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.
This Working Paper seeks to explore current and emerging framings of decolonising knowledge for development. It does this with the intent of helping to better understand the importance of diverse voices, knowledges, and perspectives in an emerging agenda for development research.
This paper seeks to connect evidence from humanitarian and development accountability approaches to better understand the linkages and disconnects, and to identify opportunities for future research and learning.
This Sussex Development Lecture will introduce the themes of uncertainty explored in the new book The Politics of Climate Change and Uncertainty in India.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHURMsWIHhM
The book brings together diverse perspectives concerning uncertainty and climate...
The total amount of money international migrants send back home to support families - is over three times the amount of Official Development Assistance (ODA). But as legal migration routes are increasingly restricted, people find other ways to cross borders to find paid work in other...
Today, people worldwide can expect to live into their 60s and beyond. There are estimated to be around 900 million older adults (aged 60 years and above), around 13 per cent of the world population
There are estimated to be around 900 million older adults (aged 60 years and above), around 13...
This briefing reviews experiences of social assistance measures in response to Covid-19 across low- and middle-income countries, and the extent to which these measures were inclusive of the most marginalised individuals or reached the furthest behind first.
Social assistance has proven a vital component of the response to the unprecedented global crisis of Covid-19. Almost all countries across the world implemented some form of social assistance to provide a buffer against the pandemic’s socioeconomic consequences.
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...
In this distinguished lecture the speakers examine the relationship between the leftist populists of the 1970s and the right-wing populists of the 2010s and explore whether their authoritarian practices differ.
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India has long held an exceptional status as the most...
BASIC (Better Assistance in Crises) Research is a Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) funded programme examining why, how and when to use social protection approaches in different crisis contexts, to deliver more effective social assistance so that vulnerable people cope better...
Background: Recognition of the value of “social accountability” to improve health systems performance and to address health inequities, has increased over the last decades, with different schools of thought engaging in robust dialogue. This article explores the tensions between health policy...
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).