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

Melissa Leach

Emeritus Fellow

Lyla Mehta

Professorial Fellow

Ian Scoones

Professorial Fellow

Amber Huff

Research Fellow

Jeremy Allouche

Professorial Fellow

Lars Otto Naess

Research Fellow

Wei Shen

Resource Politics and Environmental Change Cluster Lead and Research Fellow

Shilpi Srivastava

Resource Politics and Environmental Change Cluster Lead and Research Fellow

Programmes and centres

Recent work

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Showing 15073–15084 of 15298 results

Brief

An Agenda for the World Food Summit

The 1996 World Food Summit is an opportunity for heads of state to make binding commitments to end world hunger. It is an achievable goal, but hard choices will have to be made.

1 January 1996

Journal Article

The Triple C Approach to Local Industrial Policy

24

In both developed and developing countries there is mounting evidence that clustering and networking help small- and medium-sized manufacturers to raise their competitiveness. The role of public policy in this process is less clear. The European experience suggests that local and regional...

1 January 1996

Working Paper

Programme Aid as an Appropriate Policy Response to Drought

IDS Working Paper 34

The traditional international response to drought has been to provide humanitarian relief, in particular food aid for direct distribution. The drought of 1991-92 in Southern Africa, however, saw a change from a response that was preoccupied with direct relief, to a response that incorporated...

1 January 1996

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).

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