Research-Action Applied to Territorial Development. Lecturer Tomás RODRÍGUEZ VILLASANTE, Ph. D.

The international conference was opened with two framework papers. The first one, The Challenges of World Governance, was given by Prof. Ph.D. Carlos Berzosa, Chancellor of the Complutense University of Madrid, Professor of Applied Economics and President of the World Economic Society. The second paper, named Research-Action Applied to Territorial Development, was given by Lecturer Ph.D. Tomás Rodríguez Villasante, Sociologist-Methodologist, University Lecturer at the Complutense University of Madrid, author of an extensive work on research-action applied to the development of participatory democracy in territorial communities both in Spain and Latin America.

These interventions provided the backbone of the two fundamental levels in which the current scientific, academic and political debates on governance of sustainable development took place. Thus, the first focused on the consequences for world economic and social sustainable development of the way in which the articulation of power within and between Nation-States occurs in the absence of a world government. It also emphasized the negative results of poor or bad governance in terms of poverty and inequality. The second, with a methodological approach and more focused on local communities, defended the need for fixing the concepts of governance or sustainable development, in order to establishing operational differences that allow a practical application for the development of participatory democracy and the real transformation of these communities. Prof. Villasante presented the main elements of the participatory research-action methodology which he has been recently experimenting with his team in various contexts.