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.
This wide-ranging book sets discussion of the various approaches to local government decentralisation in the context of the changing nature of public service management and the possibilities for new kinds of public involvement in government decision-making. It draws on a wide range of...
In his most recent review of rates of return to education (RORE), George Psacharopoulos reaffirms that the conventional pattern of continent-wide aggregate social and private ROREs continues to prevail among both developed and developing countries.
The paper aims to provoke thought on the apparent entrapment of the poorest countries in a vicious circle of self-perpetuating backwardness. It begins with a selective review of the debate on growth failure, covering conventional and structuralist arguments and new growth theory.
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...
"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...
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;...
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....
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...
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).