Número 36, may-ago 2015 Imprimir
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Editorial

Foundations and Debate

  • Thomas Pogge / Frances Moore / Jennifer Clapp / Molly Anderson / Robin Broad / Ellen Messer / Timothy Wise
    Critique to the international measurement of Hunger

    Abstract: With the aim of opening the perspective to the design of strategic policies in the fight against global hunger, this essay makes a critical assessment about the serious limitations in FAO´s measurement method. It shows that, contrary to what has raised this international organization, no progress is being made on the road leading to fulfill the Millennium Goal to Reduce Hunger in the world by 2015 to half referring to 1996. Even, conversely, it is demonstrated that the total of hungry people in the world, is more than 50% above the amount calculated by the FAO. From this historical evaluation, this paper propose different alternative strategic policies in combating world hunger.

  • Jorge Beinstein
    Oil crisis and global systemic decline

    Abstract: The recent fall in oil prices can be succeeded at any time by a dizzying climb then succeeded by a new fall. The oil market are overdetermined by four phenomena: firstly, the economic stagnation that cooled to numerous markets: Second, rigidities oil market unable to react with flexibility to supply and demand imbalances, wich resulting in jumps and falls disproportionate of its prices. Thirdly, the growing global geopolitical disorder and finally speculative movements of financial networks. All this leads to price volatility as expression of a larger entropic process involving the whole of world capitalism.

  • Werner Rügemer
    Global Effects of American labor restructuring

    Abstract: In american history, in the time of the New Deal, during the thirties, the State promoted the strengthening of trade union rights. However, since the Second World War onwards, the erosion of the rules and practices of the New Deal has been the rule. From the perspective of an international analysis can be seen that the US lags far behind the conventions signed at the UN to regulate the labor world. As a result of this process, the current minimum wage is the lowest in the last century of US history. It’s undeniable presence of poor among American workers sectors and, compared with other developed industrial states, the rights of organization and unionization of employees in the private sector is limited. In the developed world, the US is among the countries most affected by the job restructuring.

  • María Teresa Holguín / María del Pilar Sánchez
    The integrated management of the natural resources, water and soil, as strategy to mitigate the climate change impact

    Abstract: The integrated management of the natural resources, throughout different planning forms, should allow the systemic management of the ecosystems in a territory, the conservation of the environment for the remaining and future generations, and also, the sustainable development of a region. Some of these mechanisms in Colombia are the Land Use Plans (Planes de Ordenamiento Territorial –POT) and watersheds, which are analyzed in light of the governance, the energetic efficiency and the food security. As a conclusion we found that there is an existence of an extensive normativity for the care, protection and management of the natural resources, but all the monitoring process and the control of all the policies, laws and norms established must be strengthened, even the spaces for the citizen participation. Likewise, the governments should maximize the use of the alternatives energies that decrease the dependence of the fossil fuels and the biofuels that put in risk the food security. Along with this is fundamental to encourage the use of residual biomass of productive process to avoid future problems in the production and supplying food for the population. Finally, is required to enforce the education. The environmental education, and the research related with the energetic efficiency and the climate change, to advance in development of more friendly alternatives with the environment, with the health of different species and the improvement of the people life quality.

Articles and Miscellany

  • Blanca Rubio
    Food sovereignty in Mexico: an unresolved matter

    Abstract: This paper’s aim is to analyze national food issues in the context of the global capitalist and food crisis. The idea is to prove that, despite the higher food prices that prevailed in the global food market from 2003 to 2014, and the recommendations of multilateral organizations to support food sovereignty in dependent countries, Mexico has been implementing policies that have resulted in its loss, particularly in basic grains. During the two years that Peña Nieto has been in power, he has continued to focus not only in subsisting domestic for imported foodstuffs, but has also abandoned basic production. This has exacerbated food dependency and had serious consequences for the general population and rural producers. The article also outlines the prospects of the national food situation vis a vis the fall of oil prices begun in late 2014.

  • Rolando V. Jiménez / Carlos Escobedo
    Can renewable energies risk the energy security of the country? The Jevons’ paradox

    Abstract: Due to the expected exhaustion of fossil fuels and the extended idea that climate change is caused mainly by burning of oil and carbon, the development of renewable energy sources has recently been accelerated. This is producing a reduction in the supply of energy in several regions of the world, due to the fact that the economic policies designed by the developed countries to provide financial assistance to the poor countries put as a condition on them to build power generating plants based on emission-free technologies, which they cannot afford. This limits, in the first place, their capacity to fulfill the energy needs of their populations. On the other hand, the race to achieve higher energy efficiencies by the employment of better devices is causing a reduction in the cost of the energy per device, but at the same time is increasing the global energy demand, beyond the energy demand that would be reached in the low efficiency scenario. This apparent paradox arises when the energy development planning is not based on a rational and systemic model. In this work we show some examples of those contradictions, not inherent to the development, and that there is a way out by using the strategies of Energy Management, understood as the energy planning which takes into consideration all relevant variables both of technical and economical nature in search of energy efficiency, savings, and sustainability.

  • Guillermo Torres Carral
    The civilizational transition

    Abstract: This article debates around the interrelation between evolution and revolution processes, taking into account that in the present world’s conditions of societal collapse, which is marking the nodal point of the critique zones (regarding the Word, feelings and human actions) of the transition to a new civilization. It was distinguished the two processes, stressing that the first is blockaded by the styles of development, while the second can help to overpass the crash between development and evolution. The risks which are presenting to achieve preservation human species must be refrained, in such a way where don’t be exceed by involution tendencies. Meanwhile present revolutions, which have the sign of peoples under the required correction which impose the transformation of contemporary society and above the interests of governments and international enterprises, are crossed by the struggle of paradigms. By this way sustainability of capitalism and the predator model which is in its base, open the doors to a compatible development among society and ecology. But the latter is not more than a moment of the transition to a new civilization, in which lessons are indispensables in order to overcome the known system now a day.