​Introduction.- Legal Methods towards Water Sustainability.- Legal Methods of Water-related Climate Change Adaptation.- Mainstreaming Climate Change Adaptation in the IWRM.- Setting the Legal and Institutional Environment.- Recommendations – Two Key Entry Points.

​This book addresses why, whether and how the existing legal framework on water management in China could make climate change adaptation a mainstream issue. The book uses a table to illustrate the distinctions and similarities between IWRM and water-centered adaptation to analyze the possibilities of mainstreaming adaptation. The new water-planning processes and EIA are also illustrated in the form of figures showing the differences after factoring in adaptation considerations. Interviews with water managers to obtain their perception and attitudes towards climate change adaptation offer new perspectives for readers. The adaptation- mainstreaming approach, which finds a way to balance various interests and tasks, will arouse the interests of those readers who argue that climate change is only one of the issues challenging water management, and that poverty reduction, environmental protection and living standard improvement are even more important. Readers will also be interested to discover that the adaptation mainstreaming approach could be applied in water management institutions such as water planning and EIA. In addition, the book offers a clear explanation of the challenges of adaptation to the existing water-related legal framework from a theoretical perspective, and provides theoretical and practical recommendations.

Thorough and in-depth analysis of the rationale of adaptation mainstreaming Provides readers with a theoretical basis for confidently managing adverse climate change impacts Two entry points of adaptation mainstreaming in the IWRM enable readers to put recommendations in practice Theoretical and empirical analysis of mainstreaming equips readers with the capacity to reduce vulnerability and adapt to variability Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras