Energy demand and consumption will not stop growing in the next four decades. And none of the current systems of energy production is problem-free; they all have their pros and cons. And so?

From the latest independent reports regarding human rights emerge the cases of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, with a serious failure to ensure them, and Spain (like other liberal democracies) with specific cases of failure to ensure them.

• Climate Change: A New Source of Armed Conflict
  por Mabel González Bustelo

The twenty first century has brought with it an outlook very different from the one of happy optimism present in the 1990s; we are looking at a new phase of power redistribution, in which there are already points of possible conflict among the hegemonic powers.

Theories that relate to democracy and economic development have remained obsolete, says the author. Today there are some democratic countries with terribly low rates of economic development and some less than democratic countries that have strongly developed, like China.

These years are decisive: the manner in which the main ecological problems (global warming, deforestation, erosion, soil desertification, the extinction of animal and plant species and the dearth of fresh water) are resolved (or not) will determine the quality of life of future generations. There are countries that have already rolled up their sleeves and gotten to work, but others (such as the United States, Australia and Spain) continue to practice the ostrich strategy; in other words, they hide behind mere rhetoric.

• Environmental lobbies in the United States
  por Heike Pintor Pirzkall
• The Impact of Climate change in Africa
  por Jesús Rivillo Torres

Finding a solution to the future of Kosovo that satisfies the Serbs and the Albanian-Kosovars is proving to be a difficult task; perhaps the alternative could at one stage be the creation of a Confederation between Serbia and Kosovo, which is still its province; it would not be an optimal situation for either of the parties, but it could be an intermediate route towards the final, peaceful solution to the conflict.

The populists tend to enlarge the group of contemporary non-liberal democracies. The author points out that t is not strange that within a single, caudillo-style leadership that claims to act in the name of the people (pueblo) and for the people, political rights and freedoms, like the freedom of the press, freedom of expression, the plural-party system, and the control of electoral processes are suppressed or diminished.

No one has any doubt that the structural funds received from the European Union have contributed in an irrefutable manner to the economic growth witnessed in Spain during the past twenty years. There are aspects in which these funds have placed Spain amongst the highest of European societies, most importantly in the fields of productivity, advanced technology, research, ecology, and innovation.