Five titles from the STEPS Centre’s Pathways to Sustainability book series have been made open access for the first time, making them freely available to download, read and share.
The new open access titles include the first comprehensive discussion of the pathways approach, Dynamic Sustainabilities, to the collective output of the STEPS global consortium, Transformative Pathways to Sustainability.
The titles are taken from the book series published by Earthscan/Routledge in association with STEPS, which has showcased the Centre’s work over 15 years.
Highlights from the series
- Dynamic Sustainabilities: Technology, Environment and Social Justice
By Melissa Leach, Ian Scoones and Andy Stirling
Published in 2010, Dynamic Sustainabilities is the first book to set out the STEPS ‘pathways approach’ in detail. The book explores the problem of responding to complex, shifting and interrelated sustainability challenges, and proposes methodologies and approaches that recognise politics, plurality, uncertainty and dynamic change. - The Politics of Green Transformations
Edited by Ian Scoones, Melissa Leach and Peter Newell
2015 was a crucial year for global development, with the launch of the Sustainable Development Goals and the COP21 climate conference in Paris. Published that year, The Politics of Green Transformations explores the roles that states, markets and citizens might play in achieving transformative change, including investments and alliances among states and businesses, as well as grassroots innovations, and emancipatory social movements. - Grassroots Innovation Movements
By Adrian Smith, Mariano Fressoli, Dinesh Abrol, Elisa Arond, Adrian Ely
Innovation is increasingly invoked by policy elites and business leaders as vital for tackling global challenges like sustainable development. Often overlooked, however, is the fact that people have been innovating grassroots solutions for social justice and environmental sustainability for decades. First published in 2017, this book draws on STEPS work to explore lessons from six diverse grassroots innovation movements in India, South America and Europe, pointing to the possibilities they reveal, as well as the struggles, challenges and limitations they have faced. - The Politics of Uncertainty: Challenges of Transformation
Edited by Ian Scoones and Andy Stirling
Why is uncertainty so important to politics today? To explore the underlying reasons, issues and challenges, this book’s chapters address finance and banking, insurance, technology regulation and critical infrastructures, as well as climate change, infectious disease responses, natural disasters, migration, crime and security and spirituality and religion. The book draws on the STEPS Centre’s ‘Uncertainty’ theme and its international symposium in 2019, and anticipates many of the problems with politics of knowledge, science, models and responses that would feature in the Covid-19 pandemic. - Transformative Pathways to Sustainability: Learning Across Disciplines, Cultures and Contexts
By the Pathways Network, edited by Adrian Ely
In 2021, the Pathways Network produced this book with lessons from transdisciplinary research in six sites, exploring challenges in water, energy and food systems through ‘Transformation Labs’. The project involved all six hubs of the STEPS Centre’s global consortium, working in their own contexts, and sharing learning with each other. The book shares findings on how transformations take place in varied contexts, as well as insights on methods and methodologies for plural, inclusive pathways to sustainability.
More publications
The STEPS Centre’s online publications library has been updated with a new look for 2022. The library is now fully searchable, and can be browsed by theme, type and author.
Around 400 titles are available, and many are open access – including briefings and working papers, reports and other resources, and many books.
Key contacts
