The establishment of the IDS Environment Group in 1990 created a line of research linked to policy that has remained central to the Institute ever since. In highlighting a series of IDS Bulletin issues, led by IDS researchers, this archive issue tracks the development of this work over the last 35 years. It also tells a broader story of the contribution of IDS to key debates on environment and development evolving over this time. During these decades environmental challenges have become ever more acute, with environmental questions being absolutely central to Development and Development Studies in a world of multiple intersecting crises.
So, what then have been the core contributions of this body of work emerging from IDS and partners over the past decades? Some of the themes highlighted by the IDS Bulletins featured here include: key contributions tracking debates over the relationships between environment, development and policy in the early 1990s; the emerging emphases on social dimensions, communities, resources and livelihoods, including work linking environmental research with long-standing gender research at IDS; the politics of environmental knowledge, exploring local knowledges and perspectives and the ways these challenge mainstream science and policy; and uncertain knowledges and the development of the ‘pathways approach’ to sustainability, bringing together understandings of complex, dynamic systems.
Over the years all this has combined with analyses of power and political economy, highlighting of questions of justice, both around the causes and consequences of environmental change and the processes of transformation towards more sustainable futures. All of these themes remain relevant to critical policy-oriented research on environment and development emerging from IDS and beyond that we hope will continue to shape global debates on these most crucial issues of our time.
Read the open access articles below
Environmental Change: Development Challenges Revisited (Full issue)
Melissa Leach, Ian Scoones and Robin Mearns
Introduction: Environmental Change, Development Challenges – Revisited
Melissa Leach and Ian Scoones
Environmental Change, Development Challenges (Editorial)
Melissa Leach and Robin Mearns
Community-Based Sustainable Development: Consensus or Conflict? (Editorial)
Melissa Leach, Robin Mearns and Ian Scoones
Food Security and the Environment (Editorial)
Susanna Davies and Melissa Leach
Gender Relations and Environmental Change (Editorial)
Melissa Leach, Susan Joekes and Susanna Davies
Livelihoods in Crisis: Challenges for Rural Development in Southern Africa [Introduction]
Ian Scoones and William Wolmer
Changing Perspectives on Forests: Science/Policy Processes in Wider Society
Melissa Leach and James Fairhead
Climate Change and the Challenge of Non-equilibrium Thinking
Ian Scoones
Environmental Governance in an Uncertain World (Editorial)
Lyla Mehta, Melissa Leach and Ian Scoones
Why Invisible Power and Structural Violence Persist in the Water Domain
Lyla Mehta
Towards a New Political Economy of Climate Change and Development
Thomas Tanner and Jeremy Allouche
Reclaiming the Cerrado – A Territorial Account of a Disputed Frontier (Introduction)
Lídia Cabral, Sérgio Sauer and Alex Shankland
Reframing Climate and Environmental Justice (Introduction)
Amber Huff and Lars Otto Naess
Climate Justice for Whom? Understanding the Vernaculars of Climate Action and Justice in Marginal Environments of India
Shilpi Srivastava, Shibaji Bose, Devanathan Parthasarathy and Lyla Mehta
Conclusion: Environmental Change, Development Challenges – Revisited
Robin Mearns
Editors
