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This research presents the design of a system for air quality managing: case Cali - Colombia. This structure facilitates to the interested parts to establish policies of emission and unmission of atmospheric pollutants of mobile and stationary sources, to define the environmental and sanitary priorities and to adopt the strategies to reduce his spoilage. It was used concepts of environmental management were in use as the evaluation of the environmental risk for identifying the emission sources, for evaluating the level of emission and concentration of atmospheric pollutants, for estimating his effect in the air and population and for valuing the actions adapted to reduce the atmospheric emission. Equally, there it was use concepts of management of the quality. The structure allows in a simplified way to articulate the control measures to obtain information of the effects in the quality of the air and of the exposed population considering the technological, juridical and organizational conditions of the zone of study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyses the problems of environmental degradation through the phenomenon of globalization, establishing that the allocation of global environmental goods such as water systems, which are wetland ecosystems, are directly related to local environmental problems. First, it addresses all the theoretical debate on globalization from the three major schools: hyperglobalistic, skeptical and transformationalist. The latter considers the structures of global governance and the strengthening of international regimes as an alternative to solve global problems. In this sense, the wetland protection established in the Ramsar Convention allows evaluating the functionality of environmental governance, at global, national and local levels, especially in relation to the application of the rules issued in accordance with the international regime for protection of these ecosystems. In this context, it is evident that in Valle del Cauca a range of difficulties for the effective preservation of wetlands exist, leading to a systematic failure of the international regime in Colombia and, consequently, the vulnerability of these ecosystems, threatening with its disappearance, the extinction of biodiversity and increased global warming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental management in cities, especially related with air, water and soil poses important challenges to a society; Colombia's current economic development model, following unsustainable production and consumption patterns, causes pollution with very high costs for societies, related to health problems and deterioration of natural renewable resources. Public policies related to environmental management must focus on prevention and must follow principles like the producer's extended responsibility, in the frame of the life cycle of the product. This represents a co-responsibility of institutional stakeholders as well as that of citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using protected areas to conserve nature has, in recent decades, acquired significant importance in the international policymaking arena. Despite a solid legal base, protected areas in Colombia face various obstacles. The divergent narratives between the natural and social sciences underline these challenges: i) defining the object of conservation in terms of exclusion through positive scientific analysis; ii) the concept of the natural in opposition to the cultural; iii) an emphasis on the object of conservation that can sometimes cause the stakeholders involved to become invisible; iv) that the conservation of nature has limited legitimacy since it is perceived to be the historical product of conquest and frontier expansion; v) the emergence of conflicts between human rights and collective environmental rights, vi) the socio-environmental perspective of conservation in which the devolution of land rights to local communities and the conservation of nature are sometimes confused as a decision that benefits the larger society. Nature conservation could be pursued through the integration, at a national scale, of a protected nature which arises as a legitimate social decision, and in a multi-cultural perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]