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 fight against the climate crisis is undoubtedly one of environmental justice, questioning entrenched systems of power that create social, political and economic inequities across the world. While this challenge is well known, rarely do we see these power systems questioned and successfully...
Urban areas are critical for human development. They are often viewed as key places for the pursuit of economic growth, for addressing epidemics, for modern day warfare, or for adapting to and mitigating for climate change hazards, amongst others.
An oft cited UN statistic noted that in...
In this Sussex Development Lecture, Professor Sonjah Stanley Niaah, discussed the reparation movement, including its achievements to date, the new opportunities for engagement on the issue and the outlook for the future against resistance from Governments of former colonial powers.
Watch...
IDS graduates Callum Chapman and Norma Jean Park (MA Food & Development, Class of 2024) were lead authors on the IDS Working Paper Towards Transformative Change: Grass-roots Innovations for Food Security During Crises in Brighton & Hove, UK.
This Working Paper analyses the emergence and...
Poor countries are reeling from the sudden and wide-ranging US aid cuts. Among the worst affected is South Sudan, a poor country which gained independence in July 2011. South Sudan relies on international assistance to provide basic services to its people. These cuts will devastate South...
How do we build economic systems that recognise and work within the biophysical limits of our finite planet while simultaneously reducing poverty and inequality? This has become a defining question of our time, and the global transition to clean energy is increasingly considered an important...
“We actually are still colonised. White people are the ones who know how long we will live and how far they can go in helping us... How can the government lead the fight when they can’t pay the health workers?” This statement was made in 2008 by a staff member in an organisation working...
Our studies of young people across our A1 land reform sites in Zimbabwe show the real challenges that young people face in getting established as independent economic actors. This requires putting together a portfolio of activities, diversifying opportunistically while also seeking a stable...
President Donald Trump announced a suite of tariffs on Wednesday (2 April), claiming that they would address trade imbalances and bring manufacturing and jobs back to the US. The tariffs, framed as being 'reciprocal tariffs', are due to be implemented from 9 April, range from 10 percent to as...
Young people’s urban lives are often riddled with inequalities and everyday obstacles inhibiting their full societal participation, to negatively affect their health and wellbeing. Findings from a study in intermediary cities in six countries show that programming interventions that support...
This working paper examines how communities along the Somalia–Kenya border navigate a landscape of war. Over decades of conflict – including civil war, insurgency, and counterinsurgency – local people have relied on their own means of governance and mutual support to repair the damage and...
The Raising Learning Outcomes (RLO) Programme emerged as a response to the global learning crisis. Launched in 2014 as a strategic partnership between the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), a number of RLO researchers...
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).