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.
In a new approach announced by the World Bank and IMF, civil society is being offered a part in shaping and implementing national anti-poverty strategies.
The purpose o f this short article is to examine critically the current orthodoxy concerning
social rates o f returns to general and vocational secondary education in developing countries.
Since George Psacharopoulos has been the prime mover in establishing this orthodoxy, we
shall focus in...
Recent research suggests that East Asia's manufactured export success is
not replicable in other developing countries, with lower skill/land ratios.
This conclusion, however, is based on a narrow definition of manufactured
exports. The present paper asks whether the chances of...
Since 1950 China has transformed itself from the sick man of Asia' to a country with
better than average health indices for its level of national income. This achievement
was due to a number of factors including a dramatic fall in the prevalence of severe
poverty, improvements in the rural...
The uses and management o f renewable natural resources (RNRs), and their consequences
fo r sustainability, are mediated in intended and unintended ways by institutional
arrangements. This paper highlights some pitfalls in the existing literature on povertyenvironment
linkages in developing...
A recently completed survey of British manufacturing investment in
fourteen anglophone African countries indicates that there has been
major disinvestment during the last five years.
This process of corporate disengagement is occuring despite concerted attempts by African governments to...
The paper makes an initial analysis of the trade policy changes that the EU will implement to give effect to its GATT Round commitments.
It focuses mainly on tariff changes in three areas: industrial products of interest to developing countries, temperate agricultural products, and
goods on...
The basic idea of linking relief and development is simple and sensible. But what is involved in practice and what are the barriers preventing it? This IDS Bulletin presents a collection of articles on the issues involved, a number of case studies, and perspectives from several leading...
Structural adjustment can be dated to the World Bank's 1981 Accelerated Development (Berg) Report, albeit precursor World Bank programmes in Sub-Saharan Africa (e.g. Togo, Malagasy Republic) date to the late 1970s.
1 July 1994
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).