In the history of international environmental law, the 1920s and 1930s and the role of the League of Nations have been neglected so far.

The chapter explores they ways the League, as one of the first institutions of its kind, started to discuss nature protection. It reveals the dilemmas of environmental and industrial–economic interest of a world that strove to overcome the aftermath of the Great War. Furthermore, the authors study the political, legal and institutional motivations that play a role in the discussions. Pressing problems – overfishing, whaling, destruction of wildlife, pollution of the coasts and seas – were brought to the attention of the League. The chapter analyses the League’s role in drafting the first conventions aiming at regulating the use of the global commons and setting the stage for future environmental governance.

Moreover, the chapter sheds light on the unique role played by transnational organizations, NGOs, civil society groups and non-state actors in campaigns and efforts for the protection of nature and the environment, and for the preservation of natural resources in a fast-changing world.

This chapter provides a brief overview of the international law relating to liability for environmental damage, and identifies, on a preliminary basis, potential issues arising in developing and applying liability rules in respect of environmental damage in areas beyond national jurisdiction (ABNJ). The chapter provides an overview of the current legal and institutional arrangements governing the ABNJ that are the focus of the book -- Antarctica, the deep seabed and the high seas – as well as highlighting some of the environmental risks posed to these areas by current and prospective activities.

This chapter examines the ICJ’s influence on international environmental law. Drawing on concrete examples, the author identifies six ways in which the Court’s jurisprudence has contributed to environmental law: by articulating foundational principles; by acting as a gatekeeper for customary international law; by elaborating existing principles; by interpreting environmental agreements; by valuing environmental harms; and by incorporating environmental considerations into other areas of international law. The author reflects on potential future evolutions of the Court’s role in the international environmental law space, given the increasing number of disputes that the Court has addressed in this field in recent years.

Using Joyce’s oeuvre as a sample case, Robert Spoo’s chapterenvisions a new global commons.From James Joyce’s lawsuit against Samuel Roth in 1927 to the decisions in the case between Carol Schloss and the Joyce Estate in 2000s, Joyce has served as the exemplar of issues around copyright in modernist literature. Following his recent history of American protectionist copyright law and public domain, Spoo first maps out the new possibilities for critical readings and publication following the passage of Joyce’s works into the public domain, following the expiration of copyright in most European Union countries on January 1, 2012. He will then sketch the recently emerged contradictions of international public domain. In response to this situation, which he calls “tragedy of the uncoordinated global commons,” Spoo will follow the precedent of Ezra Pound’s 1918 proposed statute to reform US copyright law, which combined perpetual, exclusive copyright with expansive compulsory licenses that required fixed royalties on sales, and offer a proposal for the global circulation of literature based on a reworked notion of the earlier US practice of “trade courtesy.” The chapter closes by arguing that a fertile public domain, in which creative resources are made accessible through cooperation and sharing, is essential to the future of modernism and of modernism scholarship.

Elinor Ostrom pointed out significance of rule structures, and the need for institutional diversity in addressing commons problems.This is particularly true in relation to the governance of large-scale commons resources and one global commons that requires attention is the economic system.We share the institutional arrangements that generate economic benefits but neither the wealth generated by the system, nor the negative impacts, are shared equally.The result is an economic system focused on the privatisation of shared resources that generates inequalities around the globe. This paper explores the economic system as a ‘co-created’ commons.The paper brings together two broad strands of literature on commons: one arising from the public trust doctrine, and the other based on the economic characteristics of a good or service in terms of its access (‘excludability’) and consumption (‘subtractability’).The paper links these concepts with more recent work on ‘productive commons’, where shared resources are generated through collaborative activity, and ideas from evolutionary economics, which explore the economic system as a process and structure of rules, rather than as a series of transactions based on the allocation of property rights.Evidence is provided to support the argument that commons are an integral element of the economic system, and as a result account for some of its efficiencies and, where rule structures fail, for negative impacts on socio-economic and ecological systems.

Many leading environmental and security concerns now facing the international community may be traced to the frontiers, that is, the areas historically outside of national jurisdiction including the deep seabed, outer space, Antarctica, the atmosphere, and some argue, cyberspace. From climate change and cyber attacks to the associated challenges of space weaponization and orbital debris mitigation, solutions to all of these issues have at their root some form of regulation over the frontiers, sometimes – though not always accurately – called the “global commons.” Governance is transitioning away from consensual United Nations–centered multilateral treaties to regional and bilateral accords. These burgeoning regime complexes are being influenced by the multipolar state of international relations, advancing technology, and resource scarcity. Environmental and security challenges are proliferating as a result of governance being in flux. This chapter distills recent research on these topics and makes an original contribution by comparing and contrasting some of the principal issues facing these frontiers of the international community, analyzing how and why existing governance structures are often failing to adequately meet global collective action problems, and proposing a new way forward incorporating lessons from successful regimes as well as the interdisciplinary scholarship on polycentric governance.

This chapter introduces the governance of the frontiers, with a special focus on cybersecurity and Internet governance, by first exploring the application of commons principles to these unique environments. This examination begins by defining key concepts such as “commons,” “pseudo commons,” “public goods,” “club goods,” and “common-pool resources,” before moving on to analyze commons governance through the lens of the economics, political science, and legal literatures. Specifically, the chapter discusses the applicability of law and economics concepts such as property rights, use rights, and transaction costs to the traditional global commons (including the deep seabed, Antarctica, outer space, and the atmosphere) as well as to cyberspace. The evolution of sovereignty in these areas is also summarized with a particular emphasis on how cyberspace is distinct from other commons spaces and what that portends for management. Finally, the field of polycentric institutional analysis is introduced along with its application to cyberspace. It is the purview of Chapter 1 to provide an introduction both to the primary characteristics involved in the governance of the managed and unmanaged global commons and to how these concepts apply (and do not apply) to cyberspace.