Proyecto de variante de la N-432 en Puerto Lope (Granada)

Treball finalista dels Premis Dobooku 201

LA CIUDAD Y LA GUERRA: EL CASO DE MOSTAR

Seguiré la propuesta de los organizadores de este encuentro, y no pretenderé analizar las causas del conflicto, ni procuraré formular propuestas de solución política al mismo. Aunque no podré evitar deslizar algunas opiniones, desde luego con el respeto a quienes nos han convocado, y con el imprescindible respeto a quienes han sufrido, y sufren, los conflictos y sus consecuencias. Cuando en 1996 la Unión Europea me propuso hacerme cargo de la insólita Administración de Mostar, me impuse ayudar siempre, y no intervenir en los asuntos internos de las comunidades de la ciudad que considero como propia. Venía de un país que todavía recuerda la tragedia de un enfrentamiento civil dolorosísimo, entre cuyos ingredientes figuraban las cuestiones nacionales, las lingüísticas, de desequilibrio territorial, de exclusión social, el papel de las fuerzas armadas y de seguridad, la religión y la hostilidad o la incomprensión internacionales. Más de cuarenta años hubo que pasar hasta alcanzar algún tipo de reconciliación, más por el olvido de las víctimas y por el cansancio de los vencedores que por un acto colectivo de reencuentro y perdón. Por ello precisamente traté de comprender, en todo caso y circunstancia, a cada una de las partes de los sucesivos conflictos en que se vio envuelta mi ciudad de Mostar. A todas y cada una, desde la perspectiva del sufrimiento cierto para todas ellas, y en especial para las fracciones de población que siempre constituyen el núcleo más importante de las víctimas, niños, jóvenes, ancianos, mujeres. Los éxodos sucesivos, que apenas entreví en mi memoria de vencido de una guerra civil en España, se me hicieron escenas vivas en Mostar

Ownership Concentration: Lessons from Natural Resources

Concentration of ownership over land or other resources is both a sign and a cause of inequality. Concentration of ownership makes access to such resources difficult for those less powerful, and it can have negative effects on local communities that benefit from a more distributed ownership pattern. Such concentration goes against the antimonopoly principles behind the homesteading land policies and the legal regimes that regulate many natural resources. This Essay suggests that where concentration is a concern, one might draw lessons for reform by looking to the field of natural resources law, which employs a range of deconcentration mechanisms affecting fisheries, mineral extraction, farmland, and the like that have proven a considerable success. These deconcentration mechanisms have taken mostly two forms: restrictions on how much one rights holder can hold and restrictions on who can hold rights. These deconcentrating measures are more likely to be adopted in resources with a defined, relatively small market, with homogeneous uses and users, and where community externalities from concentration are assessable

Too Simple Rules for a Complex World? Prior Appropriation Water Rights as Natural Rights

This Article assesses the fit of Professor Claeys’s theory of Natural Property Rights to traditional prior appropriation, the regime that allocates water in the West, and its capacity to fit the future of the regime. Natural Property Rights does not offer clear answers to the conflicts under the prior appropriation doctrine of water when there is scarcity. This Article explores the lack of determinacy of Claeys’s theory and the maladjustment between the theory and some of the foundational prior appropriation principles, which cannot be ignored even in the most stylized form of the regime. In particular, the Article analyzes the interaction between the definition of the right and the type of use, the necessity proviso in a market context, the role of greed in prior appropriation trades, and the public trust doctrine

Inefficient Efficiency: Crying Over Spilled Water

As the drought in Western states worsens, the agricultural sector is being criticized for failing to adopt technical responses, such as shifting to less water-demanding crops and state-of-the-art irrigation systems, in a timely manner. However, these responses can have the reverse effect: they can increase water consumption. Technological responses alone are insufficient to reduce water consumption if unaccompanied by changes in how the law defines and allocates water rights. This paper proposes a redefinition of water rights to ensure that changes in crops or irrigation techniques are socially efficient. In the West, which uses the doctrine of prior appropriation to allocate water, rights are largely measured based on how much water is diverted from streams. As a consequence, technological responses only redistribute — not reduce — the total amount of water being consumed. Such redistribution is not necessarily systemically efficient. Take, for instance, a farmer who substitutes drip irrigation for furrow irrigation. While intended to reduce water use, drip irrigation results in more water being consumed by crops than traditional furrow irrigation, which returns unused water back to the stream. Farmers are reluctant to reduce diversion, since doing so would risk partially forfeiting their water rights. As a result, drip irrigation sharply reduces the return flow available for downstream users and the environment. Downstream water users may no longer be able to produce crops and the environment may be harmed if consumption upstream increases. This rebound effect from adopting technically efficient systems has not been adequately addressed in water law while it has been accounted for in energy policies. The Supreme Court case Montana v. Wyoming is used to illustrate this point. This article advances a legal framework for ensuring that technical responses to drought accomplish the stated goal of reducing agricultural water use without harming third parties. In particular, it proposes prior consumption as an additional measure of water rights in prior appropriation regimes. Consumption more accurately reflects the true social cost of agricultural water use. This would prevent farmers from taking advantage of technical responses to increase their water use and would protect downstream users and the environment. In addition, water markets would benefit, since water rights would be better defined and the review process of water market transactions would be streamlined. The proposal is consistent with the underlying principles of prior appropriation, and the article explains why such a change would survive a potential takings challenge

El sistema educativo español a la luz del informe McKinsey

El concepto de calidad educativa es siempre subjetivo y polémico. En este trabajo hemos analizado las principales variables que parecen compartir los países que obtienen los mejores rendimientos educativos basándonos, fundamentalmente, en el informe McKinsey: “How the world’s most improved school systems keep getting better”. A la luz de dichas variables hemos realizado una valoración crítica del Sistema Educativo español, proponiendo algunas medidas que a nuestro juicio mejorarían nuestra calidad educativa.Grado en Educación Primari

Liquid Business

Water is scarcer due to climate change and in higher demand due to population growth than ever before. As if these stressors were not concerning enough, corporate investors are participating in water markets in ways that sidestep U.S. water law doctrine’s aims of preventing speculation and assuring that the holders of water rights internalize any externalities associated with changes in their rights. The operation of these new players in the shadow of traditional water law is producing elements of inefficiency and unfairness in the allocation of water rights. Resisting the polar calls for unfettered water markets, or, contrarily, the complete de-commodification of water in the face of these challenges, this Article identifies a portfolio of measures that can help get regulated water markets back on a prudent, sustainable track in our contemporary world. The portfolio includes institutional changes and measures aimed at redefining water rights. Regarding the administration and management of water rights, the Article proposes: mechanisms to address the effects on the communities where water originates, structures for joint management of surface and ground water; and tools to ensure fulfillment of all persons’ basic water needs. The changes in water rights: exclude return flows; establish character criteria for water rights holders; and define quantitative limits on the amount of water one person or entity can hold at a given time

Simulation of a public e-bike sharing system

Urban areas are in need of efficient and sustainable mobility service and it seems that one of the options that arouses more interest are public bicycles systems, which in the last decade have been promoted in cities all over the world almost exponentially, surpassing the 500 bike-sharing programs worldwide. This has resulted in a continuous evolution of these systems, which, due to their recent appearance, have practically gone ahead of the works focused on their study. This thesis intends to develop an agent-based simulation model to emulate a bikesharing system, in order to allow the optimization of the main strategic and tactical system variables, such as the total number of bicycles, the number of reposition equipment, the size of the stations and the occupancy after being repositioned, that is, its balanced occupancy. The model will be applied and validated with the parameter values of the system currently applied in Barcelona and an improved scenario will be posed to analyze the performance of a better hypothetical solution for balanced occupancy as an example of the simulator potential. The simulation is coded in Matlab® environment, using the paradigm of Object Oriented Programming, which aims to ease its use, understanding and expansion, following the open-source philosophy, which has proliferated in recent years. The document contains the description of the model and the performance of the program, its structure, and its validation. In addition, the source code can be found attached for its free download and use

Specialization Trend: Water Courts

Definition of property rights is not useful unless there is an enforcement system, either public or private, that backs it up. While the definition of property rights as a solution to the tragedy of the commons has been carefully analyzed in the literature, the enforcement piece has been somewhat overlooked. Water is becoming scarcer and conflict is rising. As a result, the need for an efficient and fair enforcement system is more necessary than ever due to climate change. Given the complexity of water law and the backlog in the judicial system, introducing specialization in the resolution of water cases may become necessary in many jurisdictions. Specialize enforcement takes different forms: from administrative agencies decisions to judicial decisions. This piece focuses on the judiciary, where specialization in the water and environmental arena has gained traction in recent decades in the United States and abroad. Specialization ensures faster resolution and better-quality decisions. To achieve those benefits, jurisdictions do not need to create a whole new system of courts necessarily. For example, in water, specialization in the judiciary can range from special masters assisting generalist judges in water cases or general judges who get assigned all water cases on the docket to full-fledged specialized courts. The article, first, covers how the literature has analyzed specialized tribunals across different legal areas, along with their advantages and disadvantages. Second, it establishes the need for specialized water courts and their procedural particularities. Factual and legal complexity of water disputes demands specialization both at the trial and at the appellate level. Third, it diagnoses the trend toward judicial specialization in water cases in the West of the United States and analyzes case studies of water courts in the United States and abroad, looking at both their institutional structure and their particular procedural rules. Based on this research, the paper offers a portfolio of institutional options for jurisdictions designing specialized courts. The proposals are particularly helpful to respond to the expected increase in conflicts over the allocation of natural resources due to climate change