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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 49–60 of 15388 results

Publication

Rapid evidence synthesis: Mpox community protection

SSHAP Evidence Synthesis

This note presents a rapid synthesis of evidence related to community protection in countries affected by the mpox clade 1b outbreak.

6 June 2025

News

IDS awarded funding to strengthen equity focused policymaking

The Institute of Development Studies (IDS) has been awarded four pioneering research projects funded through the British Academy. The funding is part of a programme that aims to enhance the use of evidence in policymaking for addressing critical global development...

6 June 2025

Opinion

Pathways to agricultural sustainability in Ghana

Farmers in Ghana are beginning to feel the consequences of decades of environmentally unsustainable practices such as soil degradation, loss of biodiversity, and dwindling household resources, yet their national agricultural policy remains focused on short-term economic gains. A recent panel...

5 June 2025

Report

Meeting report: The impact of global aid funding cuts on people and programmes in South Sudan

SSHAP Roundtable Report

Low-income countries are reeling from the sudden and wide-ranging cuts to U.S. government foreign assistance, as well as from announcements that several European donor governments are also reducing their contributions. Among the worst affected is South Sudan, a country which is experiencing...

5 June 2025

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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