The Parque Nacional Nevado de Toluca (PNNT) is one of the largest protected natural area (PNA) of Mexico. A 1936 decree defines the PNNT as areas above 3000m a.s.l. surrounding the Xinantecatl volcano, but the delineation separating the protected area from the existing administrative or agricultural boundaries has never been clearly established. Later in 1937 it was indeed necessary to alter its status to incorporate the existence of farmland and populations within the park whose expropriation was not possible. The persistence of these rural communities, the agricultural land held under an original form of collective property (‘ejidos’), a distant presence of the authorities, are factors that helped all kinds of practices persist or develop, in direct or latent conflict with legal dispositions specific to PNA. Under severe pressure, especially that due to the agglomeration of Toluca, nearby capital of the State of Mexico, undergoing degradation processes directly related to the increasing number of rural communities, the PNNT requires an in-depth diagnosis of the status and sustainability of its natural resources and of the role and interaction of social- and economic factors.. In this Selina project, a multi-level analysis of natural resources management will be developed: cultivated plot, production unit and rural community. It will also include identification of the stakeholders and their interplay from grass roots to government instance level. We will examine in particular how local initiatives can be better coordinated with public policies. Since these innovations most often occur in the 'building' of territories, we will seek to identify in this context those who contribute to the establishment of a sustainable model of territory. From this point proposals will be made to improve the management of Natural Protected Area including the participation of local communities. This joint research project between French and Mexican institutions is based on skills developed on both sides in the fields of farming system diversity, land use and land use change, characterization of living conditions of populations, public policies impact on sustainable development, community management of forest areas, governance and conflict analysis, agriculture multifunctionality, rural poverty. Trans-disciplinarity of this project, from social and political sciences to physical sciences, will help develop an integrated approach. Positive benefits in direct relationship to joint research are expected to cross social, economic, environmental, political and territorial fields. They are foreseen as immediate results of the study and analysis of interactions between public policies and local practices of natural resource managements within the PNNT. This will lead to a better integration of practices and local organizations in the design and implementation of innovative public policies. It will also help with future national and international debates on public policies and their changes following the Copenhagen and Merida conferences, and in view of upcoming conferences. As a contribution to those debates, an international conference on this theme will be organized by the project itself in 2014 and proceedings will be edited as a book.

Globally, the role of pharmacists is changing to a more patient centred, and biotechnological oriented role not covered by most of the current study programmes. There is a need for specialisation and, especially in Latin America (LA) according to the reports of many professional and academic associations. COPHELA aims to develop and pilot implementation of a COPHELA M.Sc. in pharmacy that by increasing specialisation and research in hospital, community and industrial pharmacy foster the development of pharmacy in LA in conjunction with EU.COPHELA M.Sc. will develop innovative course units with two main characteristics: 1. a competence-based learning framework that fits in well with the highly heterogeneous regulations of the pharmacy profession in the Mexico, Costa Rica, Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, Argentina, Chile, Brazil, etc. and thus can be of general application and use in LA; 2. using distance learning technology to avoid the excessive cost of the traditional specialisation courses that limit access to many LA pharmacists. The materials generated will be freely available. COPHELA will also develop quality assurance tools to facilitate the recognition of the courses. This M.Sc. development will therefore also be the starting point for the development of post-registration continuous professional development and for the validation of learning in universities all around the world and in the work place.The short-term impact will be the production of pharmacy specialists adapted to the modern LA and EU situation. The long-term impact will be a global improvement of LA healthcare with more efficient pharmaceutical care and the evolution of the LA pharmaceutical industry.The impact for the EU will be improvement in collaboration with LA in the fields of pharmacy education, healthcare and the pharmaceutical industry. The tools and teaching material developed will be used to promote continuing professional development for EU pharmacists.

Public bodies’ workers are currently facing an enormous challenge: a growing public demand for the creation of an opener and more inclusive governance and the emergence of several and social information and communication technologies (ICTs).As a result of the meetings and the debates that took place in the “1st Iberoamerican Conference on Public Innovation” (congresonovagob.com), which hosted leading specialists in the modernization of the public sector in Spain and Latin America; one of the clearest findings was the need for a common training space (both within Europe, within LAC, and between continents) in order to help a sector that evolves technologically slowly and has so much room for improvement, especially at local levels.This platform should encourage the use of good common practices and the self-improvement of public workers in order to progress as a society.The main outputs expected are:1. Creation and improvement of Digital Education Departments in the Latin American HEIs2. Joint development, recording and delivery of an Open Government MOOC in each consortium HEIs.3. Creation of a mutually beneficial and lasting LAC-EU HEIs partnership that will enable a Digital Education Cooperation Programme designed to jointly manage the Open GovernmentDigital Education Platform (OGDEP).4. Develop opportunities for international cooperation at regional (LAC)5. Development of new tools for the exchange of good “digital” practices among Latin American and European universities.6. Promotion of good governanceThe main impact of TOGiVE is, thanks to the EU-LAC platform for tertiary-level online learning, to supply society with people with leadership, language and technology skills.The public workers (the students) will benefit by acquiring new skills and know-how in the development of open government, thus improving their professional and social prospects. A platform of this type will undoubtedly generate prestige both for the HEI and the area that host it.

Transition to a low-carbon future requires technologies based on critical metals and sustainable energy production. Geological systems associated with convergent plate boundaries host considerable amounts of mineral resources and significant geothermal energy potential, both controlled by super-hot (>350C) fluids at depth. The development of supercritical geothermal resources is a global challenge that cannot be solved by a single country alone. The SCAR project will bring together leading research groups in metallogenesis and mineral extraction (British Geological Survey and Mexican Gold Corp) and geothermal systems (Autonomous University of Mexico, University of Michoacana and the Italian National Research Council) to evaluate the inter-dependency between super-hot fluids, mobilisation and distribution of critical metals (Te, Bi and In) and heat flow. We propose a collaboration focussed on the Tatatila-Las Minas Cu-Au deposit (in the Trans Mexican Volcanic Belt) which can provide data essential for modelling the potential and efficiency of simultaneous extraction of metals and energy from super-hot geothermal systems. A UK-Mexico collaboration aligns well with UK Government initiatives of setting up new partnerships to boost sustainable economies. Dr Alicja Lacinska, lead proposer of SCAR, is a New Investigator whose ambition is to forge new international partnerships to deliver high quality crosscutting science in anticipation of future large-scale metallogenic-geothermal initiatives worldwide.

The objective of ALMASI is to provide the research community with an aligned, nonprofit, high-quality, and sustainable scholarly communication ecosystem across three world regions: Africa, Europe, and Latin America. This will enable scholarly communities to take full responsibility for innovative, valid, reliable and accessible publishing services and solutions that do not charge fees to readers or authors, commonly known as Diamond Open Access. This aligned nonprofit publishing ecosystem will take into account specific needs across the diversity of disciplines, global regions, and languages. The project will achieve this goal by concentrating on measures that will harmonise and strengthen existing nonprofit publishing services and solutions. ALMASI will establish a framework for knowledge transfer, coordination, and alignment of non-technological publishing skills, services, and solutions. The project will focus on (1) mapping nonprofit publishing services and solutions across the 3 regions; (2) aligned quality support instruments for publishing services; (3) shared training materials and curricula for publishing services, journal editors, and publishing staff; and (4) long-term financial sustainability and OS policies for scholarly publishing. The project will be carried out in the context of the nascent Global Diamond Federation, which is supported by UNESCO.