This paper is concerned with four aspects in the implementation of Article VI on domestic regulation in the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). First, the need to reach a better understanding of the scope of the GATS existing disciplines, particularly, the national treatment and the transparency rule. Secondly, the feasibility of the necessity test to reach the Article VI objectives. Third, the assessment of the international standard’s role in the facilitation of the trade. Fourth, the desirability to evaluate the sectoral testing exercises to determine whether the principles and disciplines developed are relevant and adaptable to other sectors. For GATS domestic regulation development, the mentioned factors are crucial accompaniment to future liberalization of services trade and to fulfil Article VI mandate. Whether this progress can be achieved within a time frame consistent with the duration of the current negotiations remains to be seen.

This dissertation project assesses the possibility of Colombia becoming an annex I country before 2020. This assessment assumes that the country will eventually have to define the year during which it will be required to start reducing its GHG emissions and by what amount. This project aims to answer the following questions; in which year Colombia should assume a GHG reductions cap? And how much GHG emissions should Colombia reduce? These two questions were answered by first projecting the growth of future emissions of the country based on economic parameters, population growth and energy consumption and secondly by calculating the cost of undertaking the GHG reductions to meet the target. Three separate analyses were performed in order to answer those questions; first a comparative analysis of the country’s conditions when the protocol was signed, second the concept of the Environmental Kunznets Curve was used and confronted with the available Colombian data and third it was necessary to project when Colombia will be responsible for percent of the world’s emission. The results showed that at least until the year 2020 Colombia will not be responsible for a share bigger than one percent of the world emissions; neither will it reach the peak of the EKC and lastly Colombia will not become a higher middle income country anytime before the year 2020. The main conclusion obtained in this dissertation is that Colombia should not undertake any GHG reduction targets under the continuation of the Kyoto protocol before the year 2020.

This thesis analyzes the possible influence of social capital on the levels of fear of crime perceived by residents of Bogotá. The thesis focuses on the potential role of social networks and the individual perception of collective efficacy of neighborhoods in the metropolitan area of the Colombian capital. According to current theoretical developments, people who belong to social networks and actively participate in them expect reciprocity from their peers in case of a criminal event. Thus, they will benefit from an inhibiting effect on their individual levels of fear of crime. Following the statistics, the security situation in the city of Bogotá has improved during the last years. For example, the homicide rates have ostensibly dropped in the last 20 years and other crimes, such as robberies and burglaries, have stabilized within normal occurrence rates compared to the historical average. Nevertheless, citizens of Bogotá feel more insecure and perceive higher risks of being a victim of crime than 10 years ago. This seemingly paradoxical situation suggests a gap between the subjective feelings of citizens and objective criminal rates registered by different authorities. As most of the theoretical and empirical research has focused on the study of facilitators of fear of crime, using quantitative methodologies, this thesis will focus on the study of inhibitors of fear. To understand levels of fear of crime in neighborhoods of Bogotá it adopts a qualitative methodology. In addition, it inquires for the most relevant factors that produce fear of crime and suggests policy recommendations to make people feel safer in the city. The results show that the role of social networks in inhibiting individual levels of fear of crime depends on the quantity and quality of pooled resources that a community has. Neighborhoods with more social, economic and institutional resources provide environments and milieus where people feel safer. This perception of collective efficacy to advance communal goals plays a pivotal role in the inhibition of fear of crime and is stronger in more cohesive and organized neighborhoods. Finally, high levels of fear of crime lead to less participation in neighborhoods where illegal armed groups exert de facto control of the territory, hampering the already low levels of social capital in these communities.

Energy Union (En Un) is a program released by the European Commission intended to create a single energy market between the European Union in order to have secure, affordable and sustainable energy. This way the imports will be reduced and the final price should be lower (theoretically) increasing the energy security for all the countries. The first communication was in February 2015 and is a very new topic for all the energy stakeholders in the EU. This is why a dissertation for the implications of this policy in UK was developed as part of the Master in Energy, Environmental Technology & Technology from City University London. UK is currently catalogued as an Energy Island (less than 10% of cross-border interconnection), with 30% of the generation based in coal, 30% in gas and 20% renewable, a liberalised market that varies with changes in gas or wind availability and the third highest kWh price from the EU. More than 20 energy policies and Conservative government with a constraint view against renewables’ subsidies. The implication for the UK and the En Un are divided into three: Infrastructural, Political and Economical. In the middle a map of the new cross-border grids proposed by this policy some of the findings are. The Energy Union in the UK will happen even if there’s no political wiliness or if they decide to not be part of the EU, mainly because the new infrastructure is already being developed (UK-Belgium) additional to the four current cross-border interconnectors. The wholesale market in UK is already liberalized and some cross border trades are being done with clean and cheap electricity from France and Holland; the key development is UK-Ireland, because UK, instead of being a 100% exporter to Ireland, will flip the coin with an import-export relationship with 8 interconnectors, electricity generated in Euros and close distance. Now it will not really matter if you generate electricity from Fossil Fuels, Nuclear or Renewable; the country will purchase from where is cheapest and available, independently from the source. Shale Gas, Nuclear, Gas and coal with CCS will be the important investment in the next years, not only in PPP (private public partnership) schemes but with R&D. New Universities courses will be develop (energy traders / brokers, cross border trade supervisors, etc) and more women should get involved. The £/ kWh for domestic and small companies will not be significantly reduced (albeit the low cost of it), those companies more engaged with the market will have very good deals and low £/ kWh.

In the last 60 years different efforts have been made for the construction of a metro system in Bogotá yet the closer the city has got to building a large transport project was with the implementation of a Bus Rapid Transport System in 1999 called Transmilenio. Transmilenio was a success at the beginning and it helped organize the chaotic transport system of the city, but at the moment it is suffering from capacity and operational problems and the need for a rail base system is evident. The current governments of Bogotá and Colombia have promised to begin the construction of the first line of the metro in the following years. Bogotá and London are two cities with similar characteristics such as population, area, density and type of soil; furthermore both cities are in the process of building a new mass transport system; in Bogotá the first line of the metro and in London Crossrail. London is a pioneer city in railways and metro systems in the world and has experience on the economic appraisal of this type of projects. In this dissertation we will use this experience to elaborate a Cost and Benefit Analysis model for the Bogotá metro. Cost and Benefit Analysis models are a common tool for the appraisal of transport and infrastructure project around the world and particularly in the UK. We have elaborated an appraisal tool for the decision makers of Colombia that involves the more important technical, social and economical aspects of the Bogotá metro project. After the evaluation of all the cost and benefits of the system and the preparation of a model with 3 different scenarios and 7 sensitivity tests the results shows that the project is completely feasible, it should be constructed and will bring benefits for the Colombian society.

This research shows the relationship between trade liberalization and food security for the Bolivian case. As a result of the severe economic crisis of the early-1980s, Bolivia adopted a series of market-oriented reforms in 1985. The reforms included the liberalization of the trade regime and the promotion of non-traditional exports. The trade liberalization had an important effect on the performance of cash crops, especially in the development of the soybeans industry. However, food crops did not have such a great dynamics. Vegetables and starchy roots declined in per capita terms and the increase in imports were not enough to compensate the decline. Trade reforms mostly favor a small group of large-scale farmers in the lowlands, who had historically been granted land in the region. In this sense, Bolivia’s involvement in a trade liberalization process has not been reflected in an overall improvement of the country’s food security.

Public administration scholarship has yet to explore the relationship between job sector choice and public service motivation in developing countries. My dissertation aims to contribute to the field by investigating the factors that explain job sector decisions among highly skilled individuals through focusing on a sample of Colombian citizens who have pursued education abroad. More specifically, I draw on the fields of job sector choice and public service motivation to identify, both quantitatively and qualitatively, factors affecting the job sector decisions of internationally educated Colombians. I answer my research questions through an analysis of quantitative data gathered from the Colombian international scholarship program Colfuturo, and also through an analysis of qualitative data gathered from interviews with highly skilled individuals working in various sectors. The main conclusion reached is that the Colombian public sector remains an attractive employer, especially within certain groups of the population. However, other groups remain doubtful about accepting a public sector job. The Colombian government still has to adjust its recruitment strategies in terms of, among other things, salaries, duration of contracts, open access and transparency. Crucially, the results collected raise an important question concerning what the Colombian government should do, that is, whether it should facilitate access to government jobs for captive groups or, instead, attract qualified individuals currently working in other sectors. According to the quantitative and qualitative evidence provided herein, the answer is that both strategies are necessary if the Colombian government wants to increase its critical mass of highly qualified people, particularly within the upper echelons of government.

The main research question I explore is: What are the political and socio-environmental factors that can explain the Bogota’s river governance failure related to its pollution? To achieve this I analyse the relationship between society in the basin and the flow of water from a political ecology perspective. This work is divided in five sections, which includes a literature review relating the theories of the political ecology of the production of nature, common pool resource management, Tragedy of the Commons and governance. The scope of this work is limited to Bogota River’s basin in the spatial scale and the historical processes of the last 50 years. After evaluating the different interactions of the stakeholders and the river, I discuss that Bogota’s river has become a political object, using Robbins (2012) theses of political ecology. I arrive at this conclusion after analysing Bogota River’s situation following the flow of the water in spatial and temporal dimensions, seeing the production of nature (and in this case a polluted river as a result) as a historical spatial-ecological transformation that expresses the contradictions and tensions of modern times by the transformation of nature and society. I follow the water creating a narrative, to explore modernity as a geographical and socially contested project. Finally, I analyse how the sentence published in March 2014, by the Colombian State’s Council, currently tackles the issues that undermine good governance, identified in the rivers narrative and how it might help or hinder river restoration.

En 1876 estalló una de las múltiples guerras civiles que se desarrollaron en Colombia durante el siglo XIX. Fue llamada por los historiadores como Guerra de las Escuelas, pues fue la respuesta de los sectores conservadores y la Iglesia al proyecto liberal de crear un sistema de educación pública que permitía la elección entre educación laica o religiosa. La guerra, que se detonó en el Cauca, rápidamente se extendió a Santander, Boyacá, Antioquia, Tolima y Cundinamarca. Tras múltiples batallas entre el ejército liberal y las guerrillas conservadoras, los reductos de estas últimas se terminan rindiendo en 1877. El “Boletín Oficial” publicado en esta época es un periódico del gobierno liberal radical que se publicaba de manera irregular con el objetivo de informar sobre los acontecimientos que se iban desarrollando durante la guerra, en sus páginas se publicaban, comunicados, telegramas, cartas, edictos e informes sobre los enfrentamientos en las diferentes regiones.

This paper explores the relationship between land inequality and inclusive growth in light of land policies for growth and poverty reduction. Contrasting traditional redistribution with inclusive rural growth shows the importance of land as an economic, social and political asset for achieving sustainable development. Analysing the Brazilian case, the paper suggests that inclusive growth strategies do not effectively counteract structural conditions of inequality and rather than attacking exclusionary growth patterns merely address immediate exigencies. Hence, returning to redistribution is fundamental for including the rural poor in modern economies, not just in terms of economic efficiency but for constructing equitable and approachable markets that enable the expansion of individual freedom.