Financialisation of Nature: why we need politics and theory

Guest post by Andrea Brock and Mareike Beck, School of Global Studies, Sussex University In recent years, a broad range of new instruments have been promoted and celebrated to tackle…

Join us for Resource Politics 2015

The ESRC STEPS Centre’s annual conference, Resource Politics: transforming pathways to sustainability will be held at the Institute of Development Studies on 7-9 September 2015. Registration is now closed. Among…

Is it time to refocus the Water-Energy-Food nexus?

The water-energy-food nexus is the ‘new kid on the block’ in development thinking since 2008, and is a key concept within the UN post-2015 development agenda. The current framing of…

Davos, development and delivering progress

As the money men and women of the world gather in the Swiss ski resort of Davos for annual The World Economic Forum (WEF), the challenges of addressing inequality, mitigating…

Resource Politics 2015: Call for panels and posters

We are delighted to announce our annual conference, Resource Politics: transforming pathways to sustainability, to be held at the Institute of Development Studies on 7-9 September 2015. Among the plenary…

‘Thousands of models’: Planetary boundaries, values & power

The role of current patterns of human habitation in earth systems processes is pushing beyond planetary boundaries; which is to say our impacts on climate and biosphere risk tipping our…

STEPS Africa research network to boost development in Africa planned

By Gilbert Nakweya for SciDev.net [NAIROBI] A new research and capacity building hub focusing on sustainable development issues in Africa will be established by mid this year, a meeting has…

Soil and politics

What do you think of when you think about soil? There are radically different ways to answer the question. For some scientists, it’s a subject of investigation – what do…

Political Ecology: resources, power and justice

With conceptual roots in political economy and cultural ecology, as well as close relationships with development studies and science and technology studies, the multidisciplinary field of political ecology shares a…