The study analyzes the causal link between the FTA and certain economic effects, which include changes in trade and investment flows, levels of output and employment, and commodities prices. The findings of this study indicate that while the said changes may prove largely beneficial to efficient producers in certain exporting sectors, some import-competing sectors are affected adversely. The consequent emergence of winners and losers in the economic context may trigger social impacts which are beneficial for certain groups on one hand, and crippling for others. The said social impacts are associated with the living standards of the population, food security, and community life. Additionally, the economic shifts may also lead to changes in the use of natural resources that emerge as both threats and opportunities for the environment.

In the Colombian context, which ideally will now start a post-conflict period, it is necessary for the government to pursue strategies to prevent the causes of the conflict. This study considers the hypothesis that one possible cause for future conflict is the problems that emanate from coexistence of social housing neighbours. In Colombia, social housing programmes focus on providing shelter, in the sense that it is understood as something only physical. The problem is that this notion ignores the need of people to generate community integration. This study takes a conceptual approach to the issue by addressing the debates around citizenship as an identity and active citizenship. It also analyses concepts such as social capital, state-society-synergy and finally community and social housing. The study focuses on the case of Colombia, analysing the context and the challenges of social housing. It evaluates the housing policy and community integration programs of different institutions of the national government. Finally, it concludes with the suggestion that the government should have a participatory approach to building social housing that will help with arraigo (attachment) and to form the social fabric to achieve community integration, accomplishing better conviviality and housing conditions.

A review of the main issues that affect the livelihoods of non timber forest products (NTFP) focusing on the commercialisation issues of gatherers/producers and traders, was made for Colombia. It aimed to investigate broadly which are some of the cultural, economic, social, environmental, marketing and legislative issues that affect the outcomes for NTFP livelihoods. The sustainable rural livelihood framework was used to understand the main issues affecting NTFP livelihoods and to propose alternatives to improve the constraints found in NTFP development and commercialisation. The study identify the great importance of NTFP local and regional markets for rural development, and some data was given for international markets in order to understand the magnitude of the commerce and the possibilities that might arise for some promissory products. The review of some institutional and organisation incentives influencing NTFP production and commercialisation was undertaken by reviewing the forestry policies and some of its instruments. The study used secondary data of reports made mainly in Latin-America. The report concludes that the policies and norms that influence NTFP, such as the forestry policy and plans do not consider the importance of NTFP for social and environmental objectives. For NTFP research, the analysis of the commercialisation process is strongly co-related to social networks, ecology, cultural taboos, norms for management of NTFP and effectiveness of support organisations. NTFP livelihoods can be seriously affected by government organisations and NGO’s if they are treated as traditional commodities because of the fragility and uniqueness of their ecology, economy and social structures. The report gives some recommendations to government agencies and researchers that wish to mend the constraints found for NTFP successful development.

Globalization has led legal systems to influence each other throughout history and legal transplants have not been immune to that process either. Nowadays we do not just see examples of legal transplants but come across cases of 'cross-fertilization' of case law. An emergence of unstudied trends that have spread around the world in a voluntary and involuntary way across legal cultures can also be witnessed. However it seems that legal transplants have been largely misunderstood and have been condemned as mere copy-paste exercises due to their history. This paper studies the different theories of legal transplants in comparative law and also analyses some particular cases that have eventually ‘worked’ efficiently both in the country of origin and in the country where those laws were adopted. We can no longer say that legal transplants are impossible; they are a reality we cannot run away from. Amongst the many challenges faced by this phenomenon, the primary one is to overcome all the obstacles imposed by a ‘legal globalization’ that is threatening developing countries by focusing more on the liberalization of markets, rather than on policies supporting social welfare. Despite this fact, there is still hope for a new concept of ‘legal globalization’, one that includes executing a serious study of the trends that not only developing countries are in need of, but also is a need of the developed countries, which is the adoption of policies towards social welfare, one of the biggest challenges that face modern legal comparatists today.

In the work we developed a new methodology based on the ensemble Kalman filter (EnKF) and the level set method for the continuous model updating of geological facies with respect to production and static (well logs) data. We modelled geological facies using a level set representation and further conditioned them to production and static data using the ensemble Kalman filter. The history matching was done in a continuous fashion since the filter does not depend on previous states and updates parameters and states of the physical system as it receives data from the fields. The methodology is completely new and may provide an alternative to the pluri-Gaussian method with competitive complexity times. Further, the methodology allows to involve prior knowledge of the reservoir as a template base case in a Bayesian-like update. The methodology was tested and compare to others and implemented on a real 3D north-sea and synthetic reservoirs.

La implementación de acciones exitosas de conservación y desarrollo de las comunidades está muy ligada a la equidad de género y la participación es una herramienta fundamental para el desarrollo de estos procesos. Esta investigación analizó la participación de las comunidades, desde un enfoque de género, en los procesos de manejo y toma de decisiones a nivel local y regional en dos Áreas Silvestres Protegidas (ASP) de Costa Rica y relacionó esta participación con los beneficios obtenidos por las comunidades como resultado de dichos procesos. En el desarrollo de la investigación se utilizaron herramientas metodológicas que permitieron triangular información cualitativa y cuantitativa. Se seleccionaron tres grupos de actores a trabajar. El primero, los y las funcionarias de las ASP y Áreas de Conservación seleccionadas, a los cuales se les realizó entrevistas semi – estructuradas. El segundo grupo conformado por los integrantes de los espacios de participación que están formalmente establecidos por la Ley de Biodiversidad, tanto a nivel regional como local de las dos áreas seleccionadas, en estos espacios se utilizó la metodología de la observación participante y entrevistas semi – estructuradas. Por último, se seleccionaron tres comunidades por ASP en donde mediante encuestas realizadas a familias, se analizaron los capitales de cada una de las comunidades y los beneficios que reciben por ser circunvecinos a los Parque Nacionales. Asimismo, cómo la participación de hombres y mujeres, de forma equitativa, potencia dichos beneficios. Se resalta que a nivel institucional existen lineamientos para la vinculación de la sociedad civil en los procesos de toma de decisiones en el manejo de las ASP, pero que estos procesos a nivel local son incipientes y que los espacios establecidos a nivel regional son los que influyen directamente en la toma de decisiones. El tema de género a nivel institucional aunque es nombrado en varios de los lineamientos del Sistema Nacional de Áreas de Conservación (SINAC), no se trabaja. Aunque los actores evidencian la importancia de las mujeres en los procesos participativos y de manejo de los recursos naturales. De forma general las comunidades no reconocen beneficios que se generen por habitar cerca a las ASP y eso determina su participación en los espacios establecidos. La representación de mujeres de las comunidades en espacios de toma de decisiones es baja y está condicionada por características de las comunidades como la ocupación, el tipo, composición y número de organizaciones de la comunidad, los conflictos existentes entre el ASP y la comunidad, el desconocimiento de los espacios de participación y la capacitación en temas ambientales. Hay diferencias evidentes entre los intereses de hombres y mujeres que los llevan a la participación en temas relacionados con el manejo de los recursos naturales. Los hombres basan su interés en temas económicos y políticos, mientras las mujeres en temas de educación y generación de conciencia ambiental. Finalmente se reafirma que es fundamental promover la participación de las mujeres en los espacios de toma de decisiones relacionados con el manejo de las ASP, debido a que brindan otra visión en las discusiones, relacionados con la sostenibilidad de los procesos, reconociendo valores no económicos de los recursos naturales y aportando compromiso con los procesos de participación.

Ritualization entails the deployment of strategies that will qualitatively differentiate certain activities from others that might be thought of as “more quotidian” compared to the transcendent and sacred (Bell, 1992: 74). In the Tibetan culture some examples of ritualized possession are more visible and easily classified than others. When analysing these practices, certain similarities and differences can be noticed. These should not be essentialised, otherwise, we are at risk of reifying a phenomena that is in itself flexible (Bell, 1992: 204).

This study assessed the performances of a group of speakers of English as a second language (L2) when perceiving and producing the English vowel Schwa. In addition, it also aimed to evaluate the hypotheses proposed by the Speech Learning Model (SML), developed by Flege and colleagues (1988, 1992, 1995, 1999, and 2002) which suggest that L2 speakers are capable of creating new phonetic categories for new L2 sounds. Ten L2 speakers, who were living in England, and whose first language was Spanish (Colombian), as well as a group of five English native speakers participated as informants. As it had not been studied before, the effect of orthography was chosen as an important variable that could be affecting the L2 speakers’ perceptual and productive abilities. The study was carried out in three stages. The first stage, evaluated the initial L2 speakers’ perceptual and productive abilities. The second stage consisted of three sessions of pronunciation training. Finally, the third stage aimed to evaluate whether the learners improved in a post-training context. Perception was evaluated by having L2 informants judge several English words that included correct and incorrect pronunciations. Percentages of correct answers were contrasted to the results obtained from the native speakers. Regarding production, acoustic measurements of the quality and duration of the vowels were taken in order to be compared to the native speakers’ productions. Results suggest that most of the L2 speakers were influenced by the orthography of the words; therefore, they perceived and produced the English Schwas as instances of their native vowels. In consequence, as predicted by the SML, a blocking effect in the creation of new L2 phonetic categories took place and no improvement was seen after the training in terms of quality.

The present thesis work is motivated in the recent developments of wireless access technologies, which have given noticeable changes on both operator and end-user side. From the operator side, the wireless access networks have evolved from 1st generation technologies (1G) up to 3rd generation technologies (3G) during the last three decades. Additionally, 4th generation networks (4G) based in advanced radio technologies are already in development phases. The proliferation of wireless access networks yields opportunities to the end-user, however it can also induce a additional problematic due to the complexity of the network to be operated. Therefore, the end-user has the possibility to choose dynamically which access technology (access network) to connect to, in order to obtain the required service. From the moment the decisions from the users occur in a distributed, non-coordinated and generally opportunistic way, the access to wireless networks process dynamics are in a need to be studied. The present thesis work, analyses the competitive access problem by means of game theory. In particular, non-cooperative game models in which the users tend to maximize their individual utility from the access problem are considered. The thesis work presents the development and implementation of a software instrument capable of simulating game dynamics individualizing equilibria conditions and measuring the transition length to reach such equilibria (convergence time). The second part of the thesis work includes the analysis of different realistic wireless access networks considering different access strategies which are selected by the end-users and different utility function formulations with which the players “play” the game.

Colombian citizens and the government have faced a harsh and violent threat for more than 40 years. The guerrillas and specifically FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia) have plunged the whole nation into violence, terror and death from generation to generation. Having the civil population under menace, the Colombian government has to act prudently but also quickly to avoid terrorism to take the control of the forces. The state has had to deal with this complex and difficult trouble by combating FARC through the counterinsurgency (COIN), which implies allocating sufficient resources to success and developing policies to assure the supremacy of the government over all groups outside the law. This study investigates the history of FARC’s insurgency in Colombia, the qualitative essence of this insurgency’s transitional phases and the Colombian government’s strategy towards opposing FARC. The foremost idea, the validity of which is being explored throughout the course of this study’s entirety, as that it is specifically by continuing to adhere to the methodological provisions of an integrative counterinsurgency campaign that the government will continue to score successes in its struggle against this notorious organization. This change towards a better integrative strategy is represented by the shift from the Pastrana government to the Uribe government.