Journal Articles

Published: 1st December 2022

Environmental Science and Policy, vol. 138 (2022) Reliance on groundwater in Sub-Saharan Africa is growing and expected to rise as surface water resource variability increases under climate change. Major questions…

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Published: 28th October 2021

by Fernando García-Dory, Ella Houzer and Ian Scoones IDS Bulletin article In discussions around food systems and the climate, livestock is often painted as the villain. While some livestock production…

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Published: 6th August 2021

by Saturnino M. Borras Jr., Ian Scoones, Amita Baviskar, Marc Edelman, Nancy Lee Peluso and Wendy Wolford The Journal of Peasant Studies Volume 49, 2022 – Issue 1 This essay…

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Published: 11th June 2021

This article was produced as part of the Governance of Sociotechnical Transformations (GoST) project. The contribution makes use of a sociotechnical imaginaries (STI) framework to expose crucial but neglected governance…

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Published: 6th April 2021

This paper provides some of the conceptual and methodological underpinnings being developed in the ongoing TAPESTRY project which is part of the Transformations to Sustainability (T2S) Programme. We debate how the notion…

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Published: 6th April 2021

What ‘nature’ is being commodified in carbon markets, and why does it matter? How are carbon commodities and ecologies of repair co-produced through carbon forestry? Are the Polanyian notions of…

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This paper argues for a rethinking of disease preparedness that puts incertitude and the politics of knowledge at the centre. Through examining the experiences of Ebola, Nipah, cholera and COVID-19…

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Published: 11th November 2020

World Development Volume 138, February 2021 (published Open Access online) Read this paper COVID-19 is proving to be the long awaited ‘big one’: a pandemic capable of bringing societies and…

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Published: 27th September 2020

Journal of Peasant Studies 48:1 For many years, studies of peasants and pastoralists have run in parallel, creating mutual blind-spots. This article argues that, despite contrasting research traditions and conceptual…

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Published: 27th May 2020

Article in the journal Frontiers in Sustainable Cities that explores how centralized waste-to-energy (WTE) became the dominant ‘singular’ solution to Delhi’s solid waste crisis.

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Published: 6th June 2020

Issues in Science and Technology 36, no. 4 (Summer 2020): 25–27 Amid the very real devastations of already-vulnerable lives and livelihoods caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a…

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Published: 22nd May 2020

German energy giant and coal mine operator RWE makes two products: cheap electricity and ‘pretty new landscapes’. These ‘pretty new landscapes’ are biodiversity offsets to compensate for the destruction of…

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Published: 26th May 2020

IDS Bulletin 51A edited by Ian Scoones This archive IDS Bulletin reflects on 50 years of research on pastoralism at IDS. Much has changed, but there are also important continuities….

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Published: 1st April 2020

Bringing political ecology’s concern with the critical politics of nature and resource violence into dialogue with key debates in political geography, critical security studies and research on the geographies and…

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Published: 2nd February 2020

The imperatives of environmental sustainability, poverty alleviation and social justice (partially codified in the Sustainable Development Goals or SDGs) call for ambitious societal transformations. As such, few aspects of actionable…

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We draw upon and contribute to a wider literature on what drives farmers’ seed selection practices. Seed choice has been a frequent case in the elaboration of technology adoption theory. We apply a recently proposed tripartite model of learning, and present new survey data to shed light on the dynamics of seed choice and variety replacement rates among rice farmers in two sites in Nueva Ecija, Luzon, the Philippines. We compare our findings with previous research on the seed choices of Indian cotton and rice farmers in Warangal, Telangana, India.

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Laura Pereira, Niki Frantzeskaki, Aniek Hebinck, Lakshmi Charli-Joseph, Scott Drimie, Michelle Dyer, Hallie Eakin, Diego Galafassi, Timos Karpouzoglou, Fiona Marshall, Michele-Lee Moore, Per Olsson, J. Mario Siqueiros-García, Patrick van Zwanenberg…

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This paper examines a variety of theories bearing on ‘socio-material incumbency’ and explores methodological implications. The aim is to develop a systematic general approach, which builds on strengths and mitigates…

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Published: 19th March 2024

Farmer-led irrigation is far more extensive in Zimbabwe than realised by planners and policymakers. This paper explores the pattern of farmer-led irrigation in neighbouring post-land reform smallholder resettlement sites in Zimbabwe’s Masvingo district.

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Published: 8th August 2019

This article explores the livelihood challenges and opportunities of young people following Zimbabwe’s land reform in 2000. The article explores the life courses of a cohort of men and women, all children of land reform settlers, in two contrasting smallholder land reform sites.

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Published: 1st June 2019

Nightingale, A.J., Eriksen, S., Taylor, M., Forsyth, T., Pelling, M., Newsham, A., Boyd, E., Brown, K., Harvey, B., Jones, L., Kerr, R.B., Mehta, L., Naess, L.O., Ockwell, D., Scoones, I.,…

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Published: 25th July 2019

One Earth Volume 1, ISSUE 1, P18-20 The UK government recently committed to achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. Ian Scoones comments alongside other UK-based experts to reflect upon this…

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Published: 1st May 2019

Geoforum Volume 101, May 2019, Pages 231-241 Global resource scarcity has become a central policy concern, with predictions of rising populations, natural resource depletion and hunger. The narratives of scarcity…

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Published: 18th February 2019

Scoones. I., Murimbarimba. F. and Mahenehene. J. (2019) ‘Irrigating Zimbabwe after Land Reform: The Potential of Farmer-Led Systems.’, Water Alternatives, 12.1 Farmer-led irrigation is far more extensive in Zimbabwe than…

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Published: 20th November 2018

Scarcity is a dangerous idea and has long been a totalising discourse in resource politics and mainstream economics. A large body of work has critiqued the naturalisation of scarcity in…

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Published: 31st May 2018

This paper is an introduction to the special section of the journal Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions (EIST). The special issue investigates emerging phenomena associated with low carbon transitions in…

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Published: 31st October 2018

This journal article by Sam Geall (chinadialogue.net, University of Sussex,  Chatham House) and Adrian Ely (SPRU/STEPS) draws on theoretical insights from the pathways approach to explore the ways in which dominant policy narratives in…

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Published: 26th October 2018

This paper draws on two case studies from India and China to discuss how and why rapidly urbanizing contexts are particularly challenging for transformative innovation but are also critical sustainability…

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In May 2018, multiple extreme weather events claimed scores of lives, damaged property and brought public life to a standstill in parts of India. In the aftermath of these events,…

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Studies of China’s agri-food transitions have so far largely overlooked the role of the public in policymaking and practice. We argue that a deeper understanding of public perceptions of –…

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Experimental spaces for learning about and nurturing processes of social-ecological transformation are of increasing interest; a reflection, in part, of a more interventionist approach to sustainability research and funding. We…

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In this paper, we discuss how transdisciplinary development research (TDR), if approached in particular ways, can produce new knowledge and also foster deeper systemic changes in the knowledge system itself….

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Ecology and Society 23(3):8 In this paper we discuss how transdisciplinary development research (TDR), if approached in particular ways, can not only to produce new knowledge, but also foster deeper…

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Experiments to create spaces for social-ecological transformation are multiplying. These experiments aim at transcending traditional spaces for rational deliberation, planning, and participatory decision-making. We present a methodological approach for triggering…

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Published: 5th January 2018

Understanding how, why, and whether the trade-offs and tensions around simultaneous implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals are resolved both sustainably and equitably requires an appreciation of power relations across…

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This special section of ‘Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions’ investigates emerging phenomena associated with low carbon transitions in contemporary China. It looks at supply and demand side dynamics, the changing…

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Threats to climate, biodiversity, soils, air and water join long-standing issues of poverty and vulnerability in demanding urgent action. Radical transformations are required in global institutions and infrastructures for provision…

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Land grabbing emerged as a global phenomenon in the period following the global financial crisis of 2007-08. Investors in search of financial returns looked to land across the world, but…

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The world’s urban population is expected to rise from 3.9 to 6.4 billion people between 2014 and 2050, with 90% of this increase in Asia and Africa (UN, 2014). While…

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Hallie Eakin, Ximena Rueda, Ashwina Mahanti Ecology and Society Vol. 22, No. 4 In this paper we analyze how new actors, interests, and resources become salient to food system governance…

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Recent years have witnessed an expanding body of peri-urban and urban scholarship. However, recent scholarship has yet to adequately address the central role of politics and power shaping water quality…

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China has become the leading country to develop wind and solar energy industries. By presenting the institutional arrangement and interest constellations of China’s regulatory system of renewable energy sectors, this…

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Published: 13th September 2017

Human Ecology volume 45, pages 643–654 Understanding the socio-ecology of disease requires careful attention to the role of patches within disease landscapes. Such patches, and the interfaces between different socio-epidemiological…

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This paper examines the intersection between environmental pollution and people’s acknowledgements of, and responses to, health issues in Karhera, a former agricultural village situated between the rapidly expanding cities of…

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Published: 20th July 2017

In this paper we introduce an area of activity that has flourished for decades in all corners of the globe, namely grassroots innovation for sustainable development. We also argue why…

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by Ian Scoones, Marc Edelman, Saturnino M. Borras Jr., Ruth Hall, Wendy Wolford & Ben White The Journal of Peasant Studies, Forum on Authoritarian Populism and the Rural World A…

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Across the globe, conservation policies have often suppressed nonscientific forms of knowledge and ways of knowing nature, along with the social practices of the groups that are informed by such…

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Published: 1st May 2017

 In October 2015, we convened a workshop for 80 researchers and practitioners involved in makerspaces in Europe. Our aim was to explore how makerspaces can help cultivate sustainable developments. This…

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Published: 5th June 2017

by I. Scoones, K. Jones, G. Lo Iacono, D. W. Redding, A. Wilkinson and J. L. N. Wood Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B. 372:20160164 June 2017 This paper argues for…

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Published: 19th April 2017

We analyse the marketing of ‘heirloom rices’ produced in the Cordillera mountains of northern Luzon, the Philippines, as the commodification of a historical ‘anti-commodity’. We contend that, historically, rice was…

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Published: 1st January 2015

Ecology and Society 20(3): 26 Social-ecological organization is a multidimensional phenomenon that combines material and symbolic processes. However, the coupling between social and ecological subsystem is often conceptualized as purely material,…

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Published: 1st September 2016

Volume 21, August 2016, Pages 52–57 We explore the relationship between water security (WS) and adaptive capacity (AC); the two concepts are connected because achieving the first may be dependent…

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Published: 1st December 2016

Volume 66, December 2016, Pages 324–333 Adaptation is typically conceived uniquely in positive terms, however for some populations, investments in risk management can entail significant tradeoffs. Here we discuss the…

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Published: 10th January 2017

Environmental disasters, ranging from catastrophic floods to extreme temperatures, have caused more than 30,000 deaths per year and more than US$ 250–300 billion a year in economic losses, globally, between…

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Published: 30th January 2017

The ‘Pathways’ transformative knowledge network is an international group of research organisations, collaborating to explore processes of social transformation and to share insights across disciplines, cultures and contexts. Working across…

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Published: 12th December 2016

IDS Bulletin Vol 47, No 5 (2016): Power, Poverty and Inequality (open access) This article argues that inequality in access to water and sanitation is largely caused and legitimised by…

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Published: 2nd October 2016

This review examines the relationships between politics, sustainability, and development. Following an overview of sustainability thinking across different traditions, the politics of resources and the influence of scarcity narratives on…

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Published: 1st March 2016

by Dawit Solomon, Johannes Lehmann, James A Fraser, Melissa Leach, Kojo Amanor, Victoria Frausin, Søren M Kristiansen, Dominique Millimouno and James Fairhead We describe for the first time a current…

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Published: 18th October 2016

This review paper examines pathways towards solar energy in China by examining two different solar energy technologies, namely solar photovoltaic (PV) and solar water heaters (SWH). The paper investigates these two case studies to understand how different pathways for low carbon innovation are promoted and challenged by China’s changing financing and policy-making, and how they relate to changing practices among producers and consumers.

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Published: 6th June 2016

by Li Wang, Xiulan Zhang, Xiaoyun Liang and Gerald Bloom The effectiveness of antibiotics in treating bacterial infections is decreasing in China because of the widespread development of resistant organisms….

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Published: 1st June 2016

An article by Anabel Marin, Adrian Ely & Patrick van Zwanenberg about the benefits and challenges involved in co-designing research projects on agriculture & food with partners who are ‘aligned’ or ‘non-aligned’ in their aims and values, published in the journal ‘Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability’.

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Published: 1st March 2016

Published in the SAWAS Journal of South Asian Water Studies. This article is concerned with the need to recognize the peri-urban as a frontier of urban sustainability, and to build…

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Published: 27th April 2016

Golden Rice” has played a key role in arguments over genetically modified (GM) crops for many years. It is routinely depicted as a generic GM vitamin tablet in a generic plant bound for the global South. But the release of Golden Rice is on the horizon only in the Philippines, a country with a storied history and complicated present, and contested future for rice production and consumption. The present paper corrects this blinkered view of Golden Rice through an analysis of three distinctive “rice worlds” of the Philippines: Green Revolution rice developed at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the 1960s, Golden Rice currently being bred at IRRI, and a scheme to promote and export traditional “heirloom” landrace rice. More than mere seed types, these rices are at the centers of separate “rice worlds” with distinctive concepts of what the crop should be and how it should be produced. In contrast to the common productivist framework for comparing types of rice, this paper compares the rice worlds on the basis of geographical embeddedness, or the extent to which local agroecological context is valorized or nullified in the crop’s construction.

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Published: 1st December 2015

Two-thirds of people in sub-Saharan Africa lack access to electricity, a precursor of poverty reduction and development. The international community has ambitious commitments in this regard, e.g. the UN’s Sustainable…

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Published: 1st August 2015

Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability Volume 15, August 2015, Pages 20-24 Soils must be understood from a transdisciplinary perspective, integrating biophysical, social, economic and political understandings. This requires new combinations…

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Published: 13th July 2015

Charges against critics of genetic engineering (GE) often take four general forms. But all of them, we argue, are unsupported by facts. First, scientific and policy debates are not, as…

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Published: 30th January 2015

In this paper we examine the outcomes and connections of preferences of the non-formal innovators identified by the Honey Bee Network (HBN) in India. The chosen mode of diffusion of…

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Published: 14th June 2015

Read this article (open access). The Technology Executive Committee (TEC) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) recently convened a workshop seeking to understand how strengthening national…

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Published: 9th February 2015

Special issue of the journal Water Alternatives edited by Jeremy Allouche, Carl Middleton and Dipak Gyawali. Articles are open access. Contents: Technical veil, hidden politics: Interrogating the power linkages behind…

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Mobilities, Volume 9, Issue 4, 2014 (Special Issue: Mobilities & Foucault) View this open-access article online A mobility low-carbon transition is a key issue both socially and for mobilities research….

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Published: 6th November 2014

Journal of Peer Production, Issue 5: Shared Machine Shops Read the full article online (public domain) With unemployment reaching one in eight workers, and manufacturing in steep decline in the…

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Published: 18th March 2014

by Mariano Fressoli, Elisa Arond, Dinesh Abrol, Adrian Smith, Adrian Ely and Rafael Dias Submitted to Innovation & Development in 2014 Grassroots Innovation Movements (GIMs) can be regarded as initiators…

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Published: 20th February 2014

This paper explores the complex interactions that occur as formal policies are interpreted and utilised to develop water management plans in peri-urban Delhi. With an emphasis on people’s participation in…

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Published: 8th January 2014

The ability of innovation—both technical and social—to stretch and redefine ‘limits to growth’ was recognised at Stockholm in 1972, and has been a key feature in debates through to Rio+20…

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Published: 1st October 2013

This article is included in a special issue of Global Environmental Change about grassroots innovations, guest edited by Adrian Smith and Gill Seyfang.

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Published: 11th November 2013

Abstract This article explores the extent to which efforts to improve productivity of smallholder agriculture through a new ‘Green Revolution’ in Sub Saharan Africa are likely to enhance the capacity…

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Published: 1st March 2013

Biofortification is an umbrella term for a diverse range of projects and possibilities. It is best understood on three levels: as a range of technologies for developing micronutrient – dense…

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Published: 8th November 2013

Technology assessment (TA) has a strong history of helping to identify priorities and improve environmental sustainability, cost-effectiveness and wider benefits in the technology policies and innovation strategies of nation-states. At…

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Published: 6th July 2013

Social Science & Medicine Volume 88, July 2013, Pages 10-17 Zoonotic diseases currently pose both major health threats and complex scientific and policy challenges, to which modelling is increasingly called…

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Published: 19th June 2013

Lucy S Tusting, Barbara Willey, Henry Lucas, John Thompson, Hmooda T Kafy, Richard Smith, Steve W Lindsay The Lancet, June 2013 (online) Background: Future progress in tackling malaria mortality will…

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Published: 18th March 2013

Drawing on a socio-technical systems perspective we compare the ways in which novel genetically modified (GM) crop artefacts, related devices and techniques, actors, practices, and institutions have been linked together,…

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Published: 1st January 1970

Technologies for social inclusion in Latin America are a recent manifestation of grassroots innovation movements whose global activities go back to appropriate technology in the 1970s and earlier. Common to…

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Published: 1st January 2013

Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy The ability of innovation – both technical and social – to stretch and redefine ‘limits to growth’ was recognised at Stockholm in 1972,…

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Published: 14th August 2012

In this paper we argue that over the last 40 years the context of agronomic research in the developing world has changed significantly. Three main changes are identified: the neoliberal turn…

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Published: 8th June 2012

by Melissa Leach, Johan Rockström, Paul Raskin, Ian Scoones, Andy C. Stirling, Adrian Smith, John Thompson, Erik Millstone, Adrian Ely, Elisa Arond, Carl Folke and Per Olsson A radical new…

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Published: 1st June 2012

Special issue of the journal Water Alternatives, edited by Lyla Mehta, Gert Jan Veldwisch and Jennifer Franco Recent large-scale land acquisitions for agricultural production (including biofuels), popularly known as ‘land grabbing’,…

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Published: 19th June 2012

Biochar currently attracts technological and market optimism, promising multiple wins – for climate change, food security, bioenergy and health – not least for African farmers. This paper examines the political-economic and discursive processes constructing…

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Published: 19th April 2012

Across the world, ‘green grabbing’ – the appropriation of land and resources for environmental ends – is an emerging process of deep and growing significance. The vigorous debate on ‘land grabbing’ already highlights instances…

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Published: 19th June 2012

A special issue of the Journal of Peasant Studies, edited by James Fairhead, Melissa Leach and Ian Scoones. This issue draws new theorisation together with 17 cases from African, Asian…

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Published: 6th October 2011

This article explores the links between agency, institutions, and innovation in navigating shifts and large-scale transformations toward global sustainability. Our central question is whether social and technical innovations can reverse…

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Published: 3rd January 2012

Recent years have seen growing worldwide discussions, experiments, and expectations around various kinds of public engagement in the biosciences. This is especially so, in the governance of biotechnology—in research policy,…

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Published: 5th August 2011

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…

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Published: 1st December 2011

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…

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Published: 30th October 2009

The IAASTD – the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development – which ran between 2003 and 2008, involving over 400 scientists worldwide, was an ambitious attempt…

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Published: 1st December 2005

Technology mediates our relations with one another and with nature. Modern environmentalism recognised this from its inception. Alternative Technology (AT) activists called for innovations which would pre-figure ecological society. This…

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Published: 19th October 2005

A quasi-evolutionary model of socio-technical transitions is described in which regimes face selection pressures continuously. Differentiated transition contexts determine the form and direction of regime change in response to these…

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Published: 1st May 2007

Social-ecological systems are co-evolving systems. Of particular relevance are here: (1) co-evolution of the environment and governance, (2) co-evolution of technology and governance, and (3) co-evolution of human behaviour and…

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Published: 1st July 2007

A role for green niches has risen to prominence in the environment and innovation literature. The role of idealistic enthusiasts in the creation of sustainability initiatives in niches is widely…

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Published: 1st August 2007

As a consummately effective ‘boundary term’, able to link disparate groups on the basis of a broad common agenda, ‘sustainability’ has moved a long way from its technical association with…

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Published: 1st March 2010

Technology-focused literature on socio-technical transitions shares some of the complex systems sensibilities of social-ecological systems research. We contend that the sharing of lessons between these areas of study must attend…

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Published: 1st March 2010

Este artículo discute las regulaciones sobre algodón transgénico desde el punto de vista de las prácticas y las necesidades de los agricultores de menor tamaño de la provincia de Chaco,…

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Published: 12th December 2010

The international harmonization of technology-related regulations seeks certain norms across diverse contexts. Harmonization efforts are based primarily on the promulgation of state-centered command and control forms of regulation, though they…

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Published: 26th October 2011

The status of international agricultural research as a global public good (GPG) has been widely accepted since the Green Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. While the term was not…

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Published: 1st May 2011

Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space vol 43, pp 1226-1237 by David Demeritt, Andrew Dobson, Tania Murray Li, Melissa Leach, Ian Scoones, Andy Stirling Read this article

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Published: 3rd March 2011

This paper is concerned with the management of health system changes aimed at substantially increasing the access to safe and effective health services. It argues that an effective health sector…

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Published: 1st November 2010

Innovation and community action are two important strands for sustainable development. Yet they have not hitherto been linked. Community action is a neglected, but potentially important, site of innovative activity….

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Published: 1st June 2010

Focusing on the case of foot and mouth disease (FMD) in southern Africa – and specifically Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe – this paper explores the economic, social and…

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Published: 27th January 2010

This paper presents a chronology of the development of the Chinese rural health system and its responses to environment-related health problems. During the early years of the People’s Republic, the…

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Published: 5th April 2009

The ‘modernist’ project that has come to dominate food and agricultural policy has failed to provide sustainable outcomes for many poor people in developing countries. Conventional agricultural science is not…

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Published: 4th October 2007

Science and security policy are increasingly overlapping because of concerns that legitimate research might be misapplied to develop biological weapons. This has led to an expansion of security policy to…

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Published: 25th June 2007

This paper elaborates a ‘pathways approach’ to addressing the governance challenges posed by the dynamics of complex, coupled, multi-scale systems, while incorporating explicit concern for equity, social justice and the…

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Published: 17th April 2007

The overexploitation of natural resources and the increasing number of social conflicts following from their unsustainable use point to a wide gap between the objectives of sustainability and current resource…

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