The Failure of Scientific Expertise to Influence the Desertification Negotiations

Desertification is a complex environmental issue and expert advice should play an important role when negotiating an international agreement to deal with the phenomenon. Yet in practice, scientific expert influence was marginal in the development of the Convention to Combat Desertification (CCD). This paper explores why. It argues that low scientific expert influence mainly reflects two factors. First, some Southern countries, who were keen to have a post Rio convention that focused on developing countries, resisted complex scientific advice since it could jeopardize the whole convention. Second, the International Panel of Experts on Desertification -- the main institution for providing expert advice to the negotiations -- was small and emerged only late in the process. By the time the CCD was to be negotiated, most of the issues on which experts could have some influence were already settled. Moreover, the expansion over time of the definition of "desertification" to a widening range of environmental conditions eroded the focus of the concept and made it less useful for policy. Donors, who were apprehensive because earlier action plans on desertification had failed, became reluctant to support international anti-desertification projects. Thus the issue became tied to the general political debate about development aid. Although scientific experts did not have much influence, other non-governmental actors who participated in the CCD negotiations were influential. The active encouragement of the participation of non-governmental organizations, their long-standing interest and expertise on these issues, and homogeneity of their interests all contributed to their influence. That NGOs had more influence suggests that it is more important to focus on actors who have issue competence, rather than on formally appointed scientific experts, when analyzing the influence of expert advice in international environmental agreements

Cooperation Between The United Nations and Regional Institutions

Chapter VIII of the United Nations Charter does not preclude regional organizations from taking regional actions in the maintenance of international peace and security. As long as such regional actions are taken consistent with the provisions of the United Nations Charter, regional organizations can play a pivotal role in the peaceful settlement of regional disputes. Enforcement measures must however be authorized first by the Security Council

Las razones numéricas de la "Harmonía" musical en la arquitectura del Renacimiento ¿tradición, recuperación o invención?

Fue Leon Battista Alberti quien en su tratado De re aedificatoria expuso con coherencia intelectual y discursiva un sistema proporcional para la arquitectura basado en las razones numéricas de las cuerdas musicales. Este sistema aritmeticomusical pues se funda sobre las razones de los primeros números enteros ha sido considerado siempre uno de los postulados que, frente al gótico, definieron la arquitectura renacentista. Ahora bien, si el Renacimiento pretendió rescatar los valores de la Antigüedad clásica, es necesario preguntarse si Alberti se basó en aquellos edificios, o en alguna fuente de literatura artística de aquella época, para estructurar su sistema. O incluso si siguió la tradición constructiva medieval, ya que en alguna ocasión se ha planteado que también la arquitectura gótica usó un sistema proporcional de procedencia musical. Este artículo, a partir de testimonios del propio Alberti y de otros arquitectos y escritores cercanos a él el Filarete, Antonio Manetti, Vasari, entre otros , y presentando los análisis, propuestas y conclusiones de diversos investigadores, pretende determinar, hasta donde sea posible, en qué grado Leon Battista Alberti teorizó sobre una tradición anterior de procedencia medieval o grecorromana, o estructuró un sistema de proporciones arquitectónicas, si no original, al menos novedoso y representativo de los planteamientos estéticos del Renacimiento. (A

Corroborar llegendes, invocar imatges, renovar la memòria i presentar models. El valor dels goigs en la religiositat valenciana durant la Contrareforma

Abstract: This article applies the Panofsky’s method to the analysis of goigs during the period of the Counter-Reformation in Valencia. It determines, regardless of their poetical form and melody, which the cultural function of these compositions was during that period, focusing on four different exemples. The underlying ideas are confronted to other contemporary cultural expressions (historical-texts, and devotional and hagiographical works and pictures). This establishes the interrelationship between cultural values of the joys and  the society that generated them, and shows that were not naive expression of popular devotion but small and affordable versions of scholarly hagiographies and histories of images and therefore in order to have the same propaganda purpose

Arquitectura i música en Vitruvi. L'harmonía musical al "De architectura libri decem"

En alguna ocasión se ha atribuido a Vitruvio una teoría de las proporciones arquitectónicas basada en las razones numéricas de las consonancias musicales. No obstante, si bien en el capítulo 4 del De architectura libri decem Vitruvio expone brevemente los principios de la harmonía musical griega, no los asocia con la symmetría, que es, efectivamente, la cualidad arquitectónica que se asienta sobre la pro-porción. Este artículo dirime estas cuestiones. (A