Our interdisciplinary research explores how pathways to sustainability, green transformations and equitable access to resources such as land, water and food can be achieved and help us meet the environmental as well as human development-related goals of the UN Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development.
Our work builds on a long tradition of critical social science engagement with environmental issues and resource politics in collaboration with partners globally. It explores how pathways to sustainability are shaped by political-economic and social processes, and understands how they are driven by technology, markets, states and citizens. Our research sheds new light on how we can achieve green transformations that move us from fossil fuel to renewable energy, from throw-away to circular economies. It addresses the politics of sustainability, and understands how transformations occur at local levels as well as global, in both rural and urban settings, and be led by citizens as well as national governments. In doing so, it shines a light on how sustainable resource use, consumption and production is shaped by issues such as gender, livelihoods and politics.
The ESRC STEPS Centre (Social, Technological and Environmental Pathways to Sustainability) is an interdisciplinary global research and policy engagement centre.
Join us for this seminar that explores different kinds of power relationships that influence people’s access to resources, livelihood options and sustainability outcomes.
This seminar looks at a case study of aquaculture production systems in northern Vietnam and the power relationships...
The development sector proclaims that it values dignity. Yet it often breaks this promise, with people leaving encounters with charities feeling bruised and unseen. In this seminar, Tom Wein examines dignity as a core value around the world, drawing on his in-progress research for the future...
In the face of declining aid volumes and mounting debt and climate crises, lower income countries are under increasing pressure to raise more domestic revenue. With these countries already experiencing higher levels of wealth and income inequality than high-income nations, there is a compelling...
The Spending Review was published in the UK this week, with the Chancellor Rachel Reeves setting out the government’s spending plans for the next few years. It is of course dismaying to see the reduction in funds associated with the Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) budget, and...
Esta nota informativa analisa seis estudos de caso do programa POTENCIAR, implementado no setor da saúde em Moçambique. Destaca lições para os programas de governança e discute a forma como o POTENCIAR facilitou a partilha de conhecimentos, o planeamento participativo, a coordenação...
This event shares new research findings and brings together key voices to discuss current challenges, funding gaps, and what needs to change ahead of the upcoming Financing for Development conference.
Watch now
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Bn5cHJ1m5A
This launch event will explore...
Watch again
https://youtu.be/pkJHm-YE1hM
In this virtual panel event, we will bring together experts from various regions to address a critical challenge of our time: ensuring that women and youth are not left behind in the global transition to clean energy.
Gender equity needs to be at...
Uganda is one of the countries most exposed to recent cuts in international aid, particularly with the dissolution of the US Agency for International Development (USAID). In 2023, about 5 per cent of gross national income – a measure of a country’s total income, including income from...
These turbulent times strengthen the case for social protection – when there’s so much precarity, a solid floor is all the more important. And it’s clearer than ever that we can’t dodge the difficult questions: how do we deliver on global social protection promises in places where crises...
Building on critical scholarship on multiple resiliencies, this article takes temporalities seriously as the basis for its analysis. While disasters are usually described by resilience scholars as moments of temporal rupture, the article engages with different notions of temporalities with...
On 30 May 2025, IDS Honorary Associate and former UN Humanitarian Chief Martin Griffiths described the situation in Gaza as genocide. Alongside IDS Research Fellow Philip Proudfoot, here he calls for a decisive realignment of humanitarian law and humanitarian action to halt genocide and other...
Yolani Fernando, MA Governance, Development & Public Policy, Class of 2022-23, is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Arutha, (Arutha on Instagram) a Colombo-based policy think tank focused on economic research and communication with a special interest in public debt and taxation. In this...
Yolani Fernando, MA Governance, Development & Public Policy Class of 2022-23
10 June 2025
Why learn with us.
In an extraordinary time of challenge and change, we use more than 50 years of expertise to transform development approaches that create more equitable and sustainable futures. The work you do with us will help make progressive change towards universal development; to build and connect solidarities for collective action, locally and globally. The University of Sussex has been ranked 1st in the world for Development Studies for the past five years (QS World University Rankings by Subject).