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 book presents a comprehensive account of the rules, institutions and procedures governing the international climate change regime. Its detailed yet user-friendly description and analysis covers the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Kyoto Protocol, and all decisions taken by the...
This paper goes beyond conceptual debates to explore country level practice around emergent rights-based approaches to development, and their relationship with more established practices of participatory development.
Substantial theoretical and policy debate in the early 1990s led to an excessive focus on de-collectivisation and individualisation of land rights through privatisation across the former communist bloc. The objective of this paper is to examine 'individualised' production systems more closely in...
When it comes to improving development policy and practice, individual learning and change is as important as organizational learning and change, and the organization depends upon the individual. At both of these levels, an understanding of internal perspectives is required in order to explain...
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).