This introductory chapter provides a rationale for the book, presents definitions of co-management and considers its theoretical foundations, identified as common property theory and decentralisation. These informed the identification of concepts reviewed, which are set out in a section explaining the content and structure of the book. Reflections are also included on related approaches and terminology to co-management, noting that even community-based natural resource management approaches involve collaboration between communities and government and so the term ‘co-management’ is used in a broad sense, referring to multiple forms of collaborative natural resource governance. The chapter also includes a section on what concepts are understood to be and the processes suggested for forming, reconstructing and analysing concepts. These processes informed the method undertaken in reviewing the meaning and use of concepts, and in generating insights into co-management from concept definitions and applications presented in the subsequent chapters.

Government is inevitably a key actor in the co-management of renewable natural resources. However, government is not monolith and many parts of government and the state may be involved in co-management, including multiple government ministries, local as well as central government, the judiciary and police. This chapter considers the roles of government in co-management and how these are influenced by political ideology on the size and remit of government. The chapter examines how the concepts of state and bureaucracy have been defined and how bureaucrats, referred to as ‘street-level bureaucrats’, involved in policy implementation have been associated with interpreting and adjusting policy and legislation. The chapter introduces the related concept of ‘interface bureaucrats’, referring to officials at the level of decentralized government navigating the government–citizen interface. Implications of insights on the role and nature of central and local government for the practice and outcomes of co-management are identified.

Three concepts associated with ‘good governance’, referring to the quality of governance processes and outcomes, are examined in this chapter: accountability, legitimacy and trust. For each concept, definitions are reviewed and characteristics identified. The chapter investigates accountability through key themes of complexity and challenges associated with delivering on downward accountability in the context of decentralisation. Complexity arises from the number and range of actors involved in co-management, situated at different administrative levels, with multiple demands on and mechanisms for accountability. Different forms of legitimacy and trust are introduced and reviewed, including input, output and throughput legitimacy and dispositional, rational, affinitive and procedural forms of trust. Challenges to delivering and maintaining legitimacy and trust in the context of co-management and solutions to these are identified.

The context of natural resource governance is often of uncertainty and change, even more so as the effects of climate change become ever more experienced. Adaptive governance and adaptive co-management have emerged as responses to the need to cope with and adapt to new information and changing situations. The chapter reviews what is understood by these terms and approaches, and identifies key characteristics and related concepts, such as resilience and uncertainty. The centrality of knowledge for adaptive approaches is recognised, with the role of, and challenges to, community, or participatory, monitoring and use of local and traditional knowledge in co-management reviewed. Forms of social, or collective, learning are then identified, recognising that social learning may occur through experimental approaches or deliberation and that feedback from learning is essential for adaptive governance.

Tobacco, alcohol and foods of poor nutritional quality are major drivers of non-communicable diseases, and their regulation has become a central public health priority. Yet, unlike many hazardous products, they remain lawful, widely available and deeply embedded in social, cultural and economic life. The book explores how EU law mediates between these three competing dimensions of unhealthy lifestyles: health protection, market integration and ethical or cultural diversity. It addresses three core questions: the extent of the EU’s regulatory powers in this field, the balance struck between market-building and health objectives, and the accommodation within EU law of national diversity, moral choices and scientific uncertainty surrounding lifestyle practices.

Chapter 4 provides an historical overview of the content and objectives of the EU’s policy on unhealthy lifestyles. It distinguishes two periods. The first spans from the early days of European integration until the entry into force of the Treaty of Maastricht, in 1993. It is a period of negative integration: unhealthy products are regulated mostly through the prism of the TFEU internal market freedoms. One cannot yet speak of an EU ‘policy’ on the matter, in the sense of a deliberate and coordinated action made in response to the health burden associated with unhealthy lifestyles. This changes post-Maastricht, the second period, with the recognition of a formal competence for the EU in health matters. Unhealthy lifestyles are singled out as one of the key priorities of EU health action and a greater role is given to positive integration, with the adoption of various horizontal legislative instruments. Different approaches emerged for the three categories of products: while the declared goal is to bring tobacco consumption to a near end, alcohol consumption is considered to be a natural part of human life, not to be overly discouraged, with food and nutrition positioned somewhere in between.

Co-management is in essence about collaboration and participation. In this chapter, definitions are provided for each, with recurring themes identified from definitions of collaboration and collaborative governance. The chapter explores these key themes in relation to the ‘what, who, how and why’ of collaboration, moving to distinguish between cooperation, coordination and collaboration, the nature of leadership in collaboration and the relevance of scale. The chapter then moves on to review the meaning and practice of participation, reflecting on the ‘why, who, how and when’ of participation. Challenges to meaningful participation are identified, noting critique of the adoption of a mechanical, technical approach rather than recognising the political and empowering potential of participation.

Chapter 5 continues the overview through a different analytical lens. It investigates the EU’s toolbox, describing and classifying the regulatory tools used by the EU legislature across the different lifestyles. It identifies four main types of interventions: ban and composition requirements, tax and price measures, rules on advertising and promotion and rules on mandatory and voluntary information. Beyond this systematic description and classification, the chapter serves three aims. First, it confronts the regulatory tools used with the stated objectives of EU lifestyle policy, assessing their adequacy and suggesting possible reforms. Second, it highlights the significant regulatory disparities existing between lifestyle risk factors, critically evaluating the justifications for such differential treatment. Third, it shows how health and internal market objectives are intertwined in EU lifestyle policy, generating legal frictions.

International investment law is a regime in search of its identity. At the core of this search, a central role is played by ‘comparativism’ (or comparative reasoning) as a method of interpretation employed by investment tribunals. It explores how comparative reasoning fits into the theory of sources, and how this method is used by arbitral tribunals to convince their audience. The chapter finds that arbitral tribunals regularly rely on customary international law, general principles of law, as well as previous judicial decisions, when interpreting IIAs provisions. However, in doing so, arbitral tribunals display a selectivity in the choice of domestic rules or systems considered for this purpose. Relatedly, when relying on previous judicial decisions, they do not always enquire sufficiently into the similarity (or lack thereof) between the past judicial decisions and the present issue at hand. The chapter concludes that arbitral tribunals rely on comparative reasoning to strengthen or justify the choices made in the course of interpretation.

This chapter focuses on the composition and Islamic reception of the Sasanian Zīj al-Shāh, an astronomical handbook apparently first composed at the court of the Sasanian king Khusrō I in the sixth century. The Zīj al-Shāh’s Indian and Greek sources are investigated, as well as the versions in which it was available to Islamic-era scholars, and the role this work and others played in transmitting Indian learning to the Sasanian and early Islamic Middle East. The possibility that the reports regarding the Zīj al-Shāh and other works shed new light on the history of astral science in India is also explored.

The range of methods that courts can use for the interpretation of customary law is in principle no different than that applicable to other sources of international law, and these methods roughly correspond to those enumerated in articles 31-33 VCLT. At the same time, not all these methods are suitable for the interpretation of customary rules of international environmental law (IEL). Most environmental rules have by their inception an inherent constraint with regards to teleological interpretation as they yield to a number of considerations beyond simply the protection of the environment. In light of this, international courts and tribunals have interpreted customary environmental rules in expansive as well as regressive ways, oscillating between these two tendencies. When interpreting expansively, courts take into account developments that appear to affect the rule in question and push it to catch up with these developments. In contrast, regressive interpretation involves а backward looking approach where the courts are content with offering an interpretation that diverges from the standards surrounding the rule and renders a more conservative version of it.