Shaping agricultural innovation systems responsive to food insecurity and climate change

Climate change and variability present new challenges for agriculture, particularly for smallholder farmers who continue to be the mainstay of food production in developing countries. Recent global food crises have…

Veterinary science, transboundary animal diseases and markets: pathways for policy in Namibia

The beef industry in southern Africa has been a stalwart of economic development, but new conditions of trade, market access and disease dynamics, particularly of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD), mean a…

Workshop highlights: Transboundary animal diseases and market access: the future of beef marketing in southern Africa

(French version / en français) Cooperation, innovation and diversification are the keys to a bright future for the red meat industry in southern Africa. This was the message emerging from…

Synthèse de l’atelier: Maladies animales transfrontalières et accès aux marchés : l’avenir du secteur du boeuf en Afrique australe

(English version / en Anglais) Coopération, innovation et diversification sont les clés du succès futur du secteur de la viande rouge en Afrique australe. Tel est le message ayant émergé…

Pathways to sustainable food futures in a dynamic world

From food prices and hunger to GM crops and biosafety, debates about agricultural innovation involve many competing narratives about key science and technology problems and their potential solutions. With each…

The Pathways Approach of the STEPS Centre

Rapid environmental and social changes – such as climate change, population explosion, urbanisation and globalised economics – are posing urgent practical, moral and political challenges across the globe. Consequently the…

‘It is our dirty little secret’: An ethnographic study of the flying toilets in Kibera slums, Nairobi

Using the case study of the Kibera slums, this paper takes a medical anthropological approach to discuss and explain the untold and common practice among the urban poor in developing…

Living with Materiality or Confronting Asian Diversity? The Case of Iron-Biofortified Rice Research in the Philippines

This article draws on findings from a multi-sited study of international science policy processes in rice biofortification. It focuses on the ten-year period between the discovery of a “high-iron” elite…

Energy Pathways in Low-Carbon Development

Energy and development go hand-in-hand: lighting, cooking, mobility, heating, cooling and communications are all essential to development processes. Moreover, the manner in which energy services are realised has both positive…

Energy Pathways in Low Carbon Development: from Technology Transfer to Socio-technical Transformation

The relationships between energy and development are complex, compounded by increasingly differentiated situations amongst developing countries and within them. Moreover, the manner in which energy services are realised has consequences…