This chapter examines the contextual elements of article 2(4) of the UN Charter and the requirement that a prohibited ‘threat or use of force’ be in ‘international relations’. It analyses the meaning of this term and whether it requires that the object of a prohibited use of force be another State and draws conclusions about the types of acts that fall within and outside the scope of this term (and thus the scope of article 2(4)). The type of acts discussed include use of force on another State’s territory or against its extraterritorial sovereign manifestations, to reclaim disputed territory not within de facto control, those in violation of international demarcation lines, those directly arising from a political dispute between States, use of force by a State within its own territory against its own population, in the exercise of law enforcement jurisdiction against private foreign actors, against entities falling short of Statehood, those with no nexus to another State (such as against an international organisation or on terra nullius) and the use of force within a State’s own territory against small-scale incursion by another State’s armed forces.

This chapter’s overall argument is that to advance cultural-historical activity theory, at this time of a severe sociopolitical and ecological crisis, it is imperative to amplify connections to the radical scholarships of resistance immersed in social justice struggles. I address how Marxism and Vygotsky’s approach directly align with this scholarship, on an array of positions, in contrast to approaches that do not prioritize such struggles. Using the transformative-activist stance (Stetsenko, 2017a) - premised on Marxist/Vygotskyan foundations, inclusive of a unified ethico-ontoepistemology - and while connecting to contemporary scholarship of resistance, I further the notion of agency in several steps (relevant also to motives). The core argument posits agency at the nexus of a seamless, ever-evolving/moving process of a mutual self-and-world co-realization, while problematizing reality as a task and gearing agency to the tasks of resistance. Additionally, the chapter sets the stage to interrogate charges of eurocentrism and anthropocentrism in Marx and Vygotsky.

This chapter presents the fundamental theoretical principles of Role and Reference Grammar. The exposition does not presuppose any previous familiarity with RRG, and it ties in with the relevant chapters in the Handbook. After a discussion of theoretical assumptions, the theory of syntactic structure, including clauses, phrases and words, is presented in detail, with new data not found in previous expositions of the theory. The presentation includes the structure of both simple and complex sentences. The next major section concerns semantic representation, and this includes the representation of simple clauses, semantics roles and interclausal semantic relations. There follows a very short mention of the notion of information structure; the reader is referred to two other chapters which present these ideas in detail. The final section concerns the linking between syntax and semantics in simple and complex sentences. The issue of representing language-specific vs. cross-linguistically valid grammatical information is a major theme of this section. RRG’s approach involving constructional schemata is quite distinct from that of mainstream construction grammar.

This chapter offers an in-depth treatment of clause linkage and complex sentences in RRG. First, it discusses and exemplifies each nexus–juncture type, adducing evidence from a wide range of languages. Then, it introduces the notion of syntactic and semantic cohesiveness in clause linkage and makes relevant generalizations and predictions.

The claim that there exists a complex ‘nexus’ linking water and other global challenges has become a commonplace of discourse on resource governance. But how should the relations between water and cognate areas be understood? This final main chapter of the book takes up this question by examining the four main relations underpinning water security and insecurity today: with trade, agricultural production, energy and capital. The chapter considers these four relations in turn, in each case providing an overall mapping of the 'transformations and circulations' that define them and an assessment of how they shape water-related (in)securities, especially in the book's five divided environments. The chapter argues that water is much more a dependent than an independent variable in nexus relations and that patterns of water (in)security are determined neither by natural availability nor market efficiencies, but instead by countries’ positionings within a structurally unequal and hierarchical capitalist world order. Against neo-liberal arguments, the chapter thus argues that contemporary capitalist nexus relations are a central part of the problem of water – and climate – security.

Undergraduate research requires students to address key contemporary issues that challenge democratic society: how knowledge develops, how truth is established, and the importance of values and relationships within the scientific endeavor. This chapter argues that undergraduate research rests on, and has grown as a consequence of, changes in how knowledge is produced, including the freeing of disciplinary boundedness and the democratization of knowledge production. The latter is fundamental to undergraduate research because it raises questions about the relationship of research to society. It critically questions who the scholars are in universities and challenges elitist notions regarding the generation of knowledge. The chapter argues that fundamental philosophical challenges that underpin traditional research, and still persist in research practice, have provided opportunities for new forms of research and pedagogy. As such, undergraduate research has the capacity to transform students’ lives and to teach them how to live and work in a complex society characterized by ambiguity and unpredictability.

Agriculture, as the primary user of the world’s water resources, bears great promise in coping with water scarcity. Agriculture’s sub-sectors, such as plant production, livestock, and aquaculture, can significantly improve their practices that can lead to water savings, conservation of natural resources, climate change benefits, and co-benefits and can still increase levels of productivity and production to cater for a growing population. Accomplishing this requires a major change in the way we manage our water, land, and soil resources. We underline the key benefits of holistic approaches such as IWRM, nexus, and integrated landscape management, and provide examples from replicable practices.

Chapter 5 examines the traditional Islamic rules on jurisdiction. Modern rules on the jurisdiction of domestic courts exist in the context of the system of States, whereas the historic Islamic rules on jurisdiction and the assumptions upon which they were based relate to a system which was premised upon an imperial ideal that approached core concepts of modern Private International Law from different vantage points. The manner and extent to which pre-modern substantive rules, coupled with an imperial imagination, have permeated into the modern domestic law of Muslim Family Law States differs between such states, but nonetheless reveals a shared problem that we suggest animates the ongoing debates around the 1980 Hague Abduction Convention. Policies of ‘Islamisation’ pursued in certain Muslim Family Law States have at various times sought to reintroduce selected interpretations of Islam into the areas of domestic law pertinent to the study. Thus, the process is not necessarily a linear one over time where the historic rules have become marginalised, but rather one where there is an ebb and flow over time – the extent of which differs between Muslim Family Law States.

Chapter 6 examines the Muslim Family Laws of the United Arab Emirates, Tunisia, and Malaysia in light of their jurisprudence on jurisdiction. The selection of these states represents a geographically, culturally, and legally diverse sample, across which Islamic Law remains legally relevant. The chapter examines how differing approaches to jurisdiction or child custody have been adopted and what the implications of these are or may be in the context of seeking to address international parental child abduction. The selected case studies highlight different approaches that lend themselves to finding solutions to addressing international parental child abductions. One matter that traverses all three case studies concerns the capacity of domestic judges, with subject matter jurisdiction on family law, to think jurisdictionally. As the case studies show, a key concern for policy-makers in Muslim Family Law States has been to consider a whole-of-law approach to jurisprudence. For others, the challenge lies in recognising the Muslim Family Law States as disaggregated institutionally, and to strategise approaches that are institution-specific.

This chapter analyses the two pillars of the Unified Approach and the Global Anti-Base Erosion Proposals in the light of alternative policy choices which were available to the OECD. These major alternative policy choices include destination-based cash-flow taxation, residual profit allocation by income, formulary apportionment and expanding the concept of permanent establishment. In each case these policies are explained and the advantages and disadvantages of the major policy discussed. Each policy is then analysed to see what it has contributed to the 2020s compromise and what further contribution it might make to international tax reform in the future.What emerges from this analysis is that key elements of the reform owe much to the destination basis of taxation present in the various alternative reform options and selectively adopted in particular by the Unified Approach in Pillar One.

This chapter analyses the two pillars of the Unified Approach and the Global Anti-Base Erosion Proposals in the light of alternative policy choices which were available to the OECD. These major alternative policy choices include destination-based cash-flow taxation, residual profit allocation by income, formulary apportionment and expanding the concept of permanent establishment. In each case these policies are explained and the advantages and disadvantages of the major policy discussed. Each policy is then analysed to see what it has contributed to the 2020s compromise and what further contribution it might make to international tax reform in the future.What emerges from this analysis is that key elements of the reform owe much to the destination basis of taxation present in the various alternative reform options and selectively adopted in particular by the Unified Approach in Pillar One.

This final chapter looks at the alternatives between unilateral digital services taxes and a multilateral consensus on international tax reform. It analyses the key features of digital services taxes and contrasts the advantages and disadvantages against a multilateral solution. Then it goes on to analyse five key future international tax trends that form part of the 2020s compromise and considers the tax implications in the light of the COVID-19 crisis.

This final chapter looks at the alternatives between unilateral digital services taxes and a multilateral consensus on international tax reform. It analyses the key features of digital services taxes and contrasts the advantages and disadvantages against a multilateral solution. Then it goes on to analyse five key future international tax trends that form part of the 2020s compromise and considers the tax implications in the light of the COVID-19 crisis.

This chapter outlines existing theories of company law and corporate governance and related insights that are used to frame the analysis in this book, including those of Adam Smith, Berle and Means, Coase, Klausner, Alchian & Demsetz, Jensen & Meckling, Hart, Roe and Bainbridge.

In this chapter, the second limitation of the human rights-based approach is examined. The chapter develops the argument that the human rights-based approach casts the personal scope of the refugee definition too widely, as anyone who is exposed to a 'sustained or systemic denial of human rights demonstrative of a failure of state protection' is, by definition, persecuted. Such a definition, however, incorporates a wide range of individuals who would not, having regard to the 'ordinary meaning' of the term, be described as 'persecuted', including people who die because of failures of the state to maintain effective disaster risk reduction infrastructure (as in the case of Budayeva v Russian Federation). The argument is advanced that this dominant definition of being persecuted misses what is fundamental to the experience of being persecuted within the meaning of the Refugee Convention. In this context, being persecuted cannot be understood without reference to the role of discrimination as a contributory cause of a person's exposure to serious denials of human rights. Employing the methodology at Articles 31-33 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, a recalibrated definition of being persecuted is articulated.

This chapter presents the results of a review of jurisprudence relating to refugee status determination in the context of disasters and climate change. A taxonomy of the kinds of circumstances in which a person may establish a well-founded fear of being persecuted for a Convention reason is constructed and relevant cases described. The chapter identifies a number of cases where individuals were recognised as being eligible for refugee status in the context of disasters and climate change. It notes that cases in which disasters and climate change form the backdrop to familiar examples of intentional infliction of harm for a Convention reason were far more successful than cases reflecting other failures of state protection. Significant attention is paid to jurisprudence from the New Zealand Immigration and Protection Tribunal owing to the clear and principled human rights-based methodology it articulates. However, limitations in the human rights-based approach are identified, and these limitations are examined closely in subsequent chapters.