Funded through the GCRF Off-Grid Cities and Sustainable Energy call, “Towards Brown Gold” seeks to address the challenges of marginality, sanitation and wastewater management in five growing towns in Ethiopia, Ghana, India and Nepal. Good sanitation is pivotal for human wellbeing,...
This research is designed to help improve the lives of the poorest residents of cities in Africa and Asia by focusing on how they are meeting their basic needs and accessing infrastructure, particularly when they are living 'off-grid'. The research is led by a consortium including experts in...
International agreements, such as UN Habitat’s New Urban Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals, seek to ensure that urban growth in as inclusive as possible. Yet cities are notoriously unequal places. Security of tenure both shapes and is shaped by state decisions to extend...
Alleppey, a major tourist destination in Kerala, has seen a congestion of its extensive ‘backwater’ canals and severe damage to its fragile ecosystem due to poor waste management practices. The liquid waste management in Alleppey is inadequate as there is no treatment of faecal waste. It...
Nanded is a fast-growing city in the Nanded district, Maharashtra. The city pioneered a city-wide community-led total sanitation (CLTS) in 2011. But challenges still exist, and poor communities face barriers in accessing sanitation infrastructure. Nanded has a rapidly growing population – a...
Nepal was declared open defecation free (ODF) in 2019 by former prime minister Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli. However, sanitation challenges persist. The Towards Brown Gold project is working in two rapidly growing cities in south-western Nepal: Gulariya and Lumbini. We are bringing together natural...
Wa, the most urbanised town in the Upper West Region, faces significant sanitation challenges, along with many other towns in Ghana. These challenges are worsened by a lack of government action and planning, and embedded socio-cultural and gendered practices. Private companies and city...
SSHAP (the Social Science in Humanitarian Action Platform) focuses on the social dimensions of emergency responses related to health, conflict, or the environment by exploring the political economy, community engagement and cultural logics, social difference, and vulnerabilities of those...
As part of the our Trust and Governance programme, IDS has partnered up with a team of international researchers from the ISDC, UNU-WIDER, IGZ and University of Konstanz on an exciting and very timely research initiative to collect real time data on the coronavirus and its social and economic...
IDS is working jointly with JUMEME Rural Power Supply Ltd, a pioneering company developing and managing solar PV hybrid mini-grids in Tanzania, and NGO Tanzanian Gender and Sustainable Energy Network (TANGSEN) to implement a business model for off-grid electricity supply that combines financial...
This networking activity convenes research, policy, cultural and community engagement organisations from across Sahelian Francophone West Africa. It seeks to understand whether the arts and cultural activities can act as a mode through which citizen and policy actors can communicate, co-creating...
Action on Children’s Harmful Work in African Agriculture (ACHA) is a seven-year research programme supported by the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) that started in January 2020. The aim of the programme is to build evidence on: the forms, drivers, and experiences of...
