By 2050, around 70% of the world's population of 9,2 billion people is expected to live in an urban environment. Especially in developing countries this increasing population and expanding cities pose great challenges with respect to access to clean drinking water,...
Expanding cities in developing countries pose great challenges on drinking water, sanitation, waste water and protection against floods. On request of UN Habitat, PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency has published ‘Towards a world of cities in 2050’. Progress may...
Climate policies must consider radiative forcing from Kyoto greenhouse gases, as well as other forcing constituents, such as aerosols and tropospheric ozone that result from air pollutants. Non-Kyoto forcing constituents contribute negative, as well as positive forcing, and...
The role of submarine groundwater discharge (SGD), the leakage of groundwater from aquifers into coastal waters, in coastal eutrophication has been demonstrated mostly for the North American and European coastlines, but poorly quantified in other regions. Here, we present the...
Each year, the world is startled by floods occurring somewhere on the planet. Of all natural disasters floods affect the most people, in one way or another. Floods cause major damage. Well-known insurance company Munich Re has estimated a loss of USD 60 billion for 2011...
The EU has set itself the ambition of an 80% reduction of greenhouse gases by 2050. Such a drastic reduction requires a much more vigorous renewal of the energy system. Setting a target for emission reduction alone is not enough This needs to be complemented by policies and...
In river basins, soils, groundwater, riparian zones and floodplains, streams, rivers, lakes and reservoirs act as successive filters in which the hydrology, ecology and biogeochemical processing are strongly coupled and together act to retain a significant fraction of the...
The water footprint indicator for products, consumers and countries has been used to raise awareness about global-scale water appropriation for the production of goods. The indicator, however, does not reflect environmental impact. The local context is essential for making...
Although energy markets are interlinked and energy companies operate internationally, European countries have a strong national focus in their climate and energy policies. Countries have little regard for the impact of their national policy measures on neighbouring countries...
Disasters such as floods, storms, heatwaves and droughts may have serious implications for human health and the economic development of countries. One of the main findings of this report is that disaster burdens are dominated by economic and demographic developments, rather...
