Welcome to the new edition of MEPIELAN E-Bulletin.

We are gratified that the previous editions have been so well received by many readers. Nearly a year after the MEPIELAN E-Bulletin’s launch, there have been over 5.500 visits to the Bulletin’s website from 133 countries worldwide. Once more, I wish to express my gratitude and thanks to all those who have been instrumental in the success of this Bulletin.

Each time we are striving to offer contributions from a variety of perspectives and approaches. Commited to serve the vision of this Bulletin, we provide a dynamic forum for inter-disciplinary knowledge and discussion, engaging international scholars, enlightened policy makers and promising young researchers in addressing critical environmental issues from the standpoint of promoting and developing international common interest. This edition is featured by several new articles, along with the steady stream of thematic news and the presentation of selected new, knowledge-advancing books. A Guest Article written by Peter M. Haas, Professor of Political Science, University of Massachusetts Amherst, offers an insightful and critical  view of the effort of the next global environmental conference “Rio Plus 20” to accelerate the shift to a “green economy” and institutional reform arrangements, “a seriously disjoined agenda” as he calls it, underlining their deficiencies in view of the indispensable need for building the social capacity for sustainable development and for broadening the discussion for institutional reform extending it beyond the monotonous UN restructuring.

Welcome to the latest edition of MEPIELAN E-Bulletin.

We are gratified that the previous edition has been so well received by many readers. Nearly six months after the MEPIELAN E-Bulletin’s launch, there have been over 3.700 visits to the Bulletin’s website from 118 countries worldwide. Once again, I wish to express my gratitude to all those who provide us with continuous and valuable feedback and comments, an aspect that may emerge as a promising component of this Bulletin.

Each time we are striving to offer contributions from many perspectives, thus offering a dynamic forum for inter-disciplinary knowledge and discussion, and adequately serving the vision of this Bulletin and its critical as well as its theoretical undertaking. This edition is featured by several new articles, along with the steady stream of thematic news and the presentation of selected new, knowledge-advancing books. A Guest Article written by Professor Moira McConnell who perceptively explores the importance and special features of the ILO’s Maritime Labour Convention, 2006, in advancing an integrated approach to international environmental governance, as it covers the regime gap of the LOSC regime and complements the major IMO conventional maritime regimes, effectively injecting into them the human condition as distinct from human activities. Two new Insight Articles also feature this edition: Dr. Elli Louka, sheds light on the multifaceted aspects of management and disposal of nuclear materials that come out of weapons programs focusing on the regime of the Plutonium Disposition Agreement between the United States and Russia (2000) and its recent, more adapting, 2010 Protocol, addressing the context and the problems of the application of this regime in light of its unique technical characteristics and overtones and its distinct safety and environmental dimensions. Professor Dimitris Chryssochoou usefully theorizes on the new sovereignty discourse, bringing forward the individual-collective quality of sovereignty in a governance perspective thus providing more creative space for the challenging approach to consider global system as “an ordered plurality” – a critical point, in my view, to understand the nature and functioning of international (environmental) order as a process of governance of international common interest. Last, Ms. Theano Maneta  provides an interesting presentation of the Final Report of the U.S. National Commission, appointed by President Obama, on the causes of the Gulf of Mexico disaster and the future of offshore drilling.