Sustainability

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.

People

Lyla Mehta

Professorial Fellow

Ian Scoones

Professorial Fellow

Amber Huff

Resource Politics and Environmental Change Cluster Lead

Jeremy Allouche

Professorial Fellow

Lars Otto Naess

Resource Politics and Environmental Change Cluster Lead

Wei Shen

Research Fellow

Shilpi Srivastava

Research Fellow

Programmes and centres

Recent work

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Showing 1453–1464 of 14676 results

Journal Article

High Reliability Knowledge Networks: Responding to Animal Diseases in a Pastoral Area of Northern Kenya

How can reliability be generated and sustained in the face of uncertainty? This question is explored by examining knowledge networks among pastoralists and others in northern Kenya, emerging in response to a highly variable animal disease setting. Using quantitative and qualitative social...

Alex Tasker

10 January 2022

Journal Article

The Politics of Taxing Multinational Firms in a Digital Age

Journal of European Public Policy; Volume 28, Issue 11

Taxing multinationals is politically difficult because of the structural power of mobile firms within the global economy, and this structural power is expected to increase in the digital age. Recently however there has been a breakdown in the international corporate tax consensus that...

Margarita Gelepithis

7 January 2022

Report

Education, Conflict, and Stability in South Sudan

K4D Emerging Issues Report

This Emerging Issues Report explores the relationship between education, conflict, and (in)stability in South Sudan, drawing on a wide range of academic, policy, and programming literature. There is a growing body of research on the ways in which education can both exacerbate conflict and...

6 January 2022

Journal Article

Visible Outside, Invisible Inside: the Power of Patriarchy on Female Protest Leaders in Conflict and Violence-affected Settings

Gender and Development Vol 29 Number 2-3

The literature on women’s participation in public protests and movements shows that even when they are prominent actors within these, most women are excluded from the male-dominated decision-making spaces within which negotiations with the state occur. In this article we look at the case of...

Jalila Haider

6 January 2022

News

Pakistan Hub webinar series

The Pakistan Hub, a partnership with the Mahbub ul Haq Research Centre (MHRC) at the Lahore University of Management Sciences, co-hosts a number of events series. Our events include panel discussions on the political economy of development and global challenges and the Mahbub ul Haq...

5 January 2022

Publication

Diffusion of Agricultural Innovations in Guinea-Bissau: From Learning to Doing

This paper analyses the pathways of technology diffusion through social networks, following the experimental introduction of new technologies in Guinea-Bissau. In the context of an agricultural extension project, we document both the direct effects of this intervention and subsequent diffusion...

1 January 2022

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).