The Duck of Minerva

Raul Pacheco-Vega

Raul Pacheco-Vega is an Associate Professor with the Methods Lab at the Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO) Sede Mexico. My research is interdisciplinary by nature, although he considers himself more of a political scientist and geographer, as those are the two major fields he studied during his doctorate. His research lies at the intersection of space, public policy, environment and society. He is primarily interested in understanding the factors that contribute to (or hinder) cooperation in natural resource governance. While his major focus has been sanitation, wastewater and pollution control, he is also interested in solid and hazardous waste management and urban/industrial restructuring. He uses a broad range of theoretical approaches, cross disciplinary boundaries and apply multiple methods.

Recent Posts

What the EPA budget cuts mean for North American environmental politics

by Raul Pacheco-Vega | 12 April, 2017 | ,

The negative impact of President Trump's recent actions to de-fund many Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) programs goes beyond withdrawing support from climate adaptation and mitigation initiatives, and rollbacks on environmental regulations. These budget cuts will potentially hinder the cumulative (and positive) work that the Commission for Environmental Cooperation of North America (CEC) has already done for the past 23 years to improve the North American environment. Founded in 1994 as one outcome of the side agreement on environmental cooperation to the North American Free Trade...

read more

Luis Videgaray, Mexican foreign policy and the open contempt for expertise

by Raul Pacheco-Vega | 6 January, 2017 | ,

For the past few months, I've been observing with horror all the cabinet appointments in the incoming Trump administration and the Theresa May government .  As someone who originally did a PhD with the intent to become a career diplomat (and yes, I realize there's a foreign civil service pathway to achieve precisely that goal), to me expertise in top-level agencies was more than a mere technicality: it was a requirement. I wanted a PhD in international relations or political science because I wanted to be knowledgeable about the dynamics of global affairs, diplomacy and state-to-state...

read more

Why does IR shun global water governance?

by Raul Pacheco-Vega | 25 October, 2016 |

I've been invited to join the cast of guest bloggers here at Duck of Minerva, and as you may have expected, the first thing I thought of was "well, I've made it, and... now what am I supposed to blog about?" On my personal (yet research-focused) blog, I write about a very broad range of topics: academic writing, time management, literature reviews, surviving academia, and heck, even my own research! But here at the Duck of Minerva I wondered aloud whether I could bring more attention to research issues I've been concerned about that I haven't seen resolved (don't you worry, you may get an...

read more