Multi‐actor initiatives aiming at environmental sustainability and social equity, face complex tensions between institutionalized decision‐makers, backed up by expert knowledge, and communities with locally embedded knowledge and interests. Despite the importance given to community participation, successful experiences are limited in number, scope and duration. Experts are confronted with the paradox that they exclude local communities with the strategies and languages they use to include them.This study is based on the long‐term experiences of the authors with a multi‐actor initiative in southern Ecuador on sustainable rural drinking water management. They were involved as action‐researchers, facilitating multiparty interactions and supporting reflective practice among the participants.The article shows how multiparty processes construct identities, workforms, structures and activities that cross the boundaries between communities of expert and indigenous practice, even in the exceptionally unequal conditions of the Andes, where inequalities between these communities are deeply rooted in history. Such transitions were taken as opportunities to look for common ground between different communities‐of‐practice whilst, at the same time, contradictions could come to the fore. As inequalities tend to be confirmed through interactions, not only inside but also outside the multi‐actor initiative, they cannot be resolved definitively by a multiparty project. Under those circumstances a social constructionist approach, calling the attention to the constructed nature of mutual perceptions and relationships, was highly inspiring for the authors‐facilitators to keep the reflection and dialogue among the participants in the process going‐on. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

RESUMEN: El presente artículo se centra en un tipo de migración, la emigración forzada por motivaciones políticas o exilio; concretamente el exilio sufrido por una importante porción de la población uruguaya a mediados de la década de 1970 en un espacio concreto: España. Esta lectura se realiza desde dos ópticas diferentes pero complementarias, una es desde la bibliografía y la otra desde la presencia de los exiliados en diferentes espacios geográficos y de representación. Para ello se utilizan informaciones provenientes de una profundización en los testimonios de los exiliados-hoy residentes o retornados-y el análisis de la documentación de diferentes archivos particulares y distintas organizaciones políticas y sindicales.

Los estudios sobre los exilios en América Latina han tenido un desarrollo importante en los últimos veinte años. Si bien el recorrido mayor es el de los exilios del Cono Sur (Argentina, Chile y Uruguay), en los últimos años, han comenzado a aparecer textos, investigaciones y espacios académicos con trabajos sobre Paraguay 3 o Colombia 4 y, en menor medida, Centroamérica. Consideramos, que hemos llegado a un punto en el que debemos trascender los estudios de casos nacionales y comenzar a reflexionar sobre otros aspectos, planteamientos teóricos y metodológicos que busquen aportar elementos y ayuden a los análisis que, sobre estas migraciones forzadas, se están realizando. El objetivo, es reflexionar sobre la pertinencia de los estudios comparados sobre exilios de o en América Latina en el siglo XX considerando los avances ya realizados y algunos elementos sobre por dónde podría discurrir esta propuesta de trabajo.

Las movilidades forzadas tienen muchas aristas a ser consideradas, y han sido, y son, una realidad que atraviesa la historia pasada y reciente de América Latina; admite formas diferentes en países y regiones, pero mantiene una presencia y actualidad destacable. Nuestra preocupación, es tratar de abonar en un terreno de debate sobre qué representan desde el punto de vista conceptual, y cuáles son sus recortes frente a otro tipo de movilidades.  Intentaremos aportar algunos elementos que permitan seguir afianzando las características particulares de estas movilidades, a la vez que dar cuenta de su diversidad en cuanto a las modalidades que la integran, reflexionando a partir de investigaciones realizadas en el Cono Sur y el corredor México-Centroamérica.

Non-governmental organizations are gradually coming to play an increasing role in developmental projects and organizational psychology is being challenged to contribute to our understanding of the dynamics of inter-party collaboration. This article documents how the stakeholders in a social development project develop meaning through discursive practices, when they define the issues they work on from their own particular perspectives. Development work is pictured in the use of metaphors as being aid, trade, transfer, exchange, etc. through the use of specific forms of thought and language. Each metaphor leads into different meaning configurations and characterizes a specific quality of dialogue. Special attention is paid to the action strategies that allow the 'weaker' parties to remain included in the development project. Discursive practices, metaphors and qualities of dialogue are illustrated for two multi-party projects. These illustrate how a social constructionist reading can reveal and generate discourses that allow the inclusion of weaker parties, in the cases under study, as representatives of the local communities.

The need for high-temperature electric submersible pump (ESP) systems is growing as the oil industry matures. Canada's nonconventional oil reserves are estimated at just over 1 trillion barrels and Suncor's heavy oil reserves in northern Alberta, Canada, are estimated to have a potential production of 14 billion barrels of crude oil, but traditional mining methods of recovery do not make them all economically reachable. It is estimated that less than one-fifth of the oil sands resource is mineable. To deal with this, Suncor has turned to in-situ steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) operations as a key part of its plans to increase bitumen supply to its upgraders. The SAGD approach uses a pair of horizontal wells drilled parallel to each other and separated vertically by a distance of approximately 5 m. Steam injected through the uppermost well penetrates the surrounding formation, heats the heavy-oil sands, and creates a high-temperature region above the injector known as the steam chamber. Heat transferred to the oil sands reduces oil and bitumen viscosity. Gravity forces the oil, bitumen, and condensed steam downward, where these fluids, consisting of about 25-80% water, are produced into the lower well. Suncor uses SAGD technology to recover 8 to 9 degree API bitumen and heavy oil from unconsolidated sands in the Firebag field. Wells in these fields experience bottomhole pressures of 2000 to 3000 kPa and bottomhole producing temperatures of 180ºC to 209ºC. Whereas standard ESP strings are rated to 149 ºC, bottomhole operating conditions (BOC), key components of the SAGD system featured in this paper, especially its motor, power cables, pump, and advanced protector, are built to withstand bottomhole temperatures up to 218 ºC. Suncor has installed 21 of these ESP systems, which have enabled a reduction in downhole pressures to improve the steam/oil ratio (SOR). This is a direct reduction in operating and lifting costs, which provides several million dollars in savings by reducing the amount of water that needs to be treated and the amount of fuel burned to generate the steam. Suncor's line of ESP systems has achieved a runlife of more than 500 days. World Oil Reserves and Demand There are several sources of information that continually evaluate and discuss world oil reserves. The numbers may differ slightly from source to source, but almost all of them agree on a similar distribution of fossil fuel reserves as shown in Figs. 1 and 2. According to this, the world has twice as much heavy oil and bitumen than conventional oil. It is estimated than there are approximately 8 to 9 trillion barrels of heavy oil and bitumen in place worldwide, of which potentially 900 billion barrels of oil are commercially exploitable with today's technology. As for oil demand, the International Energy Agency (IEA) projects that global primary energy demand will increase by 1.7 to 2% per year from 2000 to 2030, which is equivalent to two-thirds of the current demand. On the other hand, the supply from relatively cheap conventional sources is declining, and reserves are not being replaced with new discoveries. A conservative 3% of natural decline in production from existing reserves is estimated. While non-conventional oil is emerging as a new major source of oil, even an aggressive worldwide development scenario can only capture 10 to 15% of the required new oil supply in the next 20 years. In addition, nonconventional oil by itself cannot make up for the decline in the world conventional oil production (Isaacs, 2006).

En el presente artículo se realiza un acercamiento a los discursos y las prácticas de dos organizaciones del pueblo maya mam ubicadas en la región transfronteriza entre México y Guatemala. Por un lado está la asociación civil Conciencia Cultural Mam, en los municipios de Unión Juárez y Cacahoatán, Chiapas, y por el otro, el Consejo del Pueblo Mam de Sibinal, en el municipio de Sibinal, departamento de San Marcos. Se elabora una aproximación analítica considerando el surgimiento de las organizaciones, así como los objetivos que persiguen, desde las categorías de autonomía y heteronomía indígenas.

Las movilidades forzadas revisten múltiples causalidades asociadas a las amenazas, tanto de origen humano como no humano, que sufren las personas sobre su integridad física, emocional y material, y se desarrollan en relación directa con el territorio. Su correspondencia con aspectos que tienen que ver con los grados de voluntariedad y las circunstancias vividas, así como con el movimiento como estrategia de sobrevivencia, las convierte en un tema de suma relevancia como parte del presente, al mismo tiempo que de la historia pasada y reciente de América Latina. El texto aquí presentado es una reflexión sobre cuál es el sentido que tiene el concepto de movilidades forzadas, a la vez que sobre dónde radican las diferencias entre las distintas modalidades que la integran: migración forzada, desplazamiento forzado interno y exilio. La propuesta, se basa en la preocupación sobre la poca claridad conceptual que existe sobre estos términos y realidades y está sustentada en la experiencia de investigación empírica en tres espacios de vida y trabajo: el Cono Sur de América Latina, la Península Ibérica y la región transfronteriza México-Guatemala.