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 73–84 of 15276 results

News

Gauthier Marchais receives prestigious education research award

Gauthier Marchais, Research Fellow at IDS, has won the Jackie Kirk Outstanding Book Award of the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) for his work on education in crises. Gauthier was named alongside co-editors Mary Mendenhall from Columbia University, Yusuf Sayed from the...

27 March 2025

Publication

Zakat Payments in Pakistan Exceed State Social Protection

ICTD Factsheet

Every year, hundreds of millions of Muslims across the world pay a proportion of their wealth as zakat, one of the five pillars of Islam mandating an annual payment of a proportion of an individual’s productive wealth, broadly representing 2.5 per cent. Consequently, zakat represents a...

Max Gallien
Max Gallien & 2 others

26 March 2025

Journal Article

Furthering a feminist fiscal agenda: Engendering tax and development

Development Policy Review 43

Taxation has received increasing attention from researchers and in the context of development policy, though less attention has been paid to the gendered impacts of taxation, particularly in lower-income countries. Purpose We seek to understand how taxation affects men and women differently...

Anuradha Joshi
Anuradha Joshi & 2 others

26 March 2025

Brief

Tax and Gender: Why Informality Matters

ICTD Policy Brief 16

Recent policy debates have increasingly focused on the gendered impacts of taxation, yet much of this work is rooted in high-income contexts, overlooking the realities of low- and middle-income countries where most individuals, particularly women, work in the informal sector. This policy...

Max Gallien
Max Gallien & 3 others

26 March 2025

Brief

Designing Social Assistance Programmes for Displaced People

BASIC Research Policy Briefing 6

Social assistance programmes for displaced people are likely to be more effective if they take the circumstances and preferences of displaced people into account, yet very few do. Most research tends to focus on those who deliver assistance rather than those who receive it. This Policy Briefing...

26 March 2025

Opinion

Rethinking humanitarian diplomacy

Two hundred children were killed by Israeli airstrikes on Gaza in just 72 hours last week, while all life-saving aid supplies, and water has been cut off. Progress on a ceasefire in Ukraine is hitting obstacles and South Sudan's fragile peace is teetering on the brink of collapse. US bombs are...

24 March 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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