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.
The Covid-19 pandemic has reinforced the urgency of achieving universal health coverage (UHC) and the dangers and harms that societies face without health systems that protect everyone. Not only has the pandemic caused a health crisis, including stretching and diverting health and other social...
Developing countries are increasingly using auctions for the procurement of utility-scale renewable electricity, due to the potential for attracting private investment. However, auction design and implementation can face serious obstacles due to complex context-specific factors.
This report critically examines the nature of the distinction between traditional inter-state diplomacy and sustainable development diplomacy. It then sets out the institutional changes which are necessary for the achievement of sustainable development diplomacy.
The monitoring and evaluation (M&E) Guidelines and Framework presented in this document (and in the accompanying M&E Indicator Framework) aim to encourage stakeholders in the rural sanitation and hygiene sector to take a more comprehensive, comparable and people focused approach to monitoring...
This session opens up a conversation between state, tech and civil society actors in the context of the rapid increase in application of digital health solutions in India’s mixed health system, and the challenges of ensuring inclusivity.
This consultation will ask what it means to take a...
In this seminar, we will share experiences in using a realist evaluation in the evaluation of a global mobile phone-based programme aiming to change nutrition-related behaviours in Sub-Sahara Africa.
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More specifically, we drew on a...
China and Africa’s ground-breaking declaration on climate change will profoundly impact China’s future international development strategy. In this blog, IDS Fellow Wei Shen highlights how and what more needs to be done to successfully implement this vision.
A ground-breaking joint...
Memories of old conflicts often shape domestic politics long after these conflicts end. Contemporary debates about past civil wars and/or repressive regimes in different parts of the world suggest that these are sensitive topics that might increase political polarisation, particularly when...
This paper makes theoretical, empirical, and methodological contributions to the study of social policy diffusion, drawing on the case of social protection in Africa, and Zambia in particular. We examine a range of tactics deployed by transnational agencies (TAs) to encourage the adoption of...
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).