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 theme for this year’s World Food Day (16 October) is ‘leave no one behind’. However, the leave no one behind agenda as part of the Sustainable Development Goals focuses largely on addressing deprivation and not the broader inequities - injustices and power imbalances – that drive...
Food systems are pervaded with inequities, from production to consumption. Despite massive gains in crop yields over the last half century, we're now seeing rising levels of hunger and malnutrition across the world. Vulnerable and marginalised people in richer and poorer countries alike are...
This report provides a snapshot of the research undertaken and published by members of the IDRC-supported CORE programme. It sets out the main themes addressed by the research in relation to Covid-19 impacts on industries, sectors and socioeconomic groups in locations across Africa, Middle East,...
Entitled ‘Partir pour rester?’ (‘To leave in order to stay?’), Linda Pappagallo’s doctoral research focused on the pastoral economy in a community called Douiret, in the south of Tunisia.
The first case of Covid-19 was identified in Zimbabwe on March 20 2020. Having seen what was happening elsewhere in the world, Zimbabweans were fearful of what was to come. Following World Health Organisation guidelines, the government imposed a strict lockdown on March 30. While there were very...
The Social Science in Humanitarian Action Platform (SSHAP) – a partnership between the Institute of Development Studies, Anthrologica, and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine – has announced the first Francophone cohort of its SSHAP Fellowship.
The Fellowship, which...
The adoption of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in the public sector, including for tax administration, has been hailed as potentially transformational over the last few decades. Its impact has been less far-reaching than imagined. A literature examining the determinants of –...
In this Centre for Development Impact (CDI) webinar, Peter Taylor will discuss his learnings as a commissioner of a large multi-country programme The Think Tank Initiative (TTI) for strengthening for thinktanks in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
It offered flexible, long-term funding combined...
In March 2020, when Covid-19 first arrived in Zimbabwe, we decided to switch our research focus to study the unfolding implications of the pandemic in our rural sites across the country. We did not expect to continue for over two years. It required us to reinvent a way of doing research so that...
Este capítulo describe las trayectorias de atención en el proceso de reincorporación de las Farc-EP. Analizamos una base de datos única de la Agencia de Reincorporación y Normalización (ARN) con información mensual de las interacciones y atenciones entre más de 13.000 exintegrantes y los...
The CLARISSA Nepal team collected and analysed 400 life stories of children and young people engaged in or affected by the worst forms of child labour (WFCL), particularly in the “Adult Entertainment” sector in Nepal, which includes children working in Dohoris (restaurants playing folk...
This paper studies the effects of disclosing information about politician misbehaviour on trust in public institutions. I use news bulletins from the main anti-corruption agency in Colombia announcing disciplinary prosecutions against municipal mayors. I exploit the timing of the bulletin’s...
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).