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 1585–1596 of 15345 results

Past Event

Reclaiming trans rights in India: Unsettling patriarchy?

Despite a rich cultural tradition of gender-fluidity, the transgender community in India have been stigmatised as a ‘criminal tribe’ through a colonial-era law. The community has struggled for their rights over decades, and only after significant engagement with the judiciary were they...

6 September 2022

Publication

Strengthening Food Security in Pakistan During the Covid-19 Pandemic

Stories of Change

Pakistan is facing numerous socioeconomic impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic, including on food security. Food insecurity, which is a long-standing issue, has become more visible since the pandemic. Covid-19 Responses for Equity (CORE) partner the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI)...

Abid Q. Suleri & 5 others

5 September 2022

Opinion

Empty promises: Continuing the fight for trans rights in India

Despite a rich cultural tradition of gender-fluidity, the transgender community in India have been stigmatised as a ‘criminal tribe’ through a colonial-era law. The community has struggled for their rights over decades, and only after significant engagement with the judiciary were they...

5 September 2022

Opinion

Tobacco and agrarian change in southern Africa

A great new special issue – tobacco and transformation – is out in the Journal of Southern African Studies, edited by Martin Prowse and Helena Pérez Niño. With reflections on Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe (mostly), it provides an important overview of a crucial...

5 September 2022

Opinion

Giulia Simula on pastoralists and markets in Sardinia

Giulia Simula worked with pastoralists in Sardinia, Italy, during her doctoral research with the PASTRES programme. In this short video, she discusses what she discovered, and how this challenges assumptions about how pastoralists engage with different kinds of markets.

2 September 2022

Impact Story

Partnerships for Covid-19 response exceed expectations

Two years into the Covid-19 pandemic, the more complex impacts of the disease are becoming clearer. Rising to these multidimensional challenges, IDS partnerships have gone above and beyond expectations in pursuing social science research to inform policy and practice. Despite the constraints...

1 September 2022

Journal Article

Secessionist Conflict and Affective Polarization: Evidence from Catalonia

Can secessionism be a basis for affective or social polarisation? Despite much research on independence movements, their relationship to polarisation, a key mechanism theorised as increasing the risk of violent conflict, remains less understood. We argue that the issue of secession can...

1 September 2022

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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