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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 1153–1164 of 15388 results

Opinion

Access to pastures in Northeastern Turkey: Auctions, bans, and interrupted pathways

Turkey hosts many mobile pastoral communities, most of which have become sedentary over the last few centuries. Even the most well-known mobile pastoralist groups still operating in the country often face obstacles to their movements, with consequences for livelihoods, animals and...

M. Fatih Tatari

2 June 2023

Opinion

China and the fourth industrial revolution: a call for collaborative research

Recent blogs on this site have called for academic collaboration and policy coordination with China to address global challenges including climate change and biodiversity loss, pandemics and overuse of anti-microbials, and building sustainable food systems. Here we argue for the importance of...

Jennifer Holdaway, Fellow, International Institute for Asian Studies, University of Leiden

Sarah Cook, Visiting Researcher, Southern Centre for Inequality Studies, University of Witwatersrand

2 June 2023

News

Conference to convene debate on the future of global tax governance

A century since the League of Nations first began to discuss international taxation, global tax governance has reached a critical juncture. As the OECD’s Inclusive Framework negotiations draw towards a conclusion, there is a sense that the decade-long experiment to reform international tax...

2 June 2023

Opinion

Citizen Science: lessons in pandemic preparedness from Sierra Leone

Our research explored how communities responded to two epidemics in Sierra Leone. Here we highlight some of our findings, emphasising the importance of taking note of what communities themselves infer from their experiences of epidemic diseases. Governments talk a good deal about pandemic...

Paul Richards, Professor, Njala University

& 3 others

1 June 2023

Working Paper

Taxing Mobile Money in Kenya: Impact on Financial Inclusion

Many people argue that mobile money has the potential to increase financial inclusion and improve the livelihoods of poor people in Africa. However, while many African governments impose specific taxes on mobile money transactions, very little is known about their effect on the use of mobile...

Awa Diouf
Awa Diouf & 2 others

1 June 2023

Report

Towards Digital Transformation for Universal Health Coverage

The Covid-19 pandemic has re-emphasised the need to ensure equitable access to safe, effective and affordable health services. The very rapid shift to the use of smartphone apps and telephone consultations (telemedicine) has highlighted the potential impact of digital innovations on the...

Gerald Bloom
Gerald Bloom & 6 others

1 June 2023

Book

Pastoralism, Uncertainty and Development

In the drylands and mountains where pastoralists live, uncertainty is everywhere. In these settings, negotiating access to resources, navigating volatile markets, making use of varying social relations in times of stress, and responding to conflict and complex political dynamics is essential if...

31 May 2023

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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