Sendas de desarrollo bajas en carbono en ciudades metropolitanas de América Latina

El cambio climático tendrá importantes consecuencias sobre el desarrollo urbano de los países de América Latina durante el presente siglo, y las necesidades de limitar las emisiones de Gases de Efecto Invernadero (GEI) y de adaptarse a las nuevas condiciones climáticas impondrán desafíos que incidirán significativamente en las formas de desarrollo urbano y territorial en la región. En este contexto, resulta fundamental para las ciudades construir sendas de desarrollo urbano bajo en carbono, para transitar hacia economías que sean verdes y, a la vez, resilientes. El presente estudio mira los avances que han realizados los gobiernos nacionales y locales de la región para transitar hacia un desarrollo urbano bajo en carbono. Tiene como principal objetivo identificar y proponer medidas sectoriales específicas adicionales que contribuyan a la construcción de una senda de desarrollo baja en carbono en ciudades de América Latina; para ello se seleccionan las ciudades de Santiago-Chile, Sao Paulo-Brasil y Ciudad de México-México. Asimismo, se realiza una evaluación econométrica de las medidas propuestas para cada una de las ciudades, donde se analiza su contribución respecto de los niveles de emisiones de GEI y su costo.

El Sistema de Protección Social Universal de El Salvador: posibilidades para la articulación de sus componentes

El gobierno de El Salvador está elaborando los ejercicios de planificación requeridos en el sector de la protección social para orientar las políticas y programas sociales durante la presente administración. Entre tales ejercicios destacan el Plan Quinquenal de Desarrollo (PQD) y el Plan de Desarrollo Social, en el contexto de los mandatos de la Ley de Desarrollo y Protección Social (LDPS), entre otras disposiciones legales. A solicitud y en contacto con la Secretaría Técnica de la Presidencia, se ha solicitado la elaboración de un estudio que partiendo de los mandatos, objetivos y acciones previstas, analice los desafíos y oportunidades para la articulación de los pilares contributivo y no contributivo del actual Sistema de Protección Social Universal (SPSU), y señale recomendaciones o posibles líneas de acción para avanzar hacia una mayor articulación. Precisamente, el gran reto de la protección social en El Salvador pareciera estar en la efectiva articulación de los pilares contributivo y no contributivo, en otras palabras en cómo lograr que los participantes del segundo pasen a formar parte del primero y aporten a su sostenimiento al insertarse en un mercado laboral que les pudiera ofrecer condiciones dignas y la posibilidad de una pensión.

Desafíos de la seguridad hídrica en América Latina y el Caribe

El estudio procede a identificar los desafíos que debe enfrentar la gestión del agua en la región para alcanzar una adecuada seguridad hídrica. Dichos desafíos se relacionan con los acelerados cambios sociales, económicos y políticos que experimentan las sociedades de América Latina y el Caribe.

Valoración y gobernanza de los proyectos geotérmicos en América del Sur: una propuesta metodológica

El presente documento contiene un análisis de la situación del sector geotérmico en América delSur, enfocado en la generación geotermo-eléctrica, con identificación de los principales proyectos y con evaluación de todos los factores que los caracterizan, desde el punto de vista histórico, del recurso, de su accesibilidad, y de las condiciones de entorno institucional, social, ambiental y de mercado.

O programa de municipalização do ensino fundamental no estado do Pará e seus efeitos na gestão educacional do município de Altamira

O trabalho estuda a política de municipalização de ensino, através de um movimento histórico e interpretativo, cujo propósito é caracterizar as tendências municipalizadoras da educação brasileira que procuraram imprimir aos municípios o papel prioritário na oferta da educação infantil e do ensino fundamental no país. A partir desta incursão, o estudo parte para uma análise do programa de municipalização do ensino no Estado do Pará, mostrando os principais objetivos e características da proposta implementada pelo Governo do Estado no final da década de 1990, que, principalmente a partir da aprovação do Fundef, investiu na radicalização do processo de municipalização no estado. Para evidenciar os efeitos desse programa na realidade da gestão municipal da educação, esta investigação toma como campo de pesquisa o Município de Altamira, onde procurou desvelar quais os delineamentos tomados pela política educacional do município a partir da assinatura do Convênio de Cooperação Técnica acordado entre a Prefeitura Municipal e a Secretaria Executiva de Educação e que alterou os rumos da educação municipal. A pesquisa pretende contribuir para a compreensão da política de municipalização, relacionando-a com as injunções estruturais, visando refletir sobre as especificidades que demarcam a tríplice relação entre as políticas nacionais, o caráter estadual e o contexto municipal.

Cooperação Técnica Internacional e Financiamento Externo: Aportes Teóricos

The main objective of this article is to suggest a conceptual taxonomy of thegenerically called International Technical Cooperation (ITC) and Foreign Financial Aid (FFA) phenomena, which will have the pretension to ease their comprehension and their practical consequences for the Brazilian society and for the national State. Insofar, wheninduced by a dynamical structural change in the international society, some Brazilianfederated sectors, specially, municipalities, by the exercise of so-called paradiplomacy or federated diplomacy, are developing public management instruments to acquire resources through ITC and FFA experiences, without making a reflexive thought about their benefits and their consequences.

Relações exteriores da Guiné-Bissau: um estudo das relações bilaterais Guiné-Bissau/Brasil (1974-2014)

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

A presença brasileira na América do Sul: ações e instrumentos de política externa

In this paper, the performance of Brazilian foreign policy in South America during the governments of Lula da Silva (2003-2010) and Rousseff (2011-2014) is discussed. It is showed that this activity has expanded in areas of greater consensus in the internal and external contexts. Thus, although with contradictions, initiatives to implement the infrastructure integration of transport, communications and energy into a political project, expansion of the role of the BNDES in the region and improvement of regional technical cooperation have been increasing.

ESSAYS ON INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT SPILLOVERS

The dissertation consists of three essays on international research and development spillovers. In the first essay, I investigate the degree to which differences in institutional arrangements among Sub-Saharan African countries determine the extent of benefits they derive from foreign research and development spillovers. In particular, I compare the international research and development spillovers for English common law and French civil law Sub-Saharan African countries. I show that differences in the legal origin of the company law or commercial codes in these countries may reflect the extent of barriers they place in the paths of firms that engage in the investment process. To tests this hypothesis, I constructed foreign R&D spillovers variable using imports as weights and employed the endogenous growth framework to estimate elasticities of productivity with respect to foreign R&D spillovers for a sample of 17 English common law and French Civil law Sub-Saharan African countries over the period 1980-2004. My results find support for the hypothesis. In particular, foreign R&D spillovers were higher in the English common law countries than in the French civil law countries. In the second essay, I examine the question of whether technical cooperation grants and overseas development assistance grants induce R&D knowledge spillovers in Sub-Saharan African countries. I test this hypothesis using data for 11 Sub-Saharan African countries over the period 1980-2004. I constructed foreign R&D spillovers using the technical cooperation grants and overseas development assistance grants as weights and employed the endogenous growth framework to provide quantitative estimates of foreign R&D spillover effects in 11 Sub-Saharan African countries. I find that technical cooperation grants and overseas development assistance grants are major mechanisms through which returns to R&D investments in G7 countries flows to Sub-Saharan African countries. However, their influence has declined over the years. Finally, the third essay tests the hypothesis that the relationship between a country's exporters and their foreign purchasing agents may lead to the exchange of ideas and thereby improve the manufacturing process and productivity in the exporting country. I test this hypothesis using disaggregated export data from OECD countries. The foreign R&D capital stock in this essay was constructed as exports weighted average of domestic R&D capital stock. I find empirical support for the hypothesis. In particular, capital goods exports generate more learning effects and therefore best explain productivity in OECD countries than non-capital goods exports.

Late entry into HIV care: lessons from Brazil, 2003 to 2006

Background: To ascertain the population rates and proportion of late entry into HIV care, as well as to determine whether such late entry correlates with individual and contextual factors. Methods: Data for the 2003-2006 period in Brazil were obtained from public health records. A case of late entry into HIV care was defined as one in which HIV infection was diagnosed at death, one in which HIV infection was diagnosed after the condition of the patient had already been aggravated by AIDS-related diseases, or one in which the CD4(+) T-cell count was <= 200 cells/mm(3) at the time of diagnosis. We also considered extended and stricter sets of criteria (in which the final criterion was <= 350 cells/mm(3) and <= 100 cells/mm(3), respectively). The estimated risk ratio was used in assessing the effects of correlates, and the population rates (per 100,000 population) were calculated on an annual basis. Results: Records of 115,369 HIV-infected adults were retrieved, and 43.6% (50,358) met the standard criteria for late entry into care. Diagnosis at death accounted for 29% (14,457) of these cases. Late entry into HIV care (standard criterion) was associated with certain individual factors (sex, age, and transmission category) and contextual factors (region with less economic development/increasing incidence of AIDS, lower local HIV testing rate, and smaller municipal population). Use of the extended criteria increased the proportion of late entry by 34% but did not substantially alter the correlations analyzed. The overall population rate of late entry was 9.9/100,000 population, specific rates being highest for individuals in the 30-59 year age bracket, for men, and for individuals living in regions with greater economic development/higher HIV testing rates, collectively accounting for more than half of the cases observed. Conclusions: Although the high proportion of late entry might contribute to spreading the AIDS epidemic in less developed regions, most cases occurred in large cities, with broader availability of HIV testing, and in economically developed regions.

Investigating Avian Influenza Infection Hotspots in Old-World Shorebirds

Heterogeneity in the transmission rates of pathogens across hosts or environments may produce disease hotspots, which are defined as specific sites, times or species associations in which the infection rate is consistently elevated. Hotspots for avian influenza virus (AIV) in wild birds are largely unstudied and poorly understood. A striking feature is the existence of a unique but consistent AIV hotspot in shorebirds (Charadriiformes) associated with a single species at a specific location and time (ruddy turnstone Arenaria interpres at Delaware Bay, USA, in May). This unique case, though a valuable reference, limits our capacity to explore and understand the general properties of AIV hotspots in shorebirds. Unfortunately, relatively few shorebirds have been sampled outside Delaware Bay and they belong to only a few shorebird families; there also has been a lack of consistent oropharyngeal sampling as a complement to cloacal sampling. In this study we looked for AIV hotspots associated with other shorebird species and/or with some of the larger congregation sites of shorebirds in the old world. We assembled and analysed a regionally extensive dataset of AIV prevalence from 69 shorebird species sampled in 25 countries across Africa and Western Eurasia. Despite this diverse and extensive coverage we did not detect any new shorebird AIV hotspots. Neither large shorebird congregation sites nor the ruddy turnstone were consistently associated with AIV hotspots. We did, however, find a low but widespread circulation of AIV in shorebirds that contrast with the absence of AIV previously reported in shorebirds in Europe. A very high AIV antibody prevalence coupled to a low infection rate was found in both first-year and adult birds of two migratory sandpiper species, suggesting the potential existence of an AIV hotspot along their migratory flyway that is yet to be discovered.

Challenges for nursing education in Angola: the perception of nurse leaders affiliated with professional education institutions

Background: Angola is one of the African countries with the highest morbidity and mortality rates and a devastating lack of human resources for health, including nursing. The World Health Organization stimulates and takes technical cooperation initiatives for human resource education and training in health and education, with a view to the development of countries in the region. The aim in this study was to identify how nurses affiliated with nursing education institutions perceive the challenges nursing education is facing in Angola. Methods: After consulting the National Directory of Human Resources in Angola, the nurse leaders affiliated with professional nursing education institutions in Angola were invited to participate in the study by email. Data were collected in February 2009 through the focus group technique. The group of participants was focused on the central question: what are the challenges faced for nursing education in your country? To register and understand the information, besides the use of a recorder, the reporters elaborated an interpretative report. Data were coded using content analysis. Results: Fourteen nurses participated in the meeting, most of whom were affiliated with technical nursing education institutions. It was verified that the nurse leaders at technical and higher nursing education institutions in Angola face many challenges, mainly related to the lack of infrastructure, absence of trained human resources, bureaucratic problems to regularize the schools and lack of material resources. On the opposite, the solutions they present are predominantly centered on the valuation of nursing professionals, which implies cultural and attitude changes. Conclusions: Public health education policies need to be established in Angola, including action guidelines that permit effective nursing activities. Professional education institutions need further regularizations and nurses need to be acknowledged as key elements for the qualitative enhancement of health services in the country.

What Happened to Participation? Urban Development and Authoritarian Upgrading in Cairo's Informal Neighbourhoods

Participation appeared in development discourses for the first time in the 1970s, as a generic call for the involvement of the poor in development initiatives. Over the last three decades, the initial perspectives on participation intended as a project method for poverty reduction have evolved into a coherent and articulated theoretical elaboration, in which participation figures among the paraphernalia of good governance promotion: participation has acquired the status of “new orthodoxy”. Nevertheless, the experience of the implementation of participatory approaches in development projects seemed to be in the majority of cases rather disappointing, since the transformative potential of ‘participation in development’ depends on a series of factors in which every project can actually differ from others: the ultimate aim of the approach promoted, its forms and contents and, last but not least, the socio-political context in which the participatory initiative is embedded. In Egypt, the signature of a project agreement between the Arab Republic of Egypt and the Federal Republic of Germany, in 1998, inaugurated a Participatory Urban Management Programme (PUMP) to be implemented in Greater Cairo by the German Technical Cooperation (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit, GTZ) and the Ministry of Planning (now Ministry of Local Development) and the Governorates of Giza and Cairo as the main counterparts. Now, ten years after the beginning of the PUMP/PDP and close to its end (December 2010), it is possible to draw some conclusions about the scope, the significance and the effects of the participatory approach adopted by GTZ and appropriated by the Egyptian counterparts in dealing with the issue of informal areas and, more generally, of urban development. Our analysis follows three sets of questions: the first set regards the way ‘participation’ has been interpreted and concretised by PUMP and PDP. The second is about the emancipating potential of the ‘participatory approach’ and its ability to ‘empower’ the ‘marginalised’. The third focuses on one hand on the efficacy of GTZ strategy to lead to an improvement of the delivery service in informal areas (especially in terms of planning and policies), and on the other hand on the potential of GTZ development intervention to trigger an incremental process of ‘democratisation’ from below.

Foreign Direct Investment in Agriculture: Land Grab or Food Security Improvement?

“Large-scale acquisition of land by foreign investors” is the correct term for a process where the verdict of guilt is often quicker than the examination. But is there something really new about land grab except in its extent? In comparison with colonial and post-colonial plantation operations, should foreign investors today behave differently? We generally accept coffee and banana exports as pro-growth and pro-development, just as for cars, beef and insurance. What then is wrong with an investment contract allowing the holder to buy a farm and to export wheat to Saudi Arabia, or soybeans and maize as cattle feed to Korea, or to plant and process sugar cane and palm oil into ethanol for Europe and China? Assuming their land acquisition was legal, should foreigners respect more than investment contracts and national legislation? And why would they not take advantage of the legal protection offered by international investment law and treaties, not to speak of concessional finance, infrastructure and technical cooperation by a development bank, or the tax holidays offered by the host state? Remember Milton Friedman’s often-quoted quip: “The business of business is business!” And why would the governments signing those contracts not know whether and which foreign investment projects are best for their country, and how to attract them? This chapter tries to show that land grab, where it occurs, is not only yet another symptom of regulatory failures at the national level and a lack of corporate social responsibility by certain private actors. National governance is clearly the most important factor. Nonetheless, I submit that there is an international dimension involving investor home states in various capacities. The implication is that land grab is not solely a question whether a particular investment contract is legal or not. This chapter deals with legal issues which seem to have largely escaped the attention of both human rights lawyers and, especially, of investment lawyers. I address this fragmentation between different legal disciplines, rules, and policies, by asking two basic questions: (i) Do governments and parliaments in investor home countries have any responsibility in respect of the behaviour of their investors abroad? (ii) What should they and international regulators do, if anything?