By JULIA DAY, STEPS Centre member Listen to the podcast of Bill Adams’ STEPS Seminar Read Bill Adams’ presentation The author of many seminal works on green development, Bill Adams of the University of Cambridge, visits us at the STEPS Centre today. Photo: Bill Adams delivers his STEPS Seminar “Conservation is never anything but social…
STEPS SEMINAR: BILL ADAMS ON THE POLITICAL ECOLOGY OF CONSERVATION
DEATH BY WATER
The Guardian’s economics editor Larry Elliott turns his attention to sanitation today, in particular, the situation in Bangladesh. “The vacuum [of action on sanitation] needs to be filled – by western governments and by aid organisations – and not just for Bangladesh but for all the even poorer countries in sub-Saharan Africa where sanitation is…
INNOVATION IN INDIA
By JULIA DAY, STEPS Centre member India may have strengths like democracy, diversity, demography, interdependence and role models, but it can’t become a global research giant unless it harnesses the strengths, according to Rajeev Gowda, STEPS Centre partner who organised the first event for our risk, uncertainty and technology project – co-funded by UKIERI in…
BIOFUELLED PATHWAYS TO SUSTAINABILITY?
By ADRIAN SMITH, STEPS Centre member Last week, Achim Steiner, head of UNEP, and one of the sponsors of the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change, joined an increasingly audible group of voices arguing for a system of sustainability standards for biofuels. Without such a system, operating robustly at the international level, Achim feared a backlash…
ACCOMODATING DISSENT
By JULIA DAY, STEPS Centre member Providing cures for health problems isn’t enough, if people’s personal or cultural beliefs clash with the scientific approach. STEPS Centre director Melissa Leach argues in this week’s Nature magazine that policy-makers must recognize and engage with these objections. Melissa also talks about her research into vaccination on the…
NO SHIT! IT’S WORLD TOILET DAY
By JULIA DAY, STEPS Centre member Nevermind the headline, what’s important about the 19 November is that it’s World Toilet Day – a day to focus on the humble, yet vitally important, toilet, and to raise awareness of the global sanitation crisis. (Photo: CLTS, Bangladesh) And crisis it is: 2.6 billion people – half the…
FT REPORT ON THE THREE GORGES DAM
By ADRIAN ELY, STEPS Centre member The Financial Times today has a special report by Jamil Anderlini on the Three Gorges Dam in Hubei Province, China. The report covers several of the issues raised in an earlier blog following my visit to the dam in June, arguing that the environmental and social impacts of the…