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.
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...
Duncan Green used a great metaphor in his recent blog when he called the recent mega-cuts in global aid budgets a tsunami. We are witnessing the sudden transformation of the aid sector that is losing life and diversity at a dizzying rate, like a coral reef weakened by rising sea temperatures and...
Every year, hundreds of millions of Muslims across the world pay a proportion – broadly 2,5% – of their wealth as zakat, one of the five pillars of Islam. On the occasion of Ramadan, when most zakat is paid, we highlight three preliminary findings emerging from a new nationally...
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...
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...
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...
The negative impacts of crises on marginalised people’s lives are exacerbated by intersecting inequalities. However, there is limited knowledge about the layered effects of marginalisation and protracted crises; what this means for how people cope and access social assistance in particular...
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...
The number of conflicts disrupting or halting the mining of critical minerals, like copper and lithium, is putting the energy transition required to combat climate change at risk, researchers warn in a new study.
The new research from the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) shows that...
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...
Following on our previous blog which reported on the perspectives to emerge from a meeting of researchers and funders from the global South and North on visioning equitable research partnerships, we now share the subsequent conversation between Suraj Jacob and James Georgalakis and their vision...
Perspectives from Trivandrum, India and Brighton, UK on research equity: In the two jointly authored blogs, two very differently positioned members of the global development research community share their combined challenges in the promotion of more equitable research for global...
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).