Many sustainability problems are serious and require urgent attention, but what to do about them is not always clear. The ESRC STEPS Centre’s new Methods portal includes a wealth of examples, case studies and resources to help guide researchers and others in using methods for pathways to sustainability.
From food systems to pandemics, from climate disruption to clean water, research and appraisal methods can be crucial in understanding problems and seeking solutions. Often, the solutions proposed are steered and shaped by the most powerful, and neglected views can go unheard.
But the right methods and approaches can help to explore diverse sources of knowledge or ways of seeing problems. They can also help to broaden out options to reveal possible ways forward.
The STEPS Centre’s Methods resources draw on the Pathways Approach, intended to guide thinking and action around sustainability challenges, including the complex interactions between climate change, energy, pandemic disease, water scarcity, and hunger, poverty and inequality.
Examples and cases
The Methods portal includes varied examples of methods that can reveal diverse ways of seeing the world and offer multiple possible ways forward. A set of case studies illustrates how methods have been used in the work of the STEPS Centre and its collaborators around the world.
The site brings together fifteen years of publications, including books, papers and guides to methods and methodological approaches relevant to opening up and broadening out pathways to sustainability. It also documents last year’s programme of events co-hosted by STEPS, along with partners in Mexico and Kenya, under the title Challenging Research, which explored how methods challenge power, how power shapes research, and the relationship between knowledge and action.
Methods are also explored in the STEPS Centre’s free online course on Pathways to Sustainability, which includes a series of open access lectures and readings.
For an overview of the resources, visit the STEPS Methods portal and browse the full archive.