On Thursday, India announced the first 20 cities to receive funding to become ‘Smart Cities’. It’s a high profile mission to modernise and transform urban infrastructure, especially using digital technologies…
What would a sustainable city look like?
From Dragon Heads to Farm Drops, Chinese agriculture has many faces
In Beijing last week, STEPS member Adrian Ely hosted a roundtable with social enterprises, NGOs and firms involved in food and agriculture to discuss the findings of the Low Carbon…
South Asia Sustainability Hub launched in Delhi
The economist Nitin Desai, the environmentalist Sunita Narain and the writer P. Sainath spoke at the South Asia Sustainability Hub & Knowledge Network launch event on 28 January in Delhi….
India’s seed sector is flourishing. Could African farmers benefit?
Africa’s farmers need quality seeds but the seed sector in Africa has often struggled to meet this need. The continent’s share in the global seed trade is very low, seed…
How do we end the dominance of rich countries over sustainability science?
by Patrick van Zwanenberg, Anabel Marin & Adrian Ely With the new Sustainable Development Goals adopted by the UN last year, SciDev.Net has published a timely report on the global…
Four neglected challenges for China’s low carbon future
Last year ended with a momentous political step forward on climate change. The Paris Agreement, signed at the COP21 climate conference in December, requires countries to work together to meet…
Workshop: Climate Change and Uncertainty from Above and Below
27-28 January 2016 New Delhi, India Uncertainty is often considered to be a “super wicked problem” or “monster” by scientists and policy makers. The integration of uncertainty in climate change…
International Conference: Pathways to Sustainable Urbanisation
29-30 January 2016 Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India Cities in India and other South Asian nations are in the midst of experiencing rapid urbanization. In this time of growth,…
Bats, people and a complex web of disease transmission
By Kate Jones and Liam Brierley It might seem strange that after millennia of human history, outbreaks of new, ’emerging’ diseases that we’ve never seen before still regularly occur around…
In search of transformations at COP21
The International Social Science Council has published interviews from the COP21 climate conference with three researchers who are part of their ‘Transformations to Sustainability programme’. The interviewees include STEPS researcher…