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 15169–15180 of 15287 results

Publication

Skill, Land and Trade: A Simple Analytical Framework

IDS working papers;1


This paper proposes a minimal model of the relationship between human resources and foreign trade in developing countries, aimed at making it easier for economists working in these two fields to communicate with one another. The model combines familiar ingredients in a framework which is...

1 January 1994

Publication

Paradigm Shifts and the Practice of Participatory Research and Development

IDS working papers;2


"Participation" has three uses and meanings: cosmetic labelling, to look good, co-opting practice, to secure local action and resources; and empowering process, to enable people to take command and do things themselves. Its new popularity is part o f changes in development rhetoric, thinking...

1 January 1994

Publication

Food Security: A Post-modern Perspective

IDS working papers;9


The paper explores post-modern currents in food security. It identifies three main shifts in thinking about food security since the World Food Conference o f 1974: from the global and the national to the household and the individual; from a food first perspective to a livelihood perspective;...

1 January 1994

Publication

Exporting Manufactures: Trade Policy or Human Resources?

IDS working papers;4

Whether a country exports manufactures or primary products is determined mainly by the skill level of its labour force, relative to the extent of its natural resources. This proposition is derived from a modified version of Heckscher-Ohlin theory, and strongly supported by econometric evidence....

1 January 1994

Publication

The Poor and the Environment: Whose Reality Counts?

IDS working papers;3


Sustainable rural livelihoods will be needed for many more people in the 21st century. Three widespread views tend to mislead and need to be qualified: that more people in rural areas is always and necessarily bad for the environment; that poor people inherently take the short-term view; and...

1 January 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).

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