Our colleagues in Mexico have have launched the first webinar in a four-part series, Cultivating Knowledges. The first webinar was convened in April by Umbela Transformaciones Sostenibles and LANCIS-IE-UNAM and…
Methods video: Regenerating the soil for new roots – Umbela Conversatorio #1
The financialisation of nature
Financialization describes an economic system or process that aims to reduce all values into a financial instrument. As part of this process, nature is treated as a private resource or…
Iran’s environmental crisis: why we should be mindful of depicting a dystopian future
In our age of computers and satellites, our sense of both urgency and fear has become central to the process of addressing environmental challenges. This sense of necessity for urgent…
What is Ecological Civilisation?
The Chinese Communist Party last week held its annual plenum in Beijing at which details of the country’s 13th Five Year Plan, from 2016 to 2020, were set out for…
The Anthropocene, control and responsibility: a reply to Andy Stirling
By Johan Rockström (Director, Stockholm Resilience Centre). This post is a slightly edited version of an email response and follows a blogpost by Andy Stirling on the Anthropocene, and Laura…
What can development learn from China’s approach to reform?
By Lewis Husain and Adrian Ely At the launch of the STEPS China hub in Beijing this year, there was much talk of learning from China’s development experiences. A key…
Pope Francis’ environmental encyclical
Today sees the publication of “Laudato Si”, the Pope’s encyclical on the environment. Encyclicals are for Catholics (and there are 1.2 billion of them in the world) but in this…
Watch video: ‘India’s Risks’ book launch
You can now watch video of the launch event of the book ‘India’s Risks: Democratizing the Management of Threats to Environment, Health and Values’. The video features contributions from Professor…
‘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…
Informing the UK’s approach to SDGs
A Parliamentary inquiry about the UK’s position and approach to the development targets to replace the millennium development goals has published evidence from the ESRC STEPS Centre. The Environmental Audit Committee’s inquiry is looking at how best…