Currently, the Euro-Mediterranean region is facing not only significant political, economical, and social challenges, but also an ever-growing environmental degradation that have made environmental and resource protection an increasingly critical issue. These issues have re-energized the debate on the Euro-Mediterranean integration process through concrete cooperative projects in many sectors, especially those concerned with environmental awareness, assessment, and improvement. This integration process is intended to make decision makers from related sectors aware of the importance of integrating environmental considerations into their respective activities. To reach this goal, the development gap between the northern and southern coasts of the Mediterranean should be reduced and new and closer political, economical, social, cultural, and, most importantly, scientific ties between these two shores should be created founded on common concerns.

In this context, and with the specific aim to promote Euro-Mediterranean scientific partnership so as to develop and integrate environmental research and findings into the activities of related sectors in the region, a group of Euro-Mediterranean scientists have recently launched the Euro-Mediterranean Journal for Environmental Integration. This Springer journal, which started in 2016, has been now indexed in the Web of Science ESCI. It offers a scientific platform for presenting and discussing the latest advances in research with a focus on emerging environmental issues and challenges in the region. In particular, this first regional journal from the Euro-Mediterranean, encompassing all disciplines of the earth and environmental sciences, seeks to make societies and decision makers from related sectors aware of the importance of integrating environmental considerations into their respective activities. In this context, the journal provides a scientific forum that promotes the exchange of knowledge and fosters collaborations to improve the consistency of environmental management efforts between the countries of the northern and southern shores of the Mediterranean.

To further strengthen Euro-Mediterranean environmental integration, the journal’s Editors continue the success of the 1^st and 2^nd Euro-Mediterranean Conference for Environmental Integration (EMCEI-2017 and EMCEI-2019, respectively) and organize this year the 3^rd (EMCEI-2021), in close collaboration with Springer and several partners in the region. The conference aims to gather new research contributions from all disciplines of earth and environmental sciences by scientists from diverse backgrounds, and thus makes an essential contribution towards ensuring that science and knowledge contribute to the promotion of a more sustainable environment for the Euro-Mediterranean and surrounding regions.