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.
According to a recent global survey “distrust is now society’s default emotion”. Whilst this is a grand claim, it does emphasise the importance of placing trust at the heart of efforts to bring about positive change, as has been evidenced through the diverse projects of the Covid...
The Rejuvenate project is delighted to invite you to our next virtual dialogue. This time we’ll be discussing evidencing participatory child rights work.
There are many of us who believe that we should push for the participation of children and youth, simply because it’s their right to be...
How can we close persistent gender gaps in political participation? We develop a theory highlighting the role of male household members as “gatekeepers” of women’s participation in patriarchal settings and argue that the answer involves targeting these men.
We conduct a field experiment...
The impetus for this dialogue came out our first Rejuvenate working paper – which formed the basis of our living archive. In the paper, we tried to map the people, projects and publications that occupied the space at the intersection of child rights and participation. What we found in our...
Multiple aid agencies often try to support change in the same places, at the same time, and with similar actors. Surprisingly, their interactions and combined effects are rarely explored.
This briefing examines Cambodia’s Covid-19 response to highlight how knock-on effects have disproportionately impacted vulnerable migrants and informal domestic workers, including human-trafficking survivors.
Migrant workers in Vietnam make up 7.3 per cent of the population. Despite rapid economic growth, they suffer from precarious working conditions and food insecurity, which Covid-19 control measures have exacerbated.
Overview: This report looked across Covid Collective outputs and grouped findings into three sections. Section 2) Pandemic response; Section 3) Increased marginalisation; and Section 4) Emergent outcomes. Section 4 describes outcomes, both positive and negative, which evolved and were more...
A devastating heatwave affecting South Asia over the past two months has persisted into this week, with temperatures in parts of Delhi hitting a record 49.2 degrees Celsius over the weekend. From as early as March this year daytime temperatures have frequently passed the 40 degrees Celsius mark...
There is a huge government and aid machinery to respond to ‘drought’ in Zimbabwe. Humanitarian relief, cash-plus transfer schemes, shock-responsive aid, anticipatory action, insurance products, climate-smart development and much, much more, with millions of dollars spent. But what is...
The UK’s Foreign Secretary Liz Truss has today announced the long-awaited Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office’s (FCDO) new International Development Strategy.
The strategy sets out the Government’s future approach to international development, prioritising investment...
This is the 26th monthly Knowledge, Evidence and Learning for Development (K4D) Programme's Humanitarian Evidence and Discourse Summary to signpost the latest relevant evidence and discourse on humanitarian action.
It is the result of one day of work per month and is not intended to be a...
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).