The next STEPS Summer School will be on 13-24 May 2013 at the University of Sussex, Brighton, UK.

Download the 2013 Summer School brochure and application details:

• 2013 Summer School (pdf, 344 kb)

For full information about the event, see the 2013 STEPS Summer School page.

Public debate at the Jubilee Library, Brighton, UK
Part of the Brighton Fringe 2013.

Panel:

• Kirsty Alexander, Head of Communications, Nuclear Industry Association
• Thurstan Crockett, Head of Sustainability, Brighton and Hove City Council
• Doug Parr, Chief Scientist, Greenpeace
• Jim Watson, Research Director, UK Energy Research Centre

Chair: Alice Bell, Research Fellow, SPRU Science and Technology Policy Research, University of Sussex

At a time of rising unemployment, energy and food costs, many families are struggling to heat their homes. But can fuel poverty be tackled without tackling climate change? And will tackling climate change – and other planetary boundaries such as water and land use – and keep the planet safe but make the poor poorer?

This debate will use the local issues such as fuel poverty and fracking to look at the global issues of environmental sustainability, poverty and social justice.

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The politics of policy-making around pastoralism in Kenya

Hon. Mohamed Elmi Member of Parliament for Tarbaj constituency, Kenya  and Former Minister for Northern Kenya and Other Arid Lands

Izzy Birch Technical Adviser, National Drought Management Authority, Kenya (formerly Ministry of Northern Kenya and other Arid Lands)

STEPS Centre /Future Agricultures Consortium Seminar
In April 2008 the Government of Kenya created a ministry to focus on the distinct challenges and opportunities of the country’s arid lands. Long-neglected and misunderstood by central policy-makers, these are areas on the one hand marked by insecurity and inequality, but on the other possessed of substantial, if latent, endowments and strengths.

The speakers will reflect on the ministry’s experience of promoting policy and institutional reform in the interests of a predominantly pastoral region and discuss its relationships with a range of other policy actors. They will highlight the challenges of pursuing long-term change within the limits imposed by five-year administrations, as well as the prospects for further consolidation of the reforms under Kenya’s new national and county governments.

Innovation has been moving up the strategic agendas of business, government and international agencies working in developing countries.  New markets for innovative goods and services among those at the base of the pyramid, and new technologies – particularly information and communication technologies – are inducing and enabling new actors to become involved in innovation for development.  This is creating new contexts and new locations for innovation.  And, as a result, new models of innovation are emerging.

This two-day workshop aims to share and explore some of these new models for which a variety of labels have emerged: “Pro-poor innovation”, “BoP innovation”, “Inclusive innovation”, “Below-the-radar innovation”, “Grassroots innovation”, “Frugal innovation”, “Jugaad innovation”, and more.

The STEPS Centre’s Grassroots Innovation project will be presenting a paper entitled Renewing inclusive models of innovation: grassroots innovation in historical and comparative perspective at this event, and STEPS Centre member Adrian Ely will  present a new STEPS Centre paper.

Find out more on the event website

Bram Buscher will be talking about the themes covered in his recently published book, Transforming the Frontier: Peace Parks and the Politics of Neoliberal Conservation in Southern Africa (Duke University Press). All welcome.

You can watch a video of Bram introducing his book on his website.

About Bram:
Associate Professor of Environment and Sustainable Development at the Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University. I also hold appointments as a visiting Associate Professor at the Department of Geography, Environmental Management and Energy Studies of the University of Johannesburg and a Research Associate at the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology of Stellenbosch University

About the book:
International peace parks—transnational conservation areas established and managed by two or more countries—have become a popular ways of protecting biodiversity while promoting international cooperation and regional development. In Transforming the Frontier, Bram Büscher shows how cross-border conservation neatly reflects the neoliberal political economy in which it developed.

Drawing on extensive research in Southern Africa with the Maloti-Drakensberg Transfrontier Conservation and Development Project, Büscher explains how the successful promotion of transfrontier conservation as a “win-win” solution happens not only in spite of troubling contradictions and problems, but indeed because of them. This is what he refers to as the “politics of neoliberal conservation,” which receives its strength from effectively combining strategies of consensus, anti-politics, and marketing. Drawing on long-term, multi-level ethnographic research, Büscher argues that transfrontier conservation projects are not as concerned with on-the-ground development as they are purported to be. Instead, they are reframing environmental protection and sustainable development to fit an increasingly contradictory world order.