisagée que comme un sous-produit de l’amélioration de l’efficacité alimentaire de l’animal. Le but de cette synthèse est donc de faire un tour d’horizon des différentes voies d’amélioration génétique permettant de réduire quantitativement les rejets ou d’améliorer leur composition pour produire un fertilisant organique écologique. La sélection indirecte de caractères liés à l’efficacité de la digestion ou au métabolisme de l’animal est abordée dans un premier temps. Dans un deuxième temps, nous présentons les premiers résultats montrant qu’il est possible de sélectionner directement sur la composition des rejets.

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Given the existence of a thriving epistemic community on water sciences, the high politicization of environmental issues in the country as well as the active mobilization of a grassroot movement inspired by environmental justice, South Africa appears to be an ideal case to study the development of a political ecology (PE) approach. Moreover, since the apartheid regime, water issues have long represented a marker of extreme inequality.This paper aims at drawing a panorama of the PE of water in South Africa, its main topics and approaches. In our definition, the PE of water is concerned with human-environment relations, with explicit considerations for power relations. In the first section, we identified texts that, according to this definition, constitute the core of the PE of water in South Africa, going beyond a mere "politics of water." In the second section and in the discussion, we undertook an in-depth analysis of the main topics addressed by authors, such as environmental flows, "free basic water policy," prepaid water meters. PE of water is strongly connected to international debates about the link between water and power, but also capable of addressing in a critical way the specificities of the South African waterscape. It stems from this review that critical PE in urban settings in particular dominates the discipline. We could also note that the PE of water in rural areas tends to put a bigger emphasis on the "politics of ecology" whereas urban PE tends to focus more on the "ecology in politics," although both thrive to examine the human-environment relations in an integrated manner.