STEPS

Public debate: Fuel poverty, climate change and social justice

Julia Day — Sun, 05 May 2013 11:24:59 +0000

Join us on 20 May for a debate using local issues such as fuel poverty and fracking to look at global environmental sustainability, poverty and social justice. With Doug Parr, Jim Watson, Thurstan Crockett and Kirsty Alexander, chaired by Alice Bell.

DEBATE: Fuel poverty, climate change and social justice

20 May 2013

Jubilee Library, Brighton
7.00 – 8.30pm
Free entry, all welcome. Part of the Brighton Fringe Festival.

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?

Speakers:

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)

This event is co-organised with SPRU – Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Sussex.

More details, map etc

Public lecture: Capitalism, carbon and climate change

Prof Michael Jacobs, LSE

A video of this lecture will be posted on this website soon.

Michael Jacobs is a Visiting Professor at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics, and in the School of Public Policy at University College London. He is a former Special Adviser at the Treasury and 10 Downing St.

More details

Cancelled: Planetary boundaries and Sustainable Development Goals

Unfortunately Prof Johan Rockström, Stockholm Resilience Centre, was not able to give the planned lecture on 16 May 2013 as he was called to address the UN general assembly. A video of his presentation to the UN can be viewed on the UN Web TV website (at about 1:56min in to the video).

Here are two more videos from Prof Rockström on the planetary boundaries theme:

http://www.stockholmresilience.org/21/research/research-news/3-27-2013-redefining-sustainable-development.html

http://www.ted.com/talks/johan_rockstrom_let_the_environment_guide_our_development.html

STEPS Centre Summer School 2013

Julia Day — Sat, 04 May 2013 10:05:45 +0000

The 2013 STEPS Summer School is being held on 13-24 May.
Follow via the event Storify or on Twitter #sss13

Our Summer School aims to bring together an exceptional group of people who are exploring and developing ideas on pathways to sustainability. Through a mix of lectures, walks, discussions and public events, participants will challenge the STEPS team and each other on questions of science, society and development.

The story of the 2013 STEPS Summer School

You can follow the Summer School on Twitter via #sss13 or by the Storify stream, which tells the story of the two weeks in words and images.

Pandemic Flu Controversies

Steps Admin — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 09:46:07 +0000

How can a better understanding of the social, political, institutional and policy dimensions of pandemic control and preparedness planning help us deal with new outbreak controversies, such as the new H7N9 avian flu in China?

Useful resources about pandemic influenza, including material from the STEPS Centre and Sussex University Centre for Global Health Policy’s recent Pandemic Flu Controversies workshop which discussed lessons, policy implications and future challenges of pandemic flu.

Key resources

Blog: Pandemic Flu Controversies Pandemic Flu Controversies: What Have We Learned? Ian Scoones, Melissa Leach and Stefan Elbe blog for the Huffington Post
Briefing: Zoonoses: From panic to planning
Resources: Pandemic Influenza
Book: Avian Influenza: Science, Policy and Processes, edited by Ian Scoones
Book: Epidemics: Science, governance and social justice edited by Sarah Dry and Melissa Leach
Press release: Pandemic Controversies: the global response to pandemic influenza must change
Report: Pandemic Flu Controversies workshop report (pdf 115kb)
Resources: STEPS Centre work on zoonoses

Pandemic Influenza pages

Our work is organised around a number of themes. Over the last decade, our work on pandemic influenza has produced a number of published resources, including books, journals, blogs and media pieces.

Video interviews

We interviewed participants at the Pandemic Flu Controversies workshop on what they thought recent controversies could tell us about how to respond to pandemic flu in the future.

View this playlist on YouTube

Photo gallery

A selection of photos from the workshop.

Context and issues

Since the first human deaths from H5N1 were recorded in Hong Kong in 1997, avian influenza has spread across the world, concentrating in South East Asia. Billions of dollars have been spent on control measures, contingency plans and policy measures. In 2009 another influenza virus, H1N1 (popularly named ‘swine’ flu), was recorded in Mexico, and spread in pandemic proportions over the coming months.

None of these events to date have resulted in major human mortality on the scale some have predicted. The virus was either virulent but did not spread, or spread but was mild. Yet the prospect of some future combination where pandemic spread and mass deaths occur is very real, as recent laboratory research on H5N1 confirms.

Scientific advances in our understanding of the genetics, epidemiology and ecology of flu viruses have been rapid and impressive. Yet flu pandemics have generated multiple controversies, around threat perception, modelling, spending and response measures – raising questions about whose knowledge counts, and who gains and who loses. How can a better understanding of the social, political, institutional and policy dimensions of pandemic control and preparedness planning help us deal with such controversies? What lessons can we learn from recent controversies, and for the future?

Research at the STEPS Centre and the Centre for Global Health Policy at the University of Sussex interrogates these questions through on-going work in a number of settings. Collaborations with natural scientists, policymakers and field practitioners bring new insights to bear on pressing policy issues at the centre of the global response to pandemic influenza. A ‘One Health’ approach is at the core of our work, with an emphasis on cross-disciplinary and inter-sectoral engagement, with our work in particular bringing perspectives from the social and political sciences, which are often missing from global policy discussions.

Workshop programme (pdf)
Participants list (pdf 132kb)

DIG-IT Workshop: Dialogue on Inclusive Growth, Innovation and Technology

Julia Day — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 11:19:10 +0000

The DIG-IT Workshop on Inclusive Growth, Innovation and Technology – co-sponsored by the STEPS Centre - promoted a unique forum for discussion of alternative and interdisciplinary frameworks to improve our understanding of the nexus between innovation, technological change, growth and inequalities within and between regions.

STEPS Centre co-directors Andy Stirling and Ian Scoones and members, Adrian Smith and Adrian Ely are spoke at the workshop, which took place at SPRU Science and Technology Policy Research, University of Sussex on 1-2 May 2013. The event organiser was Mariana Mazzucato, Professor in economics at the University of Sussex, where she holds the RM Phillips Chair in Science and Technology Policy.

The event hashtag on Twitter was #digit13.

Find out more on the workshop website

Relevant resources from the STEPS Centre:

Innovation, Sustainability, Development: A New Manifesto. STEPS Centre (2010)
Transforming Innovation for Sustainability STEPS Centre, Stockholm Resilience Centre, Tellus Institute (2012)
Ely, A. and Scoones, I. (2009) The Global Redistribution of Innovation: Lessons from China and India
Leach, M. and Waldman, L. (2009) Centres of Excellence? Questions of Capacity for Innovation, Sustainability, Development
Brooks, S., Leach, M., Lucas, H. and Millstone, E. (2009) Silver Bullets, Grand Challenges and the New Philanthropy
Shah, E. (2009) Manifesting Utopia: History and Philosophy of UN Debates on Science and Technology for Sustainable Development
Millstone, E., Thompson, J. and Brooks, S. (2009) Reforming the Global Food and Agriculture System: Towards a Questioning Agenda for the New Manifesto
Ely, A. and Bell, M. (2009) The Original ‘Sussex Manifesto’: Its Past and Future Relevance
Bloom, G. (2009) Science and Technology for Health: Towards Universal Access in a Changing World
Movik, S. and Mehta, L. (2009) Going with the Flow? Directions of Innovation in the Water and Sanitation Domain
Van Zwanenberg, P., Ely, A. and Stirling, A. (2009) Emerging Technologies and Opportunities for International Science and Technology Foresight
Ockwell, D., Ely, A., Mallett, A., Johnson, O. and Watson J. (2009) Low Carbon Development: The Role of Local Innovative Capabilities
Stirling, A. (2009) Direction, Distribution and Diversity! Pluralising Progress in Innovation, Sustainability and Development
Bell, M. (2009) Innovation Capabilities and Directions of Development
Arond, E. and Bell, M. (2010) Trends in the Global Distribution of R&D Since the 1970s: Data, their Interpretation and Limitations

Relevant Resources from Mariana Mazzucato:

Visit Mariana’s website where you can access many of her publications
Rethinking the State video project
Budget 2013: come on, chancellor, you can change Britain’s future (Guardian)
Towards a fairer capitalism: let’s burst the 1% bubble (Guardian)
Innovation: let the good risk-takers get their reward (Guardian)

Democracy in the Anthropocene? Science and Sustainable Development Goals at the UN

Julia Day — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 15:24:44 +0000

Melissa Leach, STEPS Centre director, was one of 28 scientists invited to attend a United Nations Expert Meeting to discuss science and Sustainable Development Goals. She reflects on the issues addressed, the process involved and asks whether a dangerous new world of undisputed scientific authority and anti-democratic politics lies ahead.

Read about Melissa’s experience of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs Expert Meeting in her blog for the Huffington Post.

Melissa’s blogpost set off a fascinating debate about the politics of planetary boundaries and nature and role of scientific expertise. You can find our more about this debate – and contribute to it via the STEPS Centre blog, The Crossing.

Find out more

The STEPS Centre is uncertaking a wide variety of work in relation to shaping the post-2015 agenda, and the formation of a set of Sustainable Development Goals.

You can find out more about our work in this area in our Beyond 2015 section

World Water Day 2013

Steps Admin — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 14:15:42 +0000

Lyla Mehta, STEPS Centre water and sanitation convenor, writes about the need to look at the Millennium Development Goal on water and sanitation and what it means for gender justice, particularly as we look beyond the MDGs to potential Sustainable Development Goals.

“Current water and sanitation indicators to monitor progress are inadequate. They ignore gender dynamics, rights, equality, sustainability and equity concerns as well as regional variations,” writes Dr Mehta in a blogpost for the IDS Knowledge, Technology and Society Team blog.

In an article for CNN.com to coincide with World Water Day, Dr Mehta, along with Jennifer C Franco and Gert Jan Veldwisch, argue that the millions of hectares of land have been acquired in the past few years across Africa by investors might be framed as “water grabs” as much as they are already framed as “land grabs”.

Meanwhile IDS recently co-hosted an event with the All Party Parliamentary Group for International Development and the Environment which brought together parliamentarians with representatives from the NGO and academic communities to discuss how we can accelerate progress towards universal access to water and sanitation. The resources include an interview with Archana Patkar, Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council.

Resources:

Find out more about the STEPS Centre’s water and Sanitation work
Are African land grabs really water grabs? By Jennifer C Franco, Lyla Mehta and Gert Jan Veldwisch, CNN.com, 22 March 2013
Water and Justice: watch a film about the STEPS Centre’s peri-urban project, which follows three people on the fringes of Delhi and looks at their relationships to water.
IDS Bulletin, ‘Some for All?’ Politics and Pathways in Water and Sanitation, edited by Alan Nicol, Lyla Mehta and Jeremy Allouche
A list of the STEPS Centre’s STEPS water publications and resources which can be downloaded. Or you can search via the publications page.
Not Another Nexus. Presentations from the STEPS event Not another nexus? Critical thinking on the ‘new security convergence’ in energy, food, climate and water

The Entrepreneurial State and the Risk-Reward Nexus: Implications for Innovation and Inequality

Steps Admin — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 11:10:06 +0000

Mariana Mazzucato, Professor of Economics, SPRU, University of Sussex, will give a STEPS Seminar on Tuesday 16 April on a new framework to study the relationship between innovation and inequality.

Tuesday 16 April, 1pm-2.30pm
University of Sussex, Brighton. Venue on campus to be confirmed.
All welcome
More details on the event page

Overview of seminar

Mariana Mazzucato, Professor of Economics and RM Phillips Chair in Science and Technology Policy at SPRU Science and Technology Policy Research, presents a new framework, called the Risk-Reward Nexus, to study the relationship between innovation and inequality. She asks: What types of economic actors (workers, taxpayers, shareholders) make contributions of effort and money to the innovation process for the sake of future, inherently uncertain, returns? Are these the same types of economic actors who are able to appropriate returns from the innovation process if and when they appear? Who takes the risks and who gets the rewards? She argues that it is the collective, cumulative, and uncertain characteristics of the innovation process that make this disconnect between risks and rewards possible. When, across these different types of actors, the distribution of financial rewards from the innovation process reflects the distribution of contributions to the innovation process, innovation tends to reduce inequality. When, however, some actors are able to reap shares of financial rewards from the innovation process that are disproportionate to their contributions to the process, innovation increases inequality. The latter outcome occurs when certain actors are able to position themselves at the point where the innovative enterprise generates financial returns; that is, close to the final product market or, in some cases, close to a financial market such as the stock market. These favored actors then propound ideological arguments, with intellectual roots in the efficiency propositions of neoclassical economics, that justify the disproportionate shares of the gains from innovation that they have been able to appropriate. These ideological arguments invariably favor shareholder contributions to the innovation process over both worker contributions and taxpayer contributions.

Protected: Summer School 2013: readings

Julia Day — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 11:40:31 +0000

STEPS Symposium 2013: Photo gallery

Julia Day — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 11:20:44 +0000

The 2013 STEPS Symposium, Credibility Across Cultures: expertise, uncertainty and the global politics of scientific advice, was held in February 2013 at the University of Sussex.

Browse the photo gallery below for some pictures from the event.

Storify: STEPS symposium 2013

Steps Admin — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 10:17:17 +0000

This Storify documents tweets, links, photos and video posted during the 2013 STEPS Symposium, Credibility Across Cultures: expertise, uncertainty and the global politics of scientific advice, held in February 2013 at the University of Sussex.