More from the Blog
Challenging Research
In a series of events in 2021 entitled Challenging Research, we asked critical questions on the way we use and think about methodologies in sustainability research. About the series Faced with multiple intersecting crises and long-term social and ecological problems, sustainability research is called to challenge power, revealing alternative pathways to diverse futures. But it…
Caring for and nurturing the soil – Umbela Conversatorio #4
In connection with our 2021 Methods theme, the Mexico-based NGO Umbela – Transformaciones Sostenibles has held a series of online events on the theme of ‘Cultivating Knowledges’. In this fourth conversation, María, Ingrid and Marila talk about what it means to care for and nurture long-term transformation processes. They share learnings from their experiences and…
Gathering knowledges – Umbela Conversatorio #3
In connection with our 2021 Methods theme, the Mexico-based NGO Umbela – Transformaciones Sostenibles has held a series of online events on the theme of ‘Cultivating Knowledges’. In this third event, the conversation focuses on Gathering knowledges. ‘Gathering knowledges’ is a conversation where we speak from the collective, from the organisations that have sown diverse…
Regulating technologies in diverse development contexts – looking back to look forward
by Adrian Ely, Vanesa Lowenstein and Yuhan Bao As part of the STEPS Centre’s final event on 8 December, we’ll be reflecting on the changes since the Centre’s project ‘Rethinking Regulation’ which took place between 2006 and 2011. The Rethinking Regulation project compared the regulation of two biotechnologies – transgenic seeds and antibiotics – with…
The ‘Methods bazaar’: what did we learn about transdisciplinary methods for sustainability?
What methods can help to ‘open up’ and ‘broaden out’ pathways to sustainability, revealing alternatives to one-track visions of progress and expertise? Sustainability challenges – from Covid-19 to climate change, agri-food futures to urbanisation – require thinking carefully about the relationships between power, knowledge and action. Transdisciplinary methods can offer a way to make new…
COP26: Two worlds talked past each other – or never even met
At the 2021 UN climate change conference in Glasgow, moving between the corporate slickness of the official “Blue Zone” (a UN-managed space which hosts the negotiations) and the wider fringe was quite a disconcerting experience for me. These were two different worlds. Everyone was committed to saving the planet, but there were highly diverging views…
Why carbon offsetting through tree planting won’t help solve the climate crisis
This is the second in a pair of blog posts focusing on tree planting, climate change and biodiversity. Read the first here. The first phase of the delayed Biodiversity Convention of the Parties (COP15) concludes today. In advance of the climate COP in Glasgow in November, there has been much talk of linking the twin…
Is mass tree-planting the answer to biodiversity and climate challenges?
Tree planting and ‘nature-based’ solutions are presented as a way to address biodiversity and tackle climate change at a massive scale. But in some cases, these schemes can undermine livelihoods and harm ecologies. This is the first in a series of two blogposts by Ian Scoones, published in the week of the COP15 conference on…
How do we put pastoralists at the centre of food and climate debates?
Last month’s UN Food Systems Summit was highly controversial. Back in July, around the pre-summit process, small-scale farmers and their allies raised concerns that the agenda was being set by corporations, investors and other powerful actors. On the day of the Summit itself, the alarm was raised again. The UN Special Rapporteur on the Right…
Printing the Calamity: Pattachitra Scrolls on Tropical Cyclones and Natural Disasters in Shyamnagar, Shatkhira
By Sumaiya Binte Anwar, Research Officer, ICCCAD; Mahmuda Akter, Research Officer, ICCCAD; Faizah Jaheen Ahmed Research Intern, ICCCAD “We are the people of coastal area, Our sufferings know no bounds, We have to survive fighting various disasters.” —Shagorika Mondol, song sung to pattachitra scroll on disaster awareness How do you creatively inform the community about…
Methods: The sowing of shared dreams – Umbela Conversatorio #2
In connection with our 2021 Methods theme, the Mexico-based NGO Umbela – Transformaciones Sostenibles is holding a series of online events on the theme of ‘Cultivating Knowledges’. In the second event in this series, The sowing of shared dreams, Tania, Enrico, Mirna and Loni talk about how to plant dreams, utopias that they describe as…
Land reform in the UK: reporting from the Mass Trespass
Access to land is not only a concern in places like Zimbabwe. In England, less than 1% of the population own half the land and 92% of land is out of bounds for ordinary people. The skewed nature of land ownership and access is what Guy Shrubsole, author of the excellent book ‘Who owns England?’…
Is Degrowth already colonial?
by Saurabh Arora and Andy Stirling We are very grateful to Timothée Parrique for engaging so thoughtfully with our essay on ‘degrowth and the pluriverse: continued coloniality or intercultural revolution’? This is the kind of frank and constructive discussion that is needed to build crucial alliances and solidarities for transformations to sustainability. And it is…
How could camel milk change the fortunes of Gujarat’s pastoralists?
by Ranit Chatterjee, Rohit Jha, Sahjeevan, Shilpi Srivastava, Lyla Mehta, Nobuhito Ohte, Shibaji Bose, TAPESTRY project Kachchh is a dryland in Western India with a dynamic ecosystem. The livestock-based economy has always been one of the most important sources of livelihood for people there. In this arid to semi-arid region, pastoralism has been practiced for…
Faced with devastating cyclones, how are women in coastal Bangladesh building resilience?
by Sumaiya Binte Anwar and Mahmuda Akter, Research Officers, ICCCAD In recent years, cyclones have battered the coastal fringes of Bangladesh, with one following closely after another. In Satkhira district, a combination of tidal flooding, inundation by storm surges, and saltwater intrusion has led to a rise in salinity in groundwater and fresh-water ponds. This…
Beyond the ‘Balance of Nature’: Pastoralists’ Alternative Perspectives on Sustainability
By Ian Scoones and PASTRES Read the original blogpost David Attenborough’s mission to restore the balance of nature in the documentary A Life on Our Planet: My Witness Statement, is at once inspiring and concerning. What if the balance of nature doesn’t exist? What if this mission is misplaced? PASTRES lead researcher Ian Scoones, in a recent…
Degrowth and the pluriverse: continued coloniality or intercultural revolution?
by Saurabh Arora and Andy Stirling UPDATE – 12 May 2021: Timothée Parrique, researcher and author on degrowth, has posted a response to this essay on his website. “And then all helplessly we peered into those Other-worlds, and wailed, “O World of Worlds, how shall man make you one?”” W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of…
Challenging power through methods
By Linet Mwirigi, Maureen Kabasa, Kennedy Mbeva and Joel Onyango In every sphere of life, different methods and power relations are at play. The dynamics and dimensionality of power and methods are evident in different disciplines, more so in research and academia. Historically, the seat of power in research is seen to be the global…
To meet the Sustainable Development Goals, we must transform innovation
By Saurabh Arora and Andy Stirling This blogpost is republished from STRINGS (Steering Research and Innovation for Global Goals). In 1925, Mahatma Gandhi famously included ‘science without humanity’ and ‘knowledge without character’, alongside ‘politics without principle’ and ‘commerce without morality’ in listing Seven Social Sins. Today, we can see these social sins of Modernity as central to unsustainability,…
Waves of challenging research for sustainability
by Patricia Pérez Belmont, Umbela Transformaciones Sostenibles How can research methods inform and catalyse change towards more sustainable worlds? Last month, the STEPS Centre held an online event to launch a series on the theme of ‘Challenging Research’. Over the last 15 years, STEPS has worked to shift discourses on the politics of sustainability to…
A crossroads for ‘genome editing’ in Europe – questions, options and dilemmas
A new policy briefing on genome editing discusses choices and dilemmas facing policy makers and societal stakeholders in the European Union and the United Kingdom. The UK is considering changing its rules on ‘genome editing’ of crops, which would mean these technologies would be less tightly regulated than in the EU. A public consultation ends…
How do we ‘decolonise’ research methodologies?
by Nora Ndege and Joel Onyango, Africa Research and Impact Network / African Centre for Technology Studies This blog post is part of the STEPS Centre’s 2021 theme on Methods. Researchers and the research community are increasingly asked to reflect on various research methods that can have positive outcomes and impacts on society, and challenge…
Post-pandemic transformations: new directions for development studies?
by Melissa Leach, Hayley MacGregor and Ian Scoones Does the pandemic reveal new directions for development studies? This was the focus of discussion at a recent IDS seminar. A new paper in World Development on ‘post-pandemic transformations’ by a group of us at IDS was the starting point. Although the pandemic is far from over, some…
Challenging sustainability research: how can methods make a difference?
by Marina Apgar and Rose Cairns, Methods theme convenors In this introductory blogpost for the STEPS theme on Methods, we discuss three meanings of sustainability research as ‘challenging research’. Methods make a difference to the potential of research to challenge power; yet power also deeply shapes the way research is framed, carried out and interpreted….
The STEPS Centre’s final year: reflections on a 15-year journey
by Ian Scoones and Andy Stirling, STEPS co-directors 2021 is the final year of the ESRC STEPS Centre. Established in 2006, but with an even longer backstory, we have come a long way. This blog post reflects on the journey, and looks forward to the future. As the formal version of the Centre at Sussex…
“The world has become weird”: crisis, natures and radical re-enchantment
In this essay, Amber Huff and Nathan Oxley reflect on questions that have emerged through Natures, the STEPS Centre’s theme throughout 2020. Dear Reader, I hope that this essay finds you well in these turbulent times. When we last reached out in this format nearly one year ago, at the beginning of 2020, it was…
The Killing Famine: an outsider’s view of conservation and colonialism
The Killing Famine is an original comic by the artist Tim Zocco, who has been working with the STEPS Centre throughout 2020. In this piece, Tim Zocco reflects on a strange encounter with mining and conservation in Madagascar, leading to a glimpse into a horrifying chapter in the country’s colonial history. The most successful liars…
Weird ecologies
In this short post, Amber Huff (STEPS/IDS) and Adrian Nel (University of KwaZulu Natal) introduce the idea of ‘weird ecologies’ and explains why ‘the Weird’ has such an enduring appeal in culture and philosophy. The piece is followed by an original comic by Tim Zocco for the STEPS Natures year, a weird expedition into the…
Genome editing in post-Brexit agriculture: Which way for the UK?
Angela Noland, Dominic Glover and Adrian Ely In less than a month’s time, the UK’s relationship with the European Union will change dramatically. Agriculture and food will be among the biggest areas affected – from production methods and supply routes to labelling and product standards. A lot will depend on the outcomes of trade negotiations….
How do we study mangrove ecology with pastoralists in Kachchh?
by Ranit Chaterjee, Pankaj Joshi, Mahendra Bhanani, Mahesh Garva and Nobuhito Ohte As part of the TAPESTRY project, we are working to understand the ecology of mangroves in Kachchh, on the western coast of India. Mangroves are an important part of the ecology of the district, providing shelter for animal life and shorelines, but are…
Transformation in a crisis: reflections on research and action
This is a personal reflection from Lyla Mehta on the Transformations to Sustainability mid-term workshop, which took place virtually in June 2020. Find out more about the meeting and see all related content on the T2S website. The world has changed dramatically since the Transformations to Sustainability projects started in late 2018. For one, we…
Don’t save ‘the world’ – embrace a pluriverse!
by Saurabh Arora and Andy Stirling The United Nations is 75 years old on 24 October 2020. It’s an unfortunate year to be reaching this milestone. Apart from global pandemic turmoil, there are many critical challenges including mass extinctions of languages and species, rising inequality, and climate disruptions. Arguably now more than ever, addressing these…
Does the African Green Revolution include smallholder farmers?
This year’s African Green Revolution Forum (AGRF) took place online, hosted out of Kigali, Rwanda. Chaired by the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), the AGRF is a high-profile global summit that brings together international donor agencies, governments, African leaders and agribusinesses. The summit is an annual opportunity for them to plan, mobilise…
The ‘weight’ of humanity: questions on Attenborough’s ‘A Life On Our Planet’
Two images stand out in David Attenborough’s new film A Life On Our Planet. The first is of the “blue marble”, the Earth, viewed from a spacecraft for the first time in the early 1950s. Seen from space, the Earth appears as a small disc, finite, lonely in the black void. The second image comes…
Nuclear vs renewables: what’s better for climate mitigation?
This is an adapted version of a Nature.com blog by Prof Benjamin K. Sovacool and Prof Andy Stirling, to accompany the publication of their paper “Differences in carbon emissions reduction between countries pursuing renewable electricity versus nuclear power” in Nature Energy. A University of Sussex press release also summarises the paper’s findings and policy recommendations….
How have large investment projects affected people in Africa’s drylands?
by Jeremy Lind, Doris Okenwa and Ian Scoones In recent years, the gaze of global investment has been directed to Africa’s land and resources. Over the past decade, global capital from Europe, the Near East, China and elsewhere poured into land-based investments in industrialised agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa alongside green energy projects, oil exploration and…
Rebuilding same or rebuilding different? Critical questions in the aftermath of Cyclone Amphan
by Upasona Ghosh, Shibaji Bose, Debdatta Chakraborty, TAPESTRY project “We will build it again. We have done the same before and might have to do it many a time in future,” says Rakesh Mondal, a middle-aged resident of Kultoli block in the Indian Sundarbans, looking at his near-flattened house. The house took a direct hit…
Thriving in an ever-changing world: from technocratic control to emancipatory care?
This is the fourth and last in a series of blog posts on the climate by STEPS co-director Andy Stirling, under the heading: ‘Controlling a stable planetary climate – or caring for a complex changing Earth?’ Read part 1 / part 2 / part 3 The first three in this quartet of blogposts explored whether…
Betraying the climate? Has environmentalism succumbed to a modernity it hitherto resisted?
This is the third in a series of four blog posts on the climate by STEPS co-director Andy Stirling, under the heading: ‘Controlling a stable planetary climate – or caring for a complex changing Earth?’ Read Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 4 In the first two of this quartet of blogposts, I asked…
Does the delusion of ‘climate control’ do more harm than good to climate disruption?
This is the second in a series of four blog posts on the climate by STEPS co-director Andy Stirling, under the heading: ‘Controlling a stable planetary climate – or caring for a complex changing Earth?’ Read Part 1 / Part 3 / Part 4 In the first post of this series of four, I asked…
Is the naming of ‘climate change’ a dangerous self-defeat?
This is the first in a series of four blog posts on the climate by STEPS co-director Andy Stirling, under the heading: ‘Controlling a stable planetary climate – or caring for a complex changing Earth?’ Read part 2 What’s in a name? Often, not a lot. Never a whole story. But sometimes (if looked for),…
Pandemics: why a new science is needed
What do bubonic plague, Lyme disease, Ebola, Marburg disease, Nipah, sleeping sickness, Lassa fever, avian influenza, Western equine encephalitis, SARS and COVID-19 have in common? All are zoonotic diseases, ones that have jumped from animals to humans. Not all have turned into pandemics – where a disease spreads across multiple countries – but some certainly…
Covid-19 is a stark reminder of the struggle for rights to water and sanitation
On the 10th anniversary of the UN’s recognition of the human right to access water and sanitation, Lyla Mehta and Claudia Ringler reflect on the lessons from Covid-19 and the crucial but neglected links between water, food and health. The writers are among the co-authors of the book Water for Food Security, Nutrition and Social…
Project pioneers innovative workshops with Myanmar pig farmers
In advance of World Zoonoses Day 2020, this year on Monday, 6 July, we are sharing a story from the Myanmar Pig Partnership project which has been taking a One Health approach to exploring the links between disease risk and changing pig production and consumption patterns in Myanmar. The Myanmar Pig Partnership, an interdisciplinary project…
Online course: Pastoralism and Uncertainty
A new online course introduces key debates and concepts about pastoralism, and explores the varying ways that pastoralists respond to uncertainty around the world. Based on the work of PASTRES, a research programme linked to the STEPS Centre, the course is aimed at students, practitioners and policy-makers. It is divided into 13 parts with a…
Comic: ‘These Days…’ Covid, crisis and beyond
In our Natures theme for 2020, we are collaborating with the artist Tim Zocco. In the comic ‘These Days…’, a glimpse of a future age shaped by traumatic events, Zocco reflects on crisis, the difficulties of predicting radical change and thinking about what is to come. It’s the first in a series of creative responses…
Improving Africa’s knowledge systems: six lessons from Covid-19
The Covid-19 situation is unprecedented and is reshaping various aspects of society, including the way we produce knowledge, share it and use it. In this blog post, Joanes Atela and Nora Ndege of the Africa Sustainability Hub reflect on lessons from diverse experiences across the African continent. Knowledge systems (i.e. how we produce, disseminate and…
Coronavirus, crisis and the real Argentine economy: post-pandemic challenges
This article was first published in Spanish in the newspaper Pagina12 on 10 May 2020. Read the original article A window of opportunity is opening to reshape the organization of society, to take better advantage of new technologies and to make it more sustainable and more humane. Argentina, through its successive crises, has developed a…
How pastoralists in Kutch respond to social and environmental uncertainty
The TAPESTRY project is working in three different ‘patches’ across India and Bangladesh, creating opportunities for interactions with communities in marginalised environments to co-produce transformative change in sustainable development. In this blog post, Lyla Mehta (IDS), Mihir Bhatt (AIDMI) and Pankaj Joshi (Sahjeevan) introduce the research that TAPESTRY is undertaking together with the Kutch camel…
Food in the time of Covid-19: how can local action and national coordination work together?
As we approach the end of week 7 of the UK government’s Covid-19 social distancing measures, we have been witnessing a combination of remarkable efforts to sustain the country through this challenging time. Workers from the National Health Service (supplemented by volunteer responders) and other ‘key workers’ are applauded across the country on a weekly…
COVID-19, science and governance: lessons from India
by Dinesh Abrol, Ritu Priya and Pravin Kushwaha, South Asia Sustainability Hub The pandemic is global, but the response is local. In India, the first case of the 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic was reported on 30 January 2020. Immediately, scientists from the government’s Indian Council of Medical Research, Department of Health Research began working with colleagues…
Five lessons from past global influenza outbreaks for COVID-19
The COVID-19 pandemic is a rare event in its scale and spread. But in responding to it, people have been looking at lessons from other outbreaks of infectious disease. What are the patterns in the ways that governments and people respond, and why have some widely-known lessons been ignored again and again? One source of…
The COVID-19 pandemic shows how power produces poverty
by Saurabh Arora and Divya Sharma Responses by governments to the COVID-19 pandemic around the world reveal how poverty is produced by social power. The pandemic points, in particular, to the culpability of power exercised through the state. Consider the Indian government’s top-down lockdown imposed on 24th March 2020. Arguably “the world’s strictest lockdown”, it…
Modernity Without its Clothes: the pandemic crisis shines a light on futilities of control
With so many self-appointed pundits (like me!) currently locked down with their laptops, the present rush of commentary on how to pivot the coronavirus crisis is hardly surprising. Beyond the general news and commentary, scores of articles are exploding across the media, diagnosing what this global catastrophe means, and prescribing how it can be turned…
Sharing knowledge instead of food: TAPESTRY at the Versova Koli Seafood Festival
The TAPESTRY project is working in three different sites across India, creating opportunities for interactions with communities in marginalised environments to co-produce transformative change in sustainable development. In this blog post, Lalatendu Keshari Das shares news from the project’s Mumbai team, which is conducting action research that examines the ways in which fishing communities adapt…
Post-normal pandemics: Why COVID-19 requires a new approach to science
Guest post by David Waltner-Toews1, Annibale Biggeri2, Bruna De Marchi3, Silvio Funtowicz3, Mario Giampietro4,5, Martin O’Connor6,7, Jerome R. Ravetz8, Andrea Saltelli3,9 and Jeroen P. van der Sluijs3,10 READ THIS ARTICLE IN SPANISH: See alternative translations published by Democracia Sur and our partners Bioleft. In addressing pandemics, science has never seemed more needed and useful, while…
Science, uncertainty and the COVID-19 response
One of the abiding images of the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak in the UK has been the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, looking nervous and uncomfortable, flanked by his scientific advisors at the regular press conferences. With three white men in suits in a wood-panelled room, the aim presumably was to project a sense of control and…
Claiming space: infrastructure, uncertainty and fisherfolks’ livelihoods in Mumbai
Blog post by Synne Movik and Hans Nicolai Adam (from the TAPESTRY project team) The coastal mega-city of Mumbai is a vibrant bustling hub, home to some 20 million people and a magnet for migrants who flock to the city seeking new opportunities and a better life. The city is a complex conglomerate of contrasts;…
Should we treat the climate crisis like coronavirus?
Why don’t we respond to climate change with the same urgency as coronavirus? The Guardian writer Owen Jones asked this in a new column, making the case that the impacts of climate change are equally present in the world, but with a far higher death toll if you include air pollution, extreme weather and so…
A big-picture view on the climate negotiations: how can transformation(s) happen in practice?
by Hans Nicolai Adam and Synne Movik As the world stares at alarming evidence of climate change impacts, the search for ‘big bang’ solutions remains challenging. The situation requires nothing short of an unprecedented transformation to a low-carbon society, on the heels of decades of polluting growth. The disappointing outcomes of the COP 25 in…
How to respond to Nature in crisis: look beyond the big stories
The STEPS Centre’s theme for 2020 is Natures. In this introductory blog post by Amber Huff and Nathan Oxley, we look at four lines of enquiry that can help us get behind big stories of crisis. Modern life seems to be increasingly defined through anxiety about humanity’s perverse relationship with nature. Everywhere we look, we…
The Philippines has rated ‘Golden Rice’ safe, but farmers might not plant it
by Glenn Davis Stone and Dominic Glover “Golden Rice” is probably the world’s most hotly debated genetically modified organism (GMO). It was intended to be a beta carotene-enriched crop to reduce Vitamin A deficiency, a health problem in very poor areas. But it has never been offered to farmers for planting. Why not? Because Golden…
Human capabilities for innovation in UK makerspaces
by Cian O’Donovan and Adrian Smith Makerspaces can be a source of human capabilities that benefit people and society. But these capabilities will only lead to flourishing communities if they are accompanied by structural changes to our economies, cities and environment. Using lasers to precision-cut plywood is not easy. When Toni Buckby began running classes…
Community, belonging, identity
Yesterday, Andrea Nightingale visited IDS and we had a discussion about ‘boundary-making’. Her research in Nepal looks critically at what boundaries mean, how they are made, and how they are constantly being remade and renegotiated. From purity codes, caste, class and gender boundaries, to disagreements about access to water, boundaries shape people’s lives, but they’re…
The 2020 Davos Manifesto: A Manifesto for the Past, Rather than the Future
Out of the networking orgy that is the World Economic Forum (WEF) has emerged the Davos Manifesto 2020: ‘The Universal Purpose of a Company in the Fourth Industrial Revolution’. Unfortunately, the document is likely to fall short in its objective to improve the state of the world, writes Adrian Ely. It’s the 49th anniversary of…
India’s new citizenship act threatens the country’s constitution
A version of this post first appeared on the Institute of Development Studies website. Since the end of 2019, India has been rocked by protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the proposed National Register of Citizens Register (NRC). Protests initially began in Assam, West Bengal and New Delhi and have since spread across…
Rural support for authoritarian populism is strong – but another way is possible
The rise of authoritarian populism continues. Now the UK has a fully signed-up version in its new right-wing government, with allies in Trump, Modi, Bolsarano, Orban and others. It is a dangerous, but perhaps inevitable, trend. The soul-searching on the Left after the UK election rather belatedly diagnosed the problem. It has been long in…
A Tale of Crab Farming in Satkhira: Navigating Uncertainties ‘from below’ in the Sundarbans
The TAPESTRY research project is exploring how transformations may occur ‘from below’ in marginal environments with high levels of uncertainty. In this blog post, Shababa Haque and Mahmuda Mity, part of the research team in Bangladesh, share this story of people living on the ‘front line’ of drastic environmental changes in the Sundarbans. In the…
What can the land-water-environment ‘nexus’ do for young farmers in Kenya?
The agrifood system is one of the best examples of the ‘nexus’ of land, water, and the environment. In Kenya, as in some other African countries, there is a push to get young people to return to farming. But the way this is promoted often fails to demonstrate how young farmers ought to respond to…
Why does public research money often fail to support sustainable and just food systems?
The European Union and its Member States spend considerable amounts of their budget on supporting Research and Development (R&D) activities. In the summer of 2019, the EU Commission announced how it would spend the last annual tranche of Horizon 2020 – a €77 billion research and innovation funding programme running since 2014. For the Commission,…
How can we rethink progressive transformations to sustainability?
In a series of three recent blog posts, Andy Stirling reflects on the governance of transformations to sustainability, and what it means for opening up spaces for politics and democracy. The blog posts draw from a workshop organised by the Africa Sustainability Hub, related to the ‘Governance of Socio-technical Transformations’ (GOST) project. The Nairobi workshop…
Going deeper with value chain analysis: understanding power relations for animal disease control in Myanmar
Value chain analysis is already praised as a powerful tool for animal disease control. International organisations such as the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) routinely conduct value chain analyses to understand where animals are distributed, and who is involved in managing, moving, processing and purchasing them. In this way, policymakers and practitioners can track…
Uncertainty and the Zimbabwean economy
Over the last month there have been a number of reviews of progress – or the lack of it – since the ‘coup’ of November 2017 (see, for example, a recent BSR here). President Mnangagwa arrived in post on the back of much good will and hope for change. But hopes have been dramatically dashed…
Doing digital differently: four innovation lessons from the grassroots
by Adrian Smith, Adrian Ely and Phil Jones When Knowle West residents met with artists Paul Hurley and Caleb Parking in 2016, they had little idea they were at the vanguard of grassroots innovation and doing ‘digital’ differently. The meeting was at Knowle West Media Centre (KWMC), a community-based space in Bristol that uses arts…
How can NGOs feel at home with uncertainty?
by Irene Guijt, Head of Research and Publishing at Oxfam Great Britain Uncertainty is a given in Oxfam. Each day brings new concerns, unexpected twists in relationships and the rollercoasters of dynamic contexts. We adjust out of necessity. But how explicitly do we build uncertainty into our work? And how do we not get paralysed…
Transdisciplinarity and transformative spaces: six reflections for researchers
For transformations to sustainability to be socially and ecologically just, they must derive from diverse, discursive processes embedded in specific political contexts and cultural conditions. Questions arise from this statement: what do such transformations look like? How and where do they happen; with whom and why? The Transformations 2019 conference in Santiago, Chile, offered a…
Rural resistance and the far right: news from ERPI Europe
The Emancipatory Rural Politics Initiative (ERPI) is continuing to explore changes and conflicts in rural politics, with a couple of forthcoming events and some publications from the Europe group of ERPI. In August 2020 in Croatia, there will be an ERPI-inspired session “Geographies of Rural Resistance/s” at the 28th Colloquium of the International Geographical Union…
Now is the time to rise up for Rojava
Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces have been betrayed by the US, giving the Turkish state a green light to carry out atrocities in Northern Syria, write Amber Huff and Patrick Huff. This blog post first appeared on the Red Pepper website. The military alliance between the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in Northeastern Syria and Washington was always…
Politicising Pathways: illustrating Relational Power using the Vulnerability Walk
Blog post by Soundarya Iyer, Sayan Das, Uma Dey Sarkar, Natasha Maru, Nimita Pandey and Masresha Taye. In an increasingly complex and dynamic world, how can we envision and strive for sustainable development that upholds ideals of environmental integrity and social justice? This question is central to the endeavours of the STEPS centre, including its…
A participatory approach to initiating transformative actions from the bottom-up
Jai and Ketaki Bhadgaonkar (Bombay 61) give this report from the Ideation Workshop in Mumbai for the TAPESTRY project. Versova Koliwada is one of the most thriving fishing villages in the city of Mumbai. It is important to address the concerns and uncertainties around the sustenance of those who live in this village. The TAPESTRY…
Envisioning the future in the present: making sense of uncertainty
The STEPS symposium on ‘the politics of uncertainty’ made me think about a couple of questions that I have been concerned with in my research work, but that I have so far mostly approached from a perspective of risk, and how risk is translated into space (‘riskscapes’). The symposium addressed the issue of uncertainty and…
Experimentation to action: how Bioleft is helping to grow an open source seed culture
by Almendra Cremaschi, Patrick van Zwanenberg & Anabel Marin The seed breeding initiative Bioleft has received funding to work with more varieties of seeds in Argentina, and to develop a ‘sister’ initiative in Mexico. Bioleft is an ‘open source’, distributed seed breeding initiative that Cenit researchers, in close collaboration with public sector plant breeders, lawyers,…
Infrastructures of the imagination: uncertainty and the politics of prefiguration
By Martin Mahony and Silke Beck Sticky imaginaries, shifting frames, irreducible incertitude . . . the recent Politics of Uncertainty symposium gave us much to reflect upon in the context of recent shifts in the politics of global climate change, and what they might mean for the relationship between knowledge and action. Cluster 2 of…
Embracing uncertainty: lessons from journeys and struggles
Michele Nori, Rose Cairns and Nathan Oxley Embracing uncertainty, by choice or by necessity, is something migrants, victims of political violence, and people holding a religious belief have in common. What could we learn from their experiences about a broader understanding of living with uncertainty, and how can this inform other domains and contexts? This…
Whose risk? Whose responsibility? The politics and financialisation of uncertainty
At the STEPS Centre Symposium on the Politics of Uncertainty, Susan Erikson (Simon Fraser) and Rebecca Elliott (LSE) presented fascinating cases for the insurance theme, which was part of the finance cluster. Here are two snapshots: Financing Emergency Pandemics In July 2020, 26 investors in the Pandemic Emergency Financing Facility (PEF) are set to reap…
Net zero and low-carbon transformation: why targets are not enough
This week, the UN Global Climate Summit meets in New York, calling global leaders to describe how they will meet the challenge of disruptive climate change. The long term target for countries is to reach net zero emissions by 2050. This is a challenge for all countries, including in the industrialised world, not least in…
Climate change: how do we move beyond ‘the Great Derangement’?
by Andrea Nightingale and Lars Otto Naess Climate change has become an ever more pressing and tangible issue. July was the hottest month on record, the IPCC’s report on land and climate change contains stark warnings on the effects of human-induced climate change, the report by the Global Commission on Adaptation is asking for a…
Six pathways identified for sustainable groundwater futures in Africa
by John Thompson, Imogen Bellwood-Howard, Gebrehaweria Gebregziabher, Mohammad Shamsudduha, Richard Taylor, Devotha Kilave, Andrew Tarimo and Japhet Kashaigili Groundwater is likely to become more important as a livelihood resource in Sub-Saharan Africa, as climatic change alters the reliability of rainfall and surface water flows. More than four years ago, an international group of collaborators embarked…
Solidarity, insurance, emotions and uncertainty
I spent a fascinating three days at the STEPS Politics of Uncertainty Conference in July, and in the last few weeks have been mulling over what I have taken from the rich conversations we have had. I spent much of my time in a stream focused on uncertainty in the context of finance and banking….
Strikes to science fiction: 4 ways to transform climate and development
by Nathan Oxley and Sophie Marsden The UN Climate Summit next week in New York will once again convene governments to discuss the intimidating challenge of how to coordinate action around climate change. Around the world, a series of strikes are planned to show the depth of support – led by young people, but involving…
When ignorance does more than you think
Unstudied conditions are avoided as vigilantly as possible—right now, when it matters—by control room operators of large critical infrastructures mandated to operate reliably and safely systemwide. Having failed to fail because an operator was behaving ignorantly is orthogonal to high reliability management. That said, ignorance has differentiated functions in large socio-technical systems—but in ways not…
Sustainable Energy Policy in Germany: A Case of Natural Gas Lock-in
A new Working Paper from STEPS Summer School alumni seeks to explain why (and how) natural gas has assumed such a dominant role in German energy policy, and at what cost. The authors call upon fellow researchers to challenge the increasing dominance of gas in energy systems worldwide, and to intervene in academic, NGO and…
Unpacking uncertainty in times of climate change
By Shilpi Srivastava, Hans Nicolai Adam and Lyla Mehta Climate change undoubtedly is one of the most significant development challenges of our times. Research over the last few decades has demonstrated clearly the links between anthropogenically induced emissions and climatic changes. Despite these scientific advancements, uncertainties persist at multiple scales; with respect to future societal…
Uncertain superlatives
Certainty has such a strong place in politics not just because it serves as the preferred foundation/platform from which to choose to act, but also because certainty supports and drives the belief that any such choice to act can be superlative, i.e., serve as the best or superior or optimal course of action. A key…
Uncertain futures and the politics of uncertainty
Since writing The Romantic Economist – Imagination in Economics (2009) I have been fascinated by the link between the human capacity to imagine new futures and the prevalence of uncertainty. Imagination is both the ultimate cause of much of the uncertainty we face and our best tool for coping with it. This month sees the…
A new framework for thinking about technological change
Global development is all about creating change for the better. One thing is certain: if we want to address the climate breakdown while achieving a high quality of life for all of the Earth’s citizens, it will take a transformation of the way we all live. Technological change will surely be an important part of…
Measles, MMR and vaccines: where do vaccine anxieties come from?
Measles and vaccines are back in the news. The UK has lost its measles-free status, according to Public Health England. The Guardian reports that about 30,000 children are starting primary school next month with no protection against measles, mumps and rubella, while 90,000 have had only the first of the two vaccines necessary for protection….
Enhancing red meat safety through ‘street-level diplomacy’ in Tanzania
Rising meat consumption in Tanzania – and indeed across low- and middle-income countries – presents new challenges and opportunities for health and development and we have been considering these as part of our social science input into the ZELS-funded ‘Hazards Associated with Zoonotic enteric pathogens in Emerging Livestock’ (HAZEL) meat pathways project, part of the…
HLPF 2019: Why inclusion and power matter for sustainability
On 9-18 July the UN’s High-Level Political Forum meets to discuss progress on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This meeting takes the theme of “Empowering people and ensuring inclusiveness and equality“. The theme particularly addresses goals around education, growth and employment, inequality, climate change, peace, justice and inclusion, and partnerships. The theme is a crucial…
Catastrophes of biblical proportions: why the apocalypse is back
In a parliamentary debate in London about climate change and ecology on 1 May, the debate turned to scripture to describe the scale of the problem. “We face catastrophes of biblical proportions: droughts, pestilence, famine, floods, wildfires, mass migration, political instability, war and terrorism. Global civilisation as we know it will be gone by the…
Responding to uncertainty: who are the experts?
Uncertainties are everywhere, part of life. But how to respond? Who are the experts? These are questions that we are debating this week at a symposium entitled ‘The Politics of Uncertainty: Practical Challenges for Transformative Action’. But they are also questions very pertinent to daily life in Zimbabwe, as elsewhere in the world. Everyday uncertainties For…
Choreographed Consensus: The stifling of dissent at CRISPRcon 2019
by Saurabh Arora (SPRU/STEPS Centre), Barbara van Dyck (SPRU/STEPS Centre), Alejandro Argumedo (Asociación ANDES) and Tom Wakeford (ETC Group) Last week, we attended the annual CRISPRcon hosted by Wageningen University & Research in the Netherlands. The conference was marketed as a not-for-profit event offering ‘a unique forum in which a broad selection of diverse voices…
What is revolutionary about the Green Revolution?
The dramatic increase in yields of wheat and rice in the 1960s and 1970s in India, along with many other countries in the post-colonial world, was framed as a technological breakthrough made possible by miracle hybrid seed varieties. This breakthrough ostensibly averted mass scale hunger and was central, so the story goes, to realising substantive…
Disciplinary identities and other barriers to advancing interdisciplinary working
By Professor Linda Waldman, Institute of Development Studies, Professor Joanne Sharp, University of Glasgow, and Professor James Wood, University of Cambridge. The following blog was first published on the PLoS ONE blog ‘EveryONE’. Interdisciplinary research is becoming increasingly commonplace. In recent years, climate change, ecosystem sustainability, planetary boundaries and zoonotic disease outbreaks have in particular…
Why radical land reform is needed in the UK
Half of the land is owned by 1% of the people. Getting information on who owns what land is nigh on impossible. Tax arrangements favour land speculation. Ordinary people cannot get access to land to grow food. Where is this place? Not a settler country in southern Africa, but the UK. With the publication of…
Turning the populist tide
The last week has seen major gains for nationalist, populist parties in elections, both in Europe and India. Is this the end of the centre-ground consensus? What are the alternatives? In India, the BJP swept to victory on the back of anti-Muslim rhetoric and Hindu nationalist slogans. Only Kerala stood out as a state where…
EU Elections: what does populism mean for rural people?
As countries across Europe await the results of the European Union elections, the campaigns of authoritarian and populist political movements are once again in the news. A new collection of articles shows this not only to be a European phenomenon, but worldwide. And rural people, often forgotten or stereotyped, are crucial both in supporting and…
Antimicrobial resistance and behaviour: an interview with Ayako Ebata
Agricultural economist Dr Ayako Ebata was interviewed in The AMR Studio, a podcast dedicated to interdisciplinary research into antimicrobial resistance (AMR) produced by Uppsala University. Dr Ebata specialises in value chain analysis and as part of her work for the Myanmar Pig Partnership she is considering value chains in the context of antimicrobial resistance and…
The Chinese Belt and Road Initiative: what’s in it for Africa?
The huge Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) Forum recently concluded in Beijing. 37 heads of state attended, along with droves of policy advisors and numerous thinktanks and research institutes, including IDS where I work. Monica Mutsvanga, Minister of Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services, attended on behalf of the Zimbabwe government. By all accounts it was…
Summer School 2019: Join us online
A group of 43 early career researchers are coming together from 14-24 May to explore pathways to sustainability in the STEPS Centre’s annual Summer School. During the two weeks, we’ll be sharing snapshots and reflections from the Summer School on Instagram and Twitter. This includes our annual lecture with Derek Wall on 14 May –…
Unpacking the epic narratives of the Green Revolution
by Lidia Cabral, Poonam Pandey and Xiuli Xu Nearly 50 years since its apex, the Green Revolution – a chapter in history associated with rapid expansion in agricultural production driven by science and technology – retains the power to inspire. In spite of the criticism emphasising its social and environmental costs, there is talk about…
Cities, Uncertainty and Systems Change
Depending who and where you are in the world, you will be experiencing the effects of climate change differently. Here in the UK, the recent hot-weather days in February might have felt unsettling, even as your body welcomed the warmth and sunshine. Meanwhile, people in some parts of the United States were caught in freezing…
Rediscovering the Water-Food-Energy Nexus
A few months ago, I presented the findings of a new book, The Water-Food-Energy Nexus: Power, Politics and Justice, to an International Water Association conference on the same topic at Salerno. To my great surprise, I was the only social scientist out of 200 participants. Nexus approaches help to bridge the separate domains of water,…
Realising the SDGs: why a sustainable livelihoods approach can help
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were launched with great fanfare in September 2015. This was an ambitious agenda for the whole world, aiming to transform development towards sustainability, while leaving no-one behind. I was excited by the prospects. Back then, I expressed the hope that this was perhaps the moment when a new politics of…
Poverty traps: a short film about how people in rural Appalachia see poverty
Poverty is often described as a ‘trap’. How does this reflect the perception of people who live with poverty in their everyday lives? Researchers often use the words ‘poverty trap’ for contexts where systems keep feeding back in a way that maintains a cycle of poverty. It’s not just about a lack of money: poverty…
‘What if?’ Meeting, making, dreaming, doing
Each week, the System Change Hive is exploring and experimenting with new solutions to societal and environmental problems, through creative arts practice. Artworks created will be exhibited in different locations around the UK and showcased online. The group is comprised of artists, communication experts, activists and STEPS researchers. In week 5, the session began by splitting…
Water crisis’ disproportionate toll on women can no longer be ignored
STEPS member Lyla Mehta has written an article with Ria Basu for the Indian magazine Firstpost about the impacts of ‘water crisis’ on women. Often, access to water is about power and social relations, not just physical scarcity. For most of us, accessing water is as simple as turning the taps on in our kitchens…
Irrigating Africa: can small-scale farmers lead the way?
by Ian Scoones, Felix Murimbarimba and Jacob Mahenehene We often hear that irrigation in Africa is too limited, and that the key to a “green revolution” on the continent is to expand to levels seen in Asia. But what if there is much more small-scale, informal irrigation in Africa than we thought? Could this be…
Five problems with ‘integrated assesment’ models, and what to do about them
What are the most appropriate ways of understanding changes in natural resource change in rural areas, particularly in the context of climate change? How can we make use of data that is patchy and uncertain? How can models help decision-making about future management? These questions are at the heart of three recently published journal articles…
Pastoralist milk is a viable commodity. What enables it to flourish?
Pastoralists’ integration into market dynamics is mostly addressed through the lens of trade in meat products, involving male traders. Pastoral milk, mostly traded by women, is often ignored. But good production of healthy milk is definitely the best way to ensure the efficiency and effectiveness of a pastoral system at whatever level. Milk is central…
Could Kenya’s local flour mills be an early warning system for famine?
By Fred Ajwang, Relational Pathways project In the Relational Pathways project, we have been exploring how rural people relate to technology in their everyday lives. This has included fieldwork in a part of Kenya called Machakos. One upshot of rural fieldwork is how easily one can slip in and fit into the community. And so,…
Destruction-prone conservation policies: one pathway to sustainability?
By Niak Sian Koh (Stockholm Resilience Centre, Sweden) and Amos Ochieng (Department of Forestry, Biodiversity and Tourism, Makerere University, Uganda) In an attempt to address the crucial problem of biodiversity loss, governments, conservation NGOs and the private sector are experimenting with different approaches to increase sources of funding for conservation. On a global level, the…
Learning from crises: state-citizen relations in the time of cholera
The cholera outbreak in Zimbabwe in 2008 was the worst ever recorded in Africa. There were nearly 100,000 infections and some 4,300 deaths. The disease swept through the crowded urban areas in particular, and spilled across the borders to neighbouring countries. The deadly bacterium caused illness and death, but also new forms of politics in…
Towards a more convivial politics of science
This is the last in a series of three blog posts by Andy Stirling about the theme of the STEPS Centre for 2019: Uncertainty. In previous blogposts in this series, I argued that not all is as it seems in the politics of incertitude. Deep intractabilities are papered over with the apparently precise language of…
How politics closes down uncertainty
This is the second in a series of blog posts on uncertainty by Andy Stirling. The first one is here and the third in the series is here. In a previous blog post, I discussed how uncertainty is a subjective state of knowledge, not an objective condition in the world. The example of nuclear accident…
How can knowledge systems in East Africa contribute to sustainable development?
Unpacking Knowledge Systems for sustainable development in East Africa: Practical perspectives from Kenya, Rwanda and Tanzania by Joanes Atela, Fiona Marshall, Nora Ndege, Joanna Chataway, Andy Frost and Andy Hall, Knowledge Systems Project Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) is rising up the agenda in East Africa – and it is being embraced as a way…
Reflections on Authoritarian Populism: Democracy, Technology and Ecological Destruction
Using anarchist critique to unearth the ‘roots’ of authoritarian populism can offer a productive gateway for understanding the origins and continuation of socio-ecological and economic crises. The language of ‘authoritarian populism’ creates the potential for a broad spectrum of inquiry, which can ignite timely and much-needed debate on the nature and mechanisms of authoritarian political…
Politics in the language of uncertainty
This is the first in a series of three blog post about uncertainty by Andy Stirling. The second post is here and the third post is here. Uncertainty is not a condition out there in the world. It is a state of knowledge – deeply embedded and shaped in society. The difference may seem abstract….
What can transdisciplinarity give back to communities?
By Simone Omori, Leandro Giatti and Saurabh Arora The water-energy-food and environment nexus (w-e-f-e nexus) is a matter of understanding and acting on interdependent areas of activity. By directing attention to connections that are often overlooked in disciplinary research and siloed policymaking, the w-e-f-e nexus can be used to address the socio-ecological scarcities and vulnerabilities created…
Should political ecology be populist?
By Diego Andreucci Political ecology should take populism seriously, not only because of its authoritarian or regressive manifestations, but also for its transformative potential. The rise of right-wing populism is intimately connected to the failure of what Marxist Feminist philosopher Nancy Fraser dubbed ‘progressive neoliberalism’. For Fraser, the Left should reject the false choice between the…
Art, Uncertainty and System Change
It is becoming increasingly common to see funders, at national and international levels, in the sciences, arts and humanities, encouraging interdisciplinary approaches to various fundamental policy challenges. Initiatives focusing on the interface between art and environment, or art and ecology, mostly have emerged from an arts-based starting point, but the Arts and Environment Network (AEN)…
Embracing uncertainty: what are the implications for sustainability and development?
Uncertainty is a concept that defines our times. Every media headline seems to assert that things are uncertain, and increasingly so. Whether it’s climate change, disease outbreaks, economic conditions or political settlements, the same narrative exists. Helga Nowotny, in her book The Cunning of Uncertainty, argues that “uncertainty is written into the script of life”….
Views from the coast: uncertainty beyond climate change
Coastal areas are a poster child for climate vulnerability. They are marked and scarred by sea level rise, salinization, warming water, declining fish stocks, storms, changes in currents and weather patterns. But there are other currents and other patterns too. Against the global background of climatic change, a more careful look at places and communities…
Zimbabwe’s fuel riots: why austerity economics and repression won’t solve the problem
A day after the president announced a 150 percent hike in fuel prices, the Zimbabwe Congress of Trades Unions and others called for a peaceful three-day shutdown. Their demands were simple: end the economic crisis and hardships, reverse the fuel price increase and pay US$ salaries. By the end of day one, there were several…
Call For Papers: International Research Symposium on Post-Automation
International Research Symposium Post-Automation? Exploring Democratic Alternatives to Industry 4.0 11-13 September 2019 Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU), University of Sussex, Brighton, UK About the Symposium We are delighted to invite proposals for papers for the International Research Symposium on Post-Automation? Towards Democratic Alternatives to Industry 4.0, taking place at the Science Policy Research Unit,…
Headless populism and the political ecology of alienation
Populism of the kind displayed by the Yellow Vests is a revolt against social and ecological alienation and an affirmation of collective popular power. Since the gilets jaunes (‘Yellow Vests’) erupted onto the French national stage on the 17th of November, erecting blockades and occupying roundabouts ostensibly to protest President Emanuel Macron’s new tax on fuel, the movement…
Skills for Sustainability Research
By Fateme Zare, Victoria Evia and Michael Kriechbaum What skills and dispositions do researchers require for sustainability and transdisciplinary research? In this blog post, we want to provide insights on this question from the final session of the 2018 STEPS Summer School. We attended this two-week course, together with 39 other early-career sustainability researchers from different…
Answers on a postcard: how would you do technology differently?
Picture this… I like picture postcards. I like sending them, and I like receiving them. Despite the instantaneous advantages of Telegram and Twitter, or the range of Instagram and Facebook, my liking for postcards sent from A to B endures. Some I stick on my office wall, including the one above. Stuck above my desk…
Diets not riots: what would massive public dialogue on climate change look like?
The UN’s COP24 climate conference reaches its halfway point this weekend, and carbon emissions are going in the wrong direction worldwide. Debates about the best ways to tackle climate change are spilling out on to the streets and making headlines beyond the conference in Poland. In France, the gilets jaunes have made a violent and…
Authoritarianism, populism and political ecology
by Amber Huff and Levi van Sant Based on a number of events convened under the Emancipatory Rural Politics Initiative, we introduce a series of interventions that explore how political ecologies can help us to better understand and confront the emergence of contemporary authoritarian populism. Shaped by the crises of progressive neoliberalism – and its contradictory nexus of elite cosmopolitanism,…
Enabling Innovations
At the launch of STEPS America Latina in 2015, one of the themes that we focused on at our opening event was what we called ‘enabling’ innovations. These are new institutions, policies or technologies that are not only, themselves, a novel way of doing something or of solving a problem, but that also encourage and…
Video: Hilary Wainwright on knowledge, politics and the left
On 31 October 2018 Hilary Wainwright, editor of Red Pepper magazine and author of the book ‘A New Politics From The Left’, spoke at a STEPS/IDS seminar at the Institute of Development Studies. The seminar linked to our work with the Emancipatory Rural Politics Initiative on how people are responding and reacting to a new…
The challenges of open science
On Friday, November 2nd, the Argentine Congress of Open and Citizen Science (CIACIAR) was held at the University of San Martín, organized by CENIT and Cientópolis, and sponsored by STEPS Latin America. It was a meeting attended by more than 200 people among researchers, scientists, disseminators of science and technology, and university students from Buenos…
From digital commons to nurturing social relationships: How to practice open source ideas with seeds?
What happens when you try to transfer open source ideas beyond the digital world? In Argentina we organized a workshop on open hardware and immediately afterward an event on open seeds. Some of the difficulties involved in transferring open source ideas from virtual to more material settings, and from communities of practitioners comfortable with networked, digital culture, to those that are less so, were readily apparent.
Creating bridges in Xochimilco through the “Pathways to Sustainability Game”
By Beatriz Ruizpalacios, Lakshmi Charli-Joseph, Hallie Eakin, J. Mario Siqueiros-García, Rebecca Shelton, Pathways Network The urban wetland in Xochimilco, Mexico City, and the traditional agricultural areas within it, are undergoing rapid change and degradation, driven in part by the lack of regulation of urban growth near and within the wetland ecosystem. Strategizing on the best…
Open and Citizen Science Congress
On November 2nd, starting at 9 a.m. the second edition of the Open and Citizen Science Congress will be held at the University of San Martín, Buenos Aires. The event seeks to bring together different actors involved in open science initiatives. There will be open workshops, posters, debates, talks and an art and science fair….
Transformation Labs: Six stories of change
These six stories are summaries of T-Labs (Transformation Labs) carried out by the Pathways Network between 2016 and 2018. The project worked in Mexico, the UK, India, Argentina, China and Kenya. The text is excerpted from the booklet T-Labs: A Practical Guide, published in October 2018. Researchers from the Pathways Network have contributed to each…
Endings and beginnings: project-based work within wider transformations
by Adrian Ely and Elise Wach Since 2016 we have been involved in a small-scale project, as part of the broader ‘Pathways Network’, that has explored how to move towards more sustainable agri-food systems in Brighton and Hove. The project’s focus has been evolving on the basis of changing circumstances, knowledge and ideas – a…
Hardware y software de código abierto para cambiar el mundo
By Julieta Arancio As part of my doctoral project at CENIT-STEPS Latin America on open hardware, I am working as a mentor at the summer school of the Geneva-Tsinghua Iniciative, part of the University of Geneva. From this experience I will be publishing a series of blog posts on this subject. —- Como parte de…
The Power of a T-Lab: Sharing lessons on water and justice in Gurgaon, India
by Dinesh Abrol, Pravin Kushwaha and Bikramaditya K. Choudhary, South Asia Sustainability Hub & Knowledge Network. As big cities change rapidly, people moving into them can struggle for access to basic services like clean water and sanitation. One such city is Gurgaon, a secondary city that’s experienced rapid urban transition over the last two decades….
How transformative are mobile payments for solar home systems in Kenya?
by Victoria Chengo and Kennedy Mbeva, Africa Sustainability Hub The second Transformation Lab workshop (T-Lab) organised by the Africa Sustainability Hub was held in June in Nairobi, Kenya – one of six study sites in the international Pathways Network. As part of a 3-year process, the workshop discussed what needs to be done to enable…
Open access and open science: A historic opportunity
By Mariano Fressoli In recent years several countries in Latin America managed to develop policies and legislation on open access. For example, Argentina, Peru and Mexico have national legislations. While Colombia, Brazil and Chile have been working for years in the management of national systems for digital repositories. In this regard, Latin America has become…
Who benefits and loses from large developments in Eastern Africa’s rangelands?
The past ten years have seen the spread of large-scale investments in infrastructure, resources and land across pastoral areas of eastern Africa. In the past, these areas were insignificant to states in the region and large capital from beyond – at least, compared to the region’s agrarian highlands and Indian Ocean coast. But the recent…
Bioleft Project in Comunes meeting
On August 15th, Anabel Marin presented the Bioleft project within the Comunes meeting, on behalf of an interdisciplinary team of members from CENIT, the University of Buenos Aires and CONICET. The meeting was held in Buenos Aires, where an audience of 50 people listened attentively, interested in free and collaborative culture. It is the first…
Are alternative visions missing from the debates about sustainability transitions?
by Kasper Ampe, Michael Kriechbaum and Sofie Sandin In June 2018 we attended the IST (International Sustainability Transitions) conference in Manchester. It was a repeat visit for all of us, but this time we left the conference rather puzzled – with the STEPS Centre’s summer school in the back of our minds. In the summer…
Argentina’s ‘Bioleft’ project shares its first open source seeds
Seeds were transferred from researchers to farmers for the first time under a new kind of open source transfer contract, called Bioleft, .
Open Science Map: Charting the development of Open Science practices in Latin America
Open Science represents a new approach in scientific knowledge based on collaborative work and new ways of spreading information using digital technologies. There are many benefits that come with open science practices such as different forms of participation, a more efficient production of knowledge and alternative trajectories of social and technological development. In Latin America,…
Is the new European ruling on GM techniques ‘anti-science’?
Frontstage rhetorics, backstage forces in current debates around the European Court of Justice ruling on GM crops There has been much commotion in the media over the past week, following the ruling by the European Court of Justice over how to interpret EU laws bearing on the regulation of GM crops. The ruling clarifies an…
In South Africa’s land reform, class matters
In South Africa’s former ‘homelands’ the government is trying to ‘revive’ agriculture. These areas are a legacy of the 1913 and 1936 land acts, which reserved only 13% of the land for black South Africans, and where most victims of forced removals were relocated. One of the pillars of the government’s strategy is to support…
What do we do about the heatwave?
The heatwave has turned deadly. Tinder-dry fields and forests in Europe, most dramatically in Greece, have burst into flames, with catastrophic results. Crops are failing; for some, the health risks of the heat are critical. These events have added urgency and weight to the calls to put the weather in context. A hot day is…
Three projects that explore open and collaborative production
Over the last decade, radically open and collaborative forms of producing knowledge and material artifacts have been gaining ground, accelerated by the advance of new technologies. Researchers from STEPS Latin America and CENIT (Research Center for Transformation), amongst many others, have been analyzing and contributing to initiatives that explore such alternative forms production. So what…
How can the Sustainable Development Goals be transformative?
The theme of this year’s High-level Political Forum on sustainable development is “Transformation towards sustainable and resilient societies.” The HLPF meets every year to review progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals. This year’s event runs from 9-18 July, with a ministerial meeting on 16-18 July. The Sustainable Development Goals aim to be transformative: they focus…
Democratizing public health and urban sustainability: how can nexus framings be useful?
By Saurabh Arora (SPRU, University of Sussex, UK) and Leandro Giatti (SPH, USP, Brazil) Public health and urban sustainability are inextricably linked. The World Health Organization (WHO) has emphasized this, drawing attention to the critical interdependence of the UN’s third Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) – ‘good health and well-being’ – with ‘sustainable cities and communities’ and…
Living Aulas: What connects ‘undisciplinary’ research on sustainability?
by Almendra Cremaschi and Rebecca Shelton, Pathways Network In the context of climate change and the rise of research about and towards transformations to sustainability, being an early career researcher has huge potential for learning and praxis but at the same time is filled with challenges and questions. New and deeper ways of reflecting and…
Why politics has to be at the heart of any response to zoonoses
World Zoonoses Day, on July 6 every year, is a reminder of the continuing problem of emerging diseases, particularly those originating in animals. Zoonoses have dominated policy debates in the past years – from SARS to avian influenza to Ebola. There have been calls to control ‘at source’ and stamp out such diseases through a…
Are Elsevier corrupting open science in Europe?
Elsevier – one of the largest and most notorious scholarly publishers – are monitoring Open Science in the EU on behalf of the European Commission. Jon Tennant argues that they cannot be trusted. Open Science is all about making science work better so that it can address the world’s challenges. It has been at the…
Report from Rojava: Revolution at a Crossroads
Rojava’s revolution is one of the most promising projects of democratization and social transformation afoot in the current conjuncture in the Middle East. Its context within the ongoing Syrian War – a war entangling local, regional, and global powers – marks it as highly precarious. Those struggling for positive societal transformation require solidarity with those…
Dialogues along Plural Pathways: STEPS researchers and Summer School participants in conversation
Following the STEPS Summer School in May 2018, this blog post is a conversation convened by three participants, Nimisha Agarwal, Ankita Rastogi and Jessica Cockburn. It includes introductions to the STEPS Centre’s ideas on six topics by STEPS researchers, and responses to each by different participants at the Summer School, drawing on their own knowledge…
Should we blame livestock for climate change?
Livestock are essential to rural economies and livelihoods across the world. But are these animals contributing to planetary destruction through greenhouse gas emissions? Estimates suggest that 14.5% of all anthropogenic GHG emissions are from livestock, and nearly all of this is from grazing ruminants. But what to do about it? This is a big debate,…
Uncovering Transgressive Solidarities
By Divya Sharma, Relational Pathways project In the Relational Pathways project, we are trying to understand the pathways in and out of poverty for farmers in India and Kenya. ‘Green Revolutions’ are a prominent way of discussing how farmers can benefit from technology. In Tamil Nadu, India, we have been using a technique called ‘life…
Wilderness for whom? Negotiating the role of livestock in landscapes
Livestock keeping is seen by some as a scourge on ‘natural’ landscapes, creating devastation through grazing and browsing. Reversion to some form of idealised ‘wilderness’ is seen as the solution, with value created through improved aesthetics, tourism and enhanced ecosystem services.This has been a focus by the ‘re-wilding’ debate. This takes on many forms, but…
The vegan craze: what does it mean for pastoralists?
by Ian Scoones There’s a vegan craze in full swing in Brighton in the UK – and it seems more broadly. There was a vegan festival near my house the other weekend, and vegan graffiti (in washable chalk, I hasten to add) appears frequently in our local park. My daughter became a vegan for a…
Narratives of scarcity and the global land rush
by Ian Scoones Narratives of scarcity dominate policy discourses about resources, including land. This was certainly the case during the peak of the global land rush, as we show in a paper recently published online in Geoforum (open access, which is part of a forthcoming special issue on the politics of scarcity) The paper is written with Rebecca…
BioLeft: experimenting with open source seed innovation in Argentina
by Patrick van Zwanenberg and Anabel Marin (Conicet / Cenit / UNSAM) It is sometimes said that plant breeders breed their aspirations about how agricultural production systems ought to function directly into their seed varieties. Over the last three decades there has been a collapse in the diversity of seed breeders (and with it the…
Contextualising life histories in Tamil Nadu
by Divya Sharma and V. Gajendra, Relational Pathways project In the Relational Pathways project we are trying to understand the pathways in and out of poverty for farmers in India and Kenya. ‘Green Revolutions’ are a prominent way of discussing how farmers can benefit from technology. In Tamil Nadu, India, we have been using a…
Mapping a transforming world in the Sierra Huichol, Mexico
by Shiara González, Lakshmi Charli-Joseph, and Beth Tellman The Wixáritari communities, better known as Huichol, are mainly located within the Sierra Madre Occidental, north of Jalisco state, Mexico. These communities, like many others in the world, and particularly in the Americas, are subject to pressures from the ‘Western’ world which are the catalyst for many…
What role does rural people’s agency play in finding pathways out of poverty?
by Saurabh Arora, Divya Sharma, M. Vijaybaskar, Ajit Menon and Joanes Atela This is the inaugural blog post for the project Relational Pathways: Mapping Agency and Poverty Dynamics through Green Revolutions. Based on extensive fieldwork in India and Kenya, we are developing a relational pathways approach, which posits poverty as a process rather than as…
Why killing reindeer is poor science
The Norwegian state has ordered Sami reindeer owners to reduce the size of their herds to the ‘carrying capacity’ deemed acceptable by the Ministry of Agriculture and Food, arguing that high stocking rates detrimentally affect the fragile tundra ecosystem. Herder Jovvset Ánte Sara has been battling the state in the courts, resisting the requirement to reduce his…
The many futures of pastoralism in the Horn of Africa
A 2016 article by Andy Catley, Jeremy Lind and Ian Scoones – The futures of pastoralism in the Horn of Africa: pathways of growth and change – outlines the different pathways of change emerging in the Horn of Africa. It is published in the Revue scientifique et technique (International Office of Epizootics) and is part of a special issue edited by…
Just Transitions as a process with communities, not for communities
Societal transitions towards a new energy regime are underway in order to shift society back towards a more sustainable state of functioning. However, this pathway is not without trade-offs and equity challenges, related not only to the future distribution and production of energy from renewable energy sources, but also for communities that have supported the…
Open science hardware across the Andes
After an intense programme of Open Scientific Hardware (OScH) workshops in Argentina and Chile, researchers André Chagas (University of Tübingen) and Ben Paffhausen (Freie Universität, Berlin) go back home with less material in their luggage but with a bunch of future projects, new friends, stories… And empanadas, for sure! The workshops were organised by Fernan…
New insights on navigating complexity in development
by Marina Apgar and Eric Kasper, Institute of Development Studies The challenges of development are complex. Insights about the nature of complexity – coming from various scientific disciplines – lead us to conclude that complex adaptive (social) systems cannot be managed in a formal top-down sense. The best we can do is to find ways…
Governing The Land-Water-Environment Nexus: Grant Awardees 2017-2018
The following researchers have received grants for 2017-2018 for research under the project Governing the Land-Water-Environment Nexus in Southern Africa. Eromose Ebhuoma Eromose Ebhuoma was awarded the degree of a PhD in December 2017, at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. His PhD explored the extent to which indigenous farmers in the Delta State of…
Where is the agency of farmers in Africa’s ‘new Green Revolution’?
by Joanes Atela, Charles Tonui, Dominic Glover and Saurabh Arora Hunger and food insecurity have continued to persist in sub-Saharan Africa. To address these problems, during the last decade there has been a renewed thrust for a ‘new Green Revolution’ in Africa. In popular discourse, the Green Revolution (GR) is associated with a technology-led transformation…
Forking the SDGs: How prototypes could transform the new global goals
Sustainable alternatives often come about through prototypes, from DIY electronics repair to ecohousing, agricultural tools to digital knowledge platforms. Prototypes are often small (at least to begin with) and local, but they can yield surprising results – sometimes becoming mainstream technologies like wind turbines, or ways of doing things like car clubs. This makes prototypes…
Pastoralism is changing in the Horn of Africa
A few weeks back, Ian Scoones, representing the PASTRES project, joined Andy Catley and Peter Little in a webinar organised by the Feinstein International Center at Tufts University, and chaired by Greg Gottlieb, the Center’s director. The one-hour webinar, aimed at policymakers, donors and field practitioners, can be listened to again here. It gets going about 6 minutes…
The Transformation Labs (T-Labs) approach to change
The PATHWAYS Network is exploring solutions to problems in six sites (in Argentina, China, Kenya, India, Mexico and the UK) where socio-ecological systems are transforming. To intervene in these transformations, the project is convening multi-stakeholder processes called ‘transformation labs’ (T-Labs) in order to foster change in the systems being studied by each hub.
Protected: Reading list: Summer School on Pathways to Sustainabilility 2018
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GOSH Roadmap: democratizing technology, from a Latin American perspective
As the year begins, also begin the efforts of low-budget university labs to make ends meet. The scene is unfortunately quite familiar to many of us in Latin America. How can we produce scientific knowledge when money is not enough for equipment or materials? And out of the lab, how can communities work on their…
Care or control? Four challenges for transformations to sustainability
This post introduces a series of blog posts on ‘Transformations’, our theme for 2018. Transformation is one of those buzz words that’s everywhere these days, especially in relation to the big issues of our time such as sustainability. But what does it mean, and how do we go about it? Over the last year or…
Things can change: history and transformations to sustainability
by Nathan Oxley, Jonathan Dolley, Shilpi Srivastava and Gordon McGranahan This is one in a series of four blog posts exploring ideas and case studies on ‘transformations’, drawing on research carried out in 2017 and looking forward to the STEPS Centre’s work in 2018. For background and links to the other posts, read the introduction….
Want to transform access to technology? Follow the invisible threads
by Adrian Smith, Rob Byrne, David Ockwell and Ian Scoones This is one in a series of four blog posts exploring ideas and case studies on ‘transformations’, drawing on research carried out in 2017 and looking forward to the STEPS Centre’s work in 2018. For background and links to the other posts, read the introduction….
Green transformations in India and China: who’s in charge?
by Sam Geall, Wei Shen, Lyla Mehta and Peter Newell This is one in a series of four blog posts exploring ideas and case studies on ‘transformations’, drawing on research carried out in 2017 and looking forward to the STEPS Centre’s work in 2018. For background and links to the other posts, read the introduction….
How do we ‘co-produce’ transformative knowledge?
by Andy Stirling, Adrian Ely and Fiona Marshall This is one in a series of four blog posts exploring ideas and case studies on ‘transformations’, drawing on research carried out in 2017 and looking forward to the STEPS Centre’s work in 2018. For background and links to the other posts, read the introduction. There is…
Pastoralism, uncertainty, resilience: introducing the PASTRES project
by Ian Scoones and Michele Nori, PASTRES project This month we are launching a new European Research Council funded project, Pastoralism, Uncertainty and Resilience: Global Lessons from the Margins (PASTRES) led by Ian Scoones (director of the STEPS Centre) and Michele Nori at EUI, Florence. We are asking: What lessons can we learn for global…
What ‘agency’ do researchers have in transformative research projects?
by Hallie Eakin, Lakshmi Charli-Joseph and J. Mario Siqueiros In our PATHWAYS network case in Xochimilco, Mexico City, we are exploring whether people can have ‘agency’ to make a difference to very complex socio-ecological problems. Xochimilco is a degraded but very culturally, ecologically and economically meaningful wetland system in the south of Mexico City. In…
Seeding ideas: knowledge brokering and recombination for agricultural transformations
by Adrian Ely, Paddy Van Zwanenberg, Elise Wach, Martin Obaya and Almendra Cremaschi Straight after the ‘Transformations 2017’ conference, the ‘Pathways’ network gathered at the mid-point in our three year project to take stock. This included discussions in ‘pairs’ of hubs, including reflecting on our ‘theories of change’. In our case, the UK and Argentina…
Transformations from Beijing to Nairobi and back: what can we learn from each other?
by Yang Lichao, Kennedy Liti Mbeva and Jiang Chulin This blog post summarises discussions between the Africa and China hubs at the project-wide meeting of the PATHWAYS Network in Dundee in August 2017. The Africa and China hubs in the project are both working on ‘Transformation Lab’ (T-Lab) processes related to energy, climate change and…
Degradation Neutrality and the Faustian bargain of conservation finance
A critical assessment of ‘degradation neutrality’, the latest idea to emerge in global conservation efforts, is at the heart of a new article for the Antipode Foundation by Amber Huff (STEPS Centre/IDS) and Andrea Brock (University of Sussex). The article picks up on previous work by STEPS & Sussex University on ‘green grabbing’ and other…
What does transformative research for sustainability look like?
by Patrick van Zwanenberg, Hallie Eakin, Ethemcan Turhan, Mutizwa Mukute and Fiona Marshall Efforts to nurture more sustainable, just futures are happening all around us, albeit in the context of a rapidly changing and highly unequal world that is on the brink of irrevocably dismantling the ecological foundations that sustain human life. The researchers and…
One Health Day: why tackling human health isn’t enough
One Health Day, on Friday 3 November 2017, draws attention to the interconnectedness of human, animal and environmental health. More than 60 per cent of emerging infectious diseases affecting people are zoonoses – originating in wildlife or livestock. Their spread is driven by climate change, land-use change and the massive expansion of towns and cities,…
How to embrace the darkness
In her book Hope in the Dark, Rebecca Solnit offers a view of uncertainty that may seem surprising. Uncertainty might seem to go hand in hand with fear and even despair – the state of hopelessness which the book guards us against. But for Solnit, uncertainty isn’t always a bad thing. In fact, it’s more…
Why agrarian studies should confront the rise of authoritarian, populist movements
Last week I was in Russia at the fascinating fifth BRICS Initiative in Critical Agrarian Studies conference. Throughout the event we heard about the emergence of particular styles of authoritarian populist regimes, including in the BRICS countries, but elsewhere too. Based on my remarks at the final plenary, I want to ask what the challenges are for…
NEW PAPER: People, patches and parasites
Just out in Human Ecology is a new paper – People, patches and parasites: the case of trypanosomiasis in Zimbabwe. It’s open access, so do have a look! It presents the results of a project looking at the socio-ecology of disease in Africa – part of the Dynamic Drivers of Disease in Africa Consortium –…
Why Mumbai’s floods are an urban planning disaster
by Hans Nicolai Adam, Lyla Mehta and D. Parthasarathy, Climate Change, Uncertainty and Transformation project As Houston was inundated by ‘biblical’ rainfall and grapples with extreme flooding and its aftermath, another coastal megacity on the other side of the globe also experienced destructive flooding, albeit on a lesser scale. Within the span of a couple…
How do we ensure values are at the heart of resilience science?
We live and work now perhaps more than ever before in the time of science for transformation. This was the central theme of discussions in Stockholm during the Resilience 2017 and Sustainability Science conferences held back to back from 21-26 August. The transformative intention of these events is particularly relevant at this time of increasing…
Coming to terms with messiness: What is a ‘Transformation Lab’?
In this blog post, Laura Pereira explains the idea of a ‘Transformation Lab’ (T-lab). T-labs are being used in our Pathways Network project in 6 countries to try to enable socio-ecological transformations. In the post, Laura uses an example of a completed T-lab from the GRAID research project in South Africa. For a short summary…
The global food system still benefits the rich at the expense of the poor
Ramen noodles in Sweden, wheat bread in Tanzania and Chilean wines in China. The cross-Atlantic transit of the potato and the tomato from the Andes to Europe, and back again as French fries and pasta sauce. We think of the world as globalised and sophisticated in its food tastes, and our palettes as curious and…
Can open and collaborative approaches change the world?
by Patrick van Zwanenberg, Mariano Fressoli, Valeria Arza and Adrian Smith Around the world, people are changing how things are made and how knowledge is produced, by involving more people, opening up data, and sharing skills and insights with these activities across communities, countries or continents. Experimentation with radically open and collaborative ways of producing…
Why will no one listen to the pig farmers of Yangon?
Sitting in a pig farmer’s house in the Yangon region of Myanmar, I heard a question I’d heard many times before from backyard farmers: “What will your project provide us with?” It was my last month of a year in Myanmar, undertaking fieldwork for the social science component of the Myanmar Pig Partnership, a project looking…
Brexit and food: there is no plan, so what is the UK going to put on the table?
by Tim Lang, City, University of London; Erik P Millstone, University of Sussex, and Terry Marsden, Cardiff University Even the British eat. But one might be forgiven for thinking that the UK government does not know this for all the attention it has paid to the implications of Brexit for UK consumers and the nation’s…
A day in the Chinampas
In the wetlands of Xochimilco in Mexico, farming is carried out in a system going back to Mesoamerican times, in chinampas – rectangular floating fields growing crops on a shallow lake. The area is changing rapidly with competing pressures from farming, urbanization and pollution, and we’ve been exploring how local people can respond to this…
How Kerala is making the transition towards healthy, home-grown food
In Kerala, agri-food systems are in transition towards self-reliance and sustainability. Through bringing traditional gardening into the mainstream food agenda, and adopting technologies and practices like agroecology, growers and consumers in Kerala are trying to overcome the impacts of external food dependency and related vulnerabilities. Debates on sustainable food systems are still largely trapped in…
Unpacking sustainabilities in diverse transitions contexts: Four key lessons from empirical research
In the late 18th century, an Indian philosopher and religious leader offered a piece of knowledge to his followers. Taking into account the diverse religious faiths that exist in societies, he proclaimed that there are as many ways [to God] as there are faiths. The plurality of perspectives and interpretations in sustainability debates astonishingly reminds…
Confronting authoritarian populism: a new initiative and a new paper
A few weeks back, I highlighted the launch of the Emancipatory Rural Politics Initiative (ERPI), and the availability of small grants for doing research on both the contours of the current conjuncture, and how authoritarian populism emerges and is sustained in rural areas, as well as the forms of resistance and diversity of alternatives being…
Results of four-year zoonoses research showcased in One Health ‘Special Issue’
Infectious diseases traceable to animals are driven by climate change, land-use change and the massive expansion of towns and cities, according to contributors to a paper in a major new output from the Dynamic Drivers of Disease in Africa Consortium, a STEPS Centre led project.
Research, convening and bridging: sharing insights from the ISSC’s Transformative Knowledge Networks
by Adrian Ely (co-lead, ‘Pathways’ Network), with contributions from Joanes Atela, Mirna Inturias, Dylan McGarry, Iokiñe Rodríguez & Patrick Van Zwanenberg Working with the World Social Science Council’s ‘Transformations to Sustainability’ programme brings the privilege of engaging with an incredible range of scholars and practitioners from across the globe. The programme’s three transformative knowledge networks…
Can China be a global climate leader?
President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate agreement has sparked off another round of intense global discussion on China’s potential as a global leader on climate. Since last week, there appears to be a widespread desire for China and Europe to forge a stronger alliance to lead global efforts…
Using a “farmers’ jury” to see Nicaragua’s food system from rural perspectives
Jorge Irán Vásquez Zeledón, a participant in the project on Transitions to Agroecological Food Systems based in Nicaragua, has written a blog post (in Spanish) about a “Farmers’ Jury” organised in connection to the project. The event aimed to investigate farmers’ views on the state of agroecological systems in Nicaragua, and what challenges need to…
How can open and collaborative knowledge help to build communities?
by Adrian Smith, STEPS Centre and Patrick van Zwanenberg, STEPS America Latina Experimentation with open and collaborative ways of creating knowledge is flourishing. How might the increasing interest in initiatives such as open science, open hardware and open data lead to a transformation in knowledge production? And could this enable more inclusive and sustainable approaches…
Putting research to use in addressing complex development challenges: are we ready?
by Marina Apgar and Boru Douthwaite The Sustainable Development Goals provide a framework that may open up space to move beyond the siloes of disciplines and sectors. Those of us inclined to see development as systemic and who, through our research practice, engage with stakeholders in the messiness of uncovering solutions to seemingly intractable problems…
Rethinking transformative pathways to equitable growth in Kenya: key research options for the Kenya’s Newton Utafiti Fund
Kenya has witnessed a proliferation of research interventions on both international and national fronts. The country is a host to renowned research and development agencies such as the CGIAR, UN bodies plus several regional research, advocacy and policy bodies all of which are working to fix Kenya’s and wider Africa’s sustainability challenges. Through these interventions,…
Learning across continents on sustainable transformations: a visit from China to Africa
In early April I visited Nairobi for a four-day exchange visit to the African Centre for Technology Studies (ACTS), as part of a project on Transformative Pathways to Sustainability funded by the World Social Science Council (ISSC). The project explores different sustainability challenges in 6 countries (Kenya, China, UK, Mexico, Argentina and India). The China…
Beyond policy statements: how politics and ecology combine in land, water and forests
Governing land, water and forests (so-called ‘nexus’ resources) is critical for sustaining livelihoods, especially in the face of emerging shocks such as climate change. This also means that the effectiveness of interventions aimed at addressing climate change and other livelihood issues will heavily depend on how these resources are governed – including how they are…
Introducing the new STEPS Centre and Global Consortium website
You might have noticed that the STEPS Centre has a new website. As the final step to our online facelift, we have just launched a new global section of the website. It highlights the exciting work of the Pathways to Sustainability Global Consortium hubs in Africa, China, South Asia, North America, Latin America and Europe….
How rethinking local people’s agency could help navigate Xochimilco’s troubled waters
Xochimilco, Mexico City is the last remnant of the complex lacustrine system of wetlands that was the basis for agriculture and livelihoods (the chinampa system) in pre-Columbian times. However, the water is no longer provided by natural springs, but is reliant on the discharge of treated wastewater from the neighboring, densely populated and impoverished borough…
Could new alliances for seeds in Argentina be a way to nurture agricultural diversity?
Over the last three decades there has been an unprecedented process of concentration in world and regional seed markets. Seed R&D has shifted from being widely distributed over hundreds of medium and large seed firms and public sector institution to being heavily concentrated in just five or six multinational agro-chemical firms.
Why rapid transitions are more possible than you might think
In the face of climate change and social inequality, changing to a greener and fairer society might feel impossible – but rapid, radical transitions may be more possible than you might think, according to a new booklet published by the STEPS Centre and the New Weather Institute.
To combat neglected tropical diseases, we need more than just drugs and vaccines
Neglected tropical diseases have been in the news this week. A big meeting at the World Health Organisation in Geneva has resulted in big pledges from the UK aid progamme and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to banish the scourge affecting around a billion people worldwide. This is good news, and to be commended….
Is Trident Influencing UK Energy Policy?
What explains the UK government’s enthusiasm for nuclear power, despite its various problems – including technical difficulties and cost? Could one hidden factor be the pressure to support the infrastructure needed for military programmes such as Trident? SPRU researcher Philip Johnstone and our co-director Andy Stirling have been researching this question, and explore their findings…
Facts vs truth: Brexit and sustainability in turbulent times
Today the UK’s Article 50 letter will be delivered, formally marking the UK’s intention to leave the European Union. Two weeks ago a conference on ‘Sustainability in Turbulent Times’ was held in London to discuss the uncertainties around Brexit and other momentous political developments in the global North, which seem to be driven by a…
How can solar power be part of transformations to sustainability in Kenya?
Transforming pro-poor energy access is a priority goal for many countries in Africa. Many poorer households are not connected to the grid, so use kerosene, paraffin or batteries, or have to travel to charge mobile phones. In Kenya, solar home systems (SHS) via mobile payment systems are tackling this problem by giving access to renewable…
Just another drop in the bucket on World Water Day?
Each year, the United Nations uses World Water Day as an opportunity to raise awareness and demand action around the global water crisis. Each year, there is a theme. This year’s theme is wastewater, framed as a ‘grossly undervalued as a potentially affordable and sustainable source of water, energy, nutrients and other recoverable materials’ (pdf)….
Exploring the social impacts of green transformations in China
pA transformation lab (T-Lab) focused on China’s green transformation policy and its impacts was held in Shijiazhuang City, Hebei Province on October 22, 2016. The T-lab intended to identify problems created through the implementation of local “green transformation” policies and sustainable pathways for the future. It was entitled “Transformative pathways to sustainability: Exploring the social…
Protected: Reading list: Summer School on Pathways to Sustainabilility 2017
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Impact story #2: From land grabs to the Anthropocene
A new impact story, From land grabs to the Anthropocene: exploring the politics of resources is the second in our series looking back at a decade of STEPS Centre research and engagement. This story looks at how STEPS intervened in debates on land grabbing following the financial crisis in 2007 and 2008, and how our…
How understanding politics and science can help create resilient cities
A new article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) explores how urban resilience can be strengthened by considering social and political norms, values and behaviours alongside engineering and environmental science approaches. The article, Urban resilience efforts must consider social and political forces, is written by colleagues at Arizona State University and UNAM…
How open science practices in evaluation systems can make research socially relevant for developing countries
Researchers’ choices are inevitably affected by assessment systems. This often means pursuing publication in a high-impact journal and topics that appeal to the international scientific community. For researchers from developing countries, this often also means focusing on other countries or choosing one aspect of their own country that has such international appeal. Consequently, researchers’ activities…
One Health: are we doing it wrong?
International scientific meetings are great for many reasons. But I also found myself profoundly frustrated and disappointed when I attended the 4th International One Health Congress, One Health EcoHealth 2016, in Melbourne recently.
From remunicipalisation to reprivatisation of water? The case of Mozambique
After widespread privatisation in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, many water services around the world began to be transferred back into public control. This ‘remunicipalisation’ has been welcomed by the Transnational Institute and like-minded organisations, who suggest that ‘remunicipalisation is here to stay’ (Lobina et al., 2014). While I am sympathetic to this work on…
Why local land matters for sustainable food systems
Land presents both challenges and opportunities for establishing sustainable food systems. That is one of the learning points from a workshop in Brighton on 7 December 2016. Stakeholders joining the discussions included local small-scale producers, retailers of sustainable produce, non-governmental organisations (Food Matters and The Gaia Foundation), and researchers from the University of Sussex and…
The social life of infectious diseases: a new impact story from STEPS
A new multimedia story, ‘The social life of infectious diseases’ is the first in a new series of impact stories from the STEPS Centre. It traces how our thinking on avian flu, Ebola and other infectious diseases has evolved over the last ten years, and how we have engaged with debates, policy-making and practical action….
Livelihoods on the edge: contested mangroves in Kachchh
There is a real buzz about Mundra village on the Gulf of Kachchh coast, one of the fastest growing industrial hubs in India. A sprawling port, two of India’s biggest thermal power plants, and a special economic zone with growing export industries jostle for space in what once used to be western India’s biggest stretch…
Livelihoods and the political economy of dairy in India and South Africa
This is the second of two blog posts comparing the dairy sector in India and South Africa, as part of research from the Governing the Land-Water-Environment Nexus in Southern Africa project. Read the first post, exploring the reasons behind the different pathways taken by the two countries. The dairy sectors in both South Africa…
Divergent Dairy: comparing pathways in India and South Africa
As a significant agricultural commodity in both India and South Africa, what role can dairy play in spurring development?
How water became a casualty of Mozambique’s debt crisis
One interesting aspect of doing fieldwork is that you get to understand some theoretical premises better. One such premise related to my PhD research is that the water/development nexus can only be properly understood when situated in the broader (national and global) political economy. This became clear when in April of this year, I set…
Power to the people: making & politics at the Science Museum
by Cian O’Donovan and Adrian Smith The maker movement in the UK, and globally, has grown rapidly over recent years. Hundreds of maker spaces, equipped with 3D printers, laser cutters, design software, as well as old-fashioned hand tools, have popped up in cities, towns and on university campuses, potentially promising new forms of re-distributed and…
Trump and Brexit: what’s the alternative?
Sometimes when you suffer trauma, you have to look elsewhere to seek out radically new ways of framing things in order to recover. This year we’ve suffered two major traumas – Brexit and the US elections. Who would have believed our world would have been radically reshaped in the space of a few short months?…
COP22: Climate change and innovation
The 22nd session of the Conference of the Parties (COP22) to the UNFCCC took place from 7-18 November 2016. Read research and opinion from STEPS on what happens next. This year’s COP comes shortly after the Paris Agreement enters into force. The agreement aims to keep global temperature rise this century to under 2 degrees….
Winners and losers of China’s green transformation
The willow trees and pagodas lining the shore of the canal in a newly-built park in Jishuitan, Beijing are all meant to evoke the sights and smells of the Qing Dynasty, which ruled China for over three centuries. A park placard quotes a poem written during the reign of Emperor Qianlong, which evokes the fragrant…
Governing the Land-Water-Environment Nexus: grant awardees 2015-2016
The following researchers have received grants for 2015-2016 for research under the project Governing the Land-Water-Environment Nexus in Southern Africa. Joanes Atela: Implications of governing the nexus on REDD+ implementation: a case study for Kenya Dr Joanes Atela is a Senior Research Fellow at the African Centre for Technology Studies (ACTS) and a researcher in…
Farming in the UK: can we nourish ourselves from this land?
The recent dispute over food prices between the UK’s largest supermarket chain, Tesco, and the UK’s biggest food and grocery manufacturer, Unilever shines a light on a deeper problem in the global food system: our reliance on food that is grown elsewhere. This is compounded by a drive for healthy eating in the UK which…
What does the future hold for Delhi’s urban farmers?
A new digital story and photo book show the dilemmas facing urban farmers at the edge of Delhi and Ghaziabad in India. Surrounded on all sides by rapid urbanisation, industry and even new tourist attractions, the farmers find their access to land increasingly constrained. Their crops, and their health, are affected by rising pollution.
The New Urban Agenda and its 47 inclusions
Inclusion can be a powerful term, particularly when applied to cities and urbanisation. It focuses attention on the means through which exclusion and inequality are produced and reproduced, and on achieving a more just ‘inclusion’. This is lost, however, when inclusion becomes a catch-all for social aspirations. Other aspirational terms, including sustainability and resilience,…
Learning from Nepal about aid, technology and development
A new book Aid, Technology and Development: The Lessons from Nepal will be published by Routledge in November. It is co-edited by Dipak Gyawali, who has had long-term links with the STEPS Centre and is a member of the STEPS Advisory Committee (the other editors are Michael Thompson and Marco Verweij). From the description: Over…
Hot debate about biogas: lessons from Italy
A new STEPS working paper by Bianca Cavicchi and Adrian Ely examines the history of biogas as a source of energy in the region of Emilia Romagna, Northern Italy. Over the last few decades, the potential of biogas in Emilia Romagna has been explored and debated by different agencies and people. But it has not…
What can we learn from digital transformations?
by Nathan Oxley and Adrian Smith With climate change, inequality, and injustice putting pressure on societies around the world, it often seems that incremental change towards sustainable development is not enough. A growing number and variety of alliances between organisations across civil society, business, politicians and states are calling for something more transformational. So are…
The sugar rush in southern Africa
In a new post on his Zimbabweland blog, STEPS director Ian Scoones discusses a new special issue looking at sugar in South Africa. “It is a good moment to review the political economy of sugar in southern Africa. This is what a new open access special issue of the Journal of Southern African Studies does….
Agricultural revolutions then and now
I’m writing from a village 70km north of Yangon in Myanmar. A group of women farmers are talking about their experiences raising pigs. They have small herds, five to 30 head. Probably for all of them, this is their first experience of a focus group discussion and they are eager to have their say. The…
Hinkley C: why is the UK building a new nuclear power plant?
Today the UK government approved Britain’s first new nuclear power plant in 20 years at Hinkley Point C. Many of the reactions to the decision have been critical for a number of reasons, including cost, the role of foreign investment and the way that the decision has been made. STEPS co-director Andy Stirling is quoted…
Learning from Rojava: exploring democracy in the midst of the Syrian war and beyond
Ahead of two events on democratic transformations in Northern Syria on 3 and 4 November, Patrick Huff (Birkbeck, University of London) blogs on the extraordinary changes going on in the region and how they came about. Few outside observers would expect to see democracy sprout from the wreckage of the Syrian Civil War – perhaps…
What we talk about when we talk about technology
In casual conversation ‘technology’ usually means something like a device, gadget or machine. Your smartphone for instance, or the satellite navigation system in your car; maybe the car itself, why not? But this conception of technology soon collapses if you subject it to a few quick tests. For example, try asking: Where is the technology?…
Empowering chickens?
In his latest Zimbabweland blog, STEPS director Ian Scoones looks at the latest scheme from Bill Gates to distribute chickens to help poor rural women.
Six grassroots innovation movements, and why they matter
Innovation is increasingly said to be vital for responding to global challenges like sustainable development. Often overlooked, however, is the fact that networks of community groups, activists and researchers have been innovating grassroots solutions for social justice and environmental sustainability for decades. A new STEPS book, Grassroots Innovation Movements (Routledge, 2016) examines six such movements…
Beyond two-dimensional perspectives: Sustainable energy access as adaptation and mitigation?
Earlier this year, the Institute of Development Studies convened a one day meeting of scholars to discuss the emerging field of the politics of climate change adaptation. I study sustainable energy access, which doesn’t conventionally get counted as adaptation, so I wondered to what extent the politics of adaptation extends to the framing of sustainable…
Responsibility and geoengineering in the Anthropocene
As the Anthropocene Working Group debate the start date of a new geological era, Jack Stilgoe asks what the Anthropocene means for how science takes responsibility for the climate. In this excerpt from his book, Experiment Earth, Jack looks at the relationship between the identification of the Anthropocene and the arrival of proposals for geoengineering,…
Digital fabrication. Whose industrial revolution?
As the Society for Social Studies of Science & EASST build up to their annual meeting in Barcelona next month, the 4S blog is featuring preview pieces by participants. One is by Johan Söderberg, Maxigas, and Adrian Smith, with a taste of their paper about democratizing the tools of scientific-technical expertise. The last wave of…
How China’s social care providers are experimenting to meet the changing needs of citizens
Welfare provision in China, including social care for older people, is being stretched and challenged by economic, social and demographic changes in the country. The rise in people’s expectations is creating pressure on government and service providers to deliver more and/or different services.
Recipe for a Green Economy
Why aren’t the media talking more about climate change and population growth? asked Nigel Chapman, the Director of the BBC World Service and Trust from 2004 to 2009, speaking at the Green Economy Coalition (GEC) Global meeting in London this week, on how to connect better with audiences about a Green Economy. He quoted a…
Landmarks: how to get up close and personal with nature
I’ve just finished reading Landmarks by Robert Macfarlane, and it’s a must-read for anyone interested in sustainability and language. Each chapter focuses on one or two authors who’ve made deep impressions on Macfarlane through their writing about the natural world – including Nan Shepherd’s deep explorations of the Cairngorms, Roger Deakin’s explorations of wild swimming,…
How to move beyond technology in ‘Sustainable Intensification’
by Saurabh Arora and Ravic Nijbroek Sustainable Intensification (SI) promises more food from the same amount of land, while minimizing pressure on the environment. In Sub-Saharan Africa, considerable research and effort has been put into achieving it – but without the expected success. So why has Sustainable Intensification (SI) not made as much progress as…
Why we should stop talking about ‘desertification’
A great new book has just been published called ‘The End of Desertification? Disputing Environmental Change in the Drylands’, available at a shocking price from Springer. It is edited by two people who know a thing or two about these issues – Roy Behnke and Mike Mortimore – and it has 20 top quality chapters…
Science, Brexit and ‘post-truth’ politics
STEPS co-director Andy Stirling is one of six researchers writing in the Guardian on ‘science after Brexit’. A longer version of his part of the Guardian article is below. The current woes of British democracy are grim and momentous. This is no time for gratuitous piggy-backing of other issues. The early indications of ‘Brexit’ specifically…
How are the LDCs defining a new sustainable development agenda?
In June 2016, the Least Developed Countries Independent Expert Group, the International Institute for Environment and Development and the STEPS Centre hosted a dialogue for Least Developed Country (LDC) experts to discuss how the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) could help to define a new agenda for development. Our colleagues at IIED interviewed participants at the meeting…
Why Britain’s decision to leave the EU is bad news for Africa
The fallout from the UK referendum that ended in victory for those wanting the country to exit from the European Union (EU) is still reverberating around the world. But what does it mean for Africa? The decision will fundamentally affect the continent’s relationship with Britain. It will have an impact on trade, aid and diplomacy….
Brexit and development
As Britain faces the prospect of leaving the European Union, here’s a couple of blog posts on what the referendum result might mean for the UK’s role in international development. Ian Scoones on Brexit and Africa: Why Britain’s Decision to leave the EU is bad news for Africa “The decision will fundamentally affect the continent’s…
Civilising Hypocrisies and Fundamental Questions: on “emancipating transformations”
This week Manchester Tyndall Centre hosted a provocative and highly interesting seminar. Professor Andy Stirling, who spent the 80s in the trenches for Greenpeace, had schlepped up to deliver a seminar on “Emancipating Transformations.” What they? Read on for an (almost) blow by blow account. [My multiple two centses are in square brackets like these.]
5 challenges for Least Developed Countries in the post-2015 era
2016 has been a big year for international agreements on development. New Sustainable Development Goals and targets were agreed. The Paris Agreement, the strongest statement for some time on climate change action, was signed. But if the aspirations in them are to be fulfilled, hard work is needed. This hard work should benefit the poorest…
Understanding the Anthropocene: blog series
We now live in an era where humankind has become the dominant force behind global environmental change. Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer introduced the term “Anthropocene” to reflect the growing impacts of human activities on the earth and the atmosphere. Sixteen years on from its introduction, it’s clear that the concept has gained traction in…
How can African countries really provide sustainable energy for poor people?
Last month, delegates drawn from across the world gathered at the UNEP headquarters in Nairobi for the second session of the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA-2) to discuss the theme ‘Delivering on the environmental dimension of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development’. I was privileged to be a panelist at a side event on ‘Sustainable…
Landesque Capital and the Political Ecology of the Anthropocene
In many areas of South East Asia rice terraces which are centuries old cover the mountainsides, while paddy field farming in South East Asia goes back hundreds of years. In South America recent discoveries of raised field systems which cover hundreds of square miles are rewriting our understanding of land use in that region. These…
Makerspaces: Creating inclusive spaces for sustainable innovations
Making stuff is all the rage these days. But how does sustainable development fit into this enthusiasm? The White House is celebrating a Week of Making from June 16-23 2016 after hosting its first Maker Faire in 2014 to spark a “grassroots renaissance in American making and manufacturing”. The hope is that by exposing people…
Painting a new picture of development
Can the Sustainable Development Goals trigger a new approach to development in the world’s Least Developed Countries? On Monday, Least Developed Country experts from around the world gathered in London for a dialogue event to discuss how the world’s poorest countries relate to the new global goals. Organised by the Least Developed Countries Independent Expert…
How do we reform fossil fuel subsidies?
The idea of reforming fossil fuel subsidies is attracting attention in both academic and policy circles. The environmental and economic aspects of subsidies and their reform have been much debated, but the political aspects are less prominent in the discussion. STEPS member Peter Newell gave a keynote talk at ‘The Politics of Fossil Fuel Subsidies…
Four Scenarios of future urban E-mobility in China
What will it be like to live in Chinese cities as e-mobility takes hold? This is the question that has been investigated by a team at CeMoRe, Lancaster University and the Graduate School at Shenzhen, Tsinghua University, since 2013 in a major project funded by the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). With China…
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 financial asset with neo-liberal, market-based approaches increasingly being adopted to protect the environment, such as payments for ecosystems processes. The School of Global Studies (through…
How the Sustainable Development Goals create a political space to reimagine development
When the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were agreed last September, there was much expectation about how they could help get sustainability back on the development agenda, and push the international community to develop new approaches to development. A declaration, covering both north and south, sought to identify a new era for development that was universal,…
Yukon: Sustainability Lessons from self-governing First Nations
The Yukon is a vast territory in northwest Canada with a small population and a rich complement of natural resources, from minerals to fossil fuels, wildlife to water. It is also a fascinating case study for Indigenous self-government and sustainable resource management. In 2014, I undertook research to learn about Indigenous self-government in the Yukon….
In the world’s poorest countries, cities could be the test for the Sustainable Development Goals
Ahead of a dialogue event on 13 June, STEPS member Gordon McGranahan discusses how the Sustainable Development Goals present challenges and opportunities for urbanisation in the world’s Least Developed Countries (LDCs). The UN’s 2030 Agenda presents a dazzling array of Sustainable Development Goals, claims they are integrated and indivisible, and pledges that no one will…
Explainer: Sustainable Development Goals and Least Developed Countries
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) could provide an opportunity for radical transformation in the Least Developed Countries (LDCs). But with hundreds of targets, attempts to implement the goals could be mired in bureaucracy. Could the SDGs, instead, open up a political space to rethink current patterns of development? Ahead of a dialogue event in London…
Learning from the past about rapid transition
What can history teach us for the task of rapid transition in the face of climate change and corrosive inequality? Historian Molly Conisbee, a speaker at this week’s Transformations events at the Hay Festival, has written about how communities adapted during Britain’s dramatic urban growth and upheaval in the 18th and 19th centuries. In a…
Report: Transforming global food systems from uniformity to diversity
A report published today written by food security and nutrition experts proposes that input-intensive crop monocultures and industrial-scale feedlots must be consigned to the past in order to put global food systems onto a sustainable footing. Prof Melissa Leach, former STEPS Director and now Director of the Institute of Development Studies, was a member of…
From social networks to robot scarecrows: Agroecology meets Open Source technologies
Agroecology has been traditionally based on co-producing knowledge with farmers, scientists, indigenous communities and technicians. As such, it could be regarded as an “open and collaborative” practice. But does this mean that it is ready to meet open source technologies?
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 action can be seen in calls to tackle climate change, biodiversity loss and extinctions, ocean acidification, etc. It comes as no surprise that addressing them…
Needs of the poorest must be central to tackling antibiotic resistance
by Gerry Bloom and Annie Wilkinson, IDS / STEPS Centre Launched this week is a major report on tackling the growing resistance to antibiotics, published by the UK Government and the Wellcome Trust. We fully support its call for the G20 and the UN to take the lead in building a global coalition for action…
Why we need to reveal the hidden connections at the heart of cities
By Fiona Marshall and Ritu Priya, STEPS Urbanisation theme Urban areas are intense meeting points of people and cultures, but they’re also places where more or less visible interactions happen: between the infrastructures and systems of water, energy, food and other resources. These connections pose a big challenge for how researchers understand cities – but…
The Wicked Foundations of the Anthropocene
The Anthropocene describes how human society has now become the dominant force on Earth’s geology and ecosystems. The notion of the Anthropocene highlights a confounding contradiction: we have an unprecedented ability to control the world around us, yet we are using this power to destroy the preconditions for our own existence, and we seem strangely…
Making visible the hidden cogs of the urban nexus
On the steep hills on the outskirts of Lima, slums like San Juan de Lurigancho are ever expanding. As roads and shacks are built on steep slopes, residents face the constant risk of rock slides and landslides. Often there is no infrastructure – no water, few roads and no electricity – to service these areas….
Call for papers: Transformations 2017
A call for papers has been issued for the Transformations 2017 conference in Dundee, UK. Transformations 2017 is the third in a biennial series of international interdisciplinary conferences that focuses on transformations towards sustainability: addressing contemporary challenges and creating conditions for enhancing people’s wellbeing, today and in the future, while strengthening the Earth’s support system.
Next steps to strengthen global land governance
by Ruth Hall and Ian Scoones Four years ago voluntary guidelines on the governance of land and land tenure were agreed at the United Nations (UN) Food and Agriculture Organisation in Rome. This was a response to growing concerns about the impacts of “land grabbing” driven by the global rush for investment in the wake…
How can the STEPS pathways approach help us understand the Anthropocene?
by Mathew Bukhi Mabele (Department of Geography, University of Zurich) and Jacob Weger (Department of Anthropology, University of Georgia) It has been sixteen years since Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer first introduced the term ‘Anthropocene’ to signify that the ‘growing impacts of human activities on earth and atmosphere’ had reached planetary proportions. Their central argument is…
Seeking sustainable transformations around the world
The new ‘Pathways’ Network, which explores transformations to sustainability in 6 cases around the world, had its opening workshop in Buenos Aires on 24-27 April 2016. At the workshop, participants from Sweden, South Africa, and ‘hubs’ in Kenya, the UK, Argentina, USA/Mexico, India and China discussed research questions and how best to share learning.
Earth Day: are we astronauts or toads?
It’s 50 years since the first image of the Earth from space was beamed back home from Lunar Orbiter 1. It’s hard for us now to imagine, or remember, what it meant back then. For the first time, humans could see a real image of their home as a whole. The picture, and others that…
How do we link research and action for sustainability?
In March, researchers, knowledge brokers and funders gathered in Pretoria, South Africa to share lessons and experiences on how a decade of ESRC-DFID research support has impacted on poverty reduction. The Conference came just a few months after the launch of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). These goals articulate the value of research and capacity…
Research collaboration for global challenges: why it’s really hard
On 17-18 March at London Zoo was the final conference of a project I have been involved in over the past four years on zoonoses, ecosystems and wellbeing in Africa. The conference highlighted the idea of ‘One Health’, a movement aimed at linking human, livestock and ecosystem health. The focus was on how to make…
Puzzling questions on tackling antibiotic resistance
Last week’s conference on One Health for the Real World was an enriching experience. All the participants agreed that One Health means linking together our understandings of, and responses to, human, livestock and ecosystem health. See for example, this blog by Ian Scoones. There was also widespread agreement that doing so was important, although in…
Chinese engagement in African agriculture is not what it seems
In December 2015, Chinese President Xi Jinping flew into South Africa for the Forum on China-Africa Co-operation with great fanfare. There were lots of announcements about prospective investments across Africa. Agriculture featured prominently. But what is the real story of China in Africa on the ground, beyond the hype? As Deborah Brautigam’s investigative research has…
Discussing low carbon urban mobility in China
On Sunday 13th March, the ‘Low Carbon Innovation in China: Prospects, Politics and Practice’ project held the closing workshop of its research package on urban e-mobilities at the Shenzhen Graduate School of Tsinghua University. The event involved over 50 delegates including senior government officials, automotive companies, mobility entrepreneurs, leading academics, NGOs and students to discuss…
Beyond risk factors: the all-too-human world of zoonotic pandemics
Human relationships are the unquantifiable that must be accounted for in global health according to the editor of a new STEPS book on One Health.
One Health for the Real World symposium
Welcome to the web page for our international symposium, ‘One Health for the Real World: zoonoses, ecosystems and wellbeing’, which took place at the Zoological Society of London, 17-18 March 2016.
Uncertainty and Climate Change in India
Harbouring one of the largest mangrove forest tracks in the world, the Sunderbans cover a sizeable area in southern Bangladesh and east India. Formed by the confluence of three major rivers, the deltaic region which the Sunderbans are part of, is famed for its tiger habitats and dynamic ecology. Researchers from a Norwegian Research Council-funded and Noragric-led project…
Are China and Brazil transforming African agriculture?
A new Open Access Special Issue in World Development based on our work on the changing role of China and Brazil in Africa’s agriculture is now available (links to individual articles are below, and also via here).
Contested Agronomy: Imagining different futures for food and farmers
The question of how to improve farming to feed and sustain people in developing countries is as important as ever, and there are no easy solutions. One route to finding answers is through the science of agronomy – testing and evaluating how crops and farming techniques perform under different conditions. But, as with any science,…
Is more inclusive urbanisation essential to the 2030 Agenda?
The 2030 Agenda promises Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that are “integrated and indivisible” and “leave no-one behind”. Yet goals listed have historically been pursued in ways that bring them into conflict with each other. In a newly released paper in Environment & Urbanization, Daniel Schensul, Gayatri Singh and I argue that inclusive urbanisation is central to bringing…
Nexus, resource conflict and social justice: are we speaking the same language?
Nexus network meetings are a bit like a bar scene in Star Wars, joked Professor Mike Bradshaw, from the University of Warwick: “What we need is a universal translator to make sense of the different languages and topics covered.” The nexus which, to a newcomer at least, might sound like a potent ial name for…
Why we need Degrowth
In this post, Giorgos Kallis responds to a three-part critique by Andy Stirling of his ideas on the ‘Degrowth Hypothesis’. You can read Andy’s blog posts here: Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 Andy Stirling’s three-part blog intervention on the occasion of my lecture at Sussex is much appreciated. I am particularly thankful…
Outgrowing the twin simplifications of Growth and Degrowth: part 3
This is the third of a series of 3 blogs by STEPS co-director Andy Stirling, responding to the ideas of Giorgos Kallis on the ‘degrowth hypothesis’. Read Part 1 and Part 2, and see also Giorgos Kallis’ response. Part Three: Outgrowing the Growth/Degrowth Trap Giorgos Kalllis’s wonderful lecture, reviewed in these blog posts, extended much…
Contested Agronomy: Four big questions to debate
We have just finished a fantastic conference co-hosted by the STEPS Centre on ‘Contested Agronomy’ with 80 participants and a vibrant discussion. I was asked to give some comments at the end. Here are some of these thoughts. Throughout the conference it was clear that ‘agronomy’ had to be understood both as a technology and…
Exporting China and Brazil’s agricultural know-how to Africa
Can China and Brazil use their home grown agricultural knowledge, which has driven phenomenal agricultural productivity at home, to transform agriculture in Africa? That was one of many questions discussed at the Contested Agronomy conference. When Lidia Cabral interviewed a Brazilian agronomist from Embrapa, Brazil’s agricultural research corporation in Mozambique, he talked to her about…
Outgrowing the twin simplifications of Growth and Degrowth: part 2
This is the second of a series of 3 blogs by STEPS co-director Andy Stirling, responding to the ideas of Giorgos Kallis on the ‘degrowth hypothesis’. Read Part 1 and Part 3, and see also Giorgos Kallis’ response. Pluralities of Growings It is odd that the thrust of Giorgos Kallis’s excellent lecture should have concentrated…
To struggle against and to build with: what does student activism in Delhi mean for pathways to justice?
At the weekend, Umar Khalid, one of the six student activists accused in Delhi’s ‘anti-nationalism scandal’ unfolded by the Hindu nationalist government of Prime Minister Modi, returned to the campus of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). In a rousing speech on Sunday night, he made a persuasive case for “anti-nationals of the world [to] unite”. Echoing…
Outgrowing the twin simplifications of Growth and Degrowth: part 1
This is the first of a series of 3 blogs by STEPS co-director Andy Stirling, responding to the ideas of Giorgos Kallis on the ‘degrowth hypothesis’. Read part 2 and part 3, and see also Giorgos Kallis’ response. What’s at Stake Between Growth and Degrowth? I recently had the privilege of hearing a great talk…
The challenges of creating new visions for sustainable urbanisation in India
by Poonam Pandey, from the Centre for Studies in Science Policy, Jawaharlal Nehru University. A two-day conference organised at Jawaharlal Nehru University, in collaboration with the STEPS centre, raised questions about how to bring about critical new thinking on sustainable urbanisation in India. For the creation of new visions for a sustainable city the foremost questions to be…
First Ebola, now Zika: inconvenient truths about emerging diseases
In the second time in as many years, the World Health Organization (WHO) has declared a new Global Public Health Emergency: the Zika virus crisis has been born. A new disease with another exotic name, Zika virus is predicted to infect millions in the next few months as it sweeps across the globe. Just as…
Contested Agronomy 2016: Whose agronomy counts?
Contested Agronomy 2016 is a conference about the battlefields in agricultural research, past and present. Date and venue 23 – 25 February 2016 Institute of Development Studies University of Sussex, UK For more information, see the dedicated conference website.
Contested Agronomy: more heat than light?
by Jim Sumberg, John Thompson, Ken Giller and Jens Andersson Agriculture, and the agronomic research that supports it, will be critical in making sustainable, equitable and secure development a reality. Surprisingly however, there seems to be increasing contestation around the priorities and methods used by agronomists, and the technologies that they develop and promote. Why…
Solidarity with JNU
We in the STEPS Centre stand in full solidarity and support for our colleagues at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), India. We were distressed to hear of the circumstances leading to the arrests and raids carried out on the JNU campus in the last few days, and the subsequent events, including violent assaults on faculty and students. Universities…
Video: Dominic Glover on agricultural biotech and smallholder farmers
STEPS member Dominic Glover spoke yesterday at the FAO’s International Symposium on “The Role of Agricultural Biotechnologies in Sustainable Food Systems and Nutrition”. Dominic’s presentation focused on the need to ensure that agricultural biotechnology policies benefit smallholders. You can watch his presentation on the FAO website (skip to 2 hours and 7 minutes in).
Symposium: animal-to-human diseases
Leading scientists, One Health practitioners and international policymakers are speaking this week at the One Health for the Real World: zoonoses, ecosystems and wellbeing symposium, co-organised by the STEPS-led Dynamic Drivers of Disease in Africa Consortium.
Protected: STEPS Summer School 2016: Reading list
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Why India’s urban researchers need to move beyond megacities
Guest post by Aviram Sharma The launch of the South Asia Sustainability Hub and Knowledge Network (SAH&KN) provides a much needed platform to the academic, policy and civil society groups working in South Asia around sustainability challenges. During the launch and afterwards for the next two days in the International Conference on Pathways to Sustainable…
Rethinking ‘smart’ in India: The city as an ecology of practices
Last week, the government of India announced the names of the first 20 cities slated to become ‘smart’. These are the winners of the recently concluded ‘Smart City Challenge’. The government claims that smartening the cities will make them inclusive and sustainable, through the adoption of ‘smart solutions’. In one city, plans include a digital…
STEPS researchers among winners of China-Africa research fellowships
The China Africa Research Initiative has announced the Fall 2015 winners of its SAIS-CARI Fellowship Programme. Research projects will start between January 2016 and April 2016, and two researchers associated with STEPS are among the winners. They are Lucy Baker of SPRU and the Energy Research Centre, University of Cape Town; and Wei Shen of the Institute…
What would a sustainable city look like?
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 like sensor networks and data centres. Smart cities are one response to the huge challenges facing urban India. The conference on pathways to sustainable urbanisation,…
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 Innovation in China: Prospects, Politics and Practice project. Based on fieldwork by Sam Geall (SPRU), and support from Yiching Song (Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy,…
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. The new hub joins five other hubs around the world in the Pathways to Sustainability Global Consortium, which the STEPS Centre convened to link up…
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 markets often aren’t supported, and the supply of quality seeds and improved crop varieties is weak. Poor seed supply threatens agriculture’s ability to play its…
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 status of sustainability science. Sustainability science (defined as ‘research that supports and drives sustainable development’) is growing significantly as a proportion of world scientific output,…
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 and surpass their ‘intended nationally determined contributions’ (INDCs) with an objective of limiting global average temperature change to 2⁰C, and an aspiration of keeping within…
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 decision-making is very much debated and disputed by scientists. Often, the reaction has been to view it as something that needs to be minimised and…
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, safeguarding environmental integrity and social justice will be decisive for the health and livelihoods of citizens. This conference focused on the possibilities for sustainable urban…
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 the world, some of which go on to become pandemic. However, this may not be so surprising considering how quickly and how intensively the world…
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 Adrian Ely, and Cosmas Ochieng, director of ACTS, one of the institutions in the STEPS Africa Sustainability Hub. The Africa hub was an important partner…
Call for papers: EASST/4S session on makers, manufacturers and politics of digital fabrication
STEPS member Adrian Smith is one of the organisers of a session at this year’s EASST/4S conference. The session title is ‘Digital fabrications amongst hackers, makers and manufacturers: whose “industrial revolution”?’ The conference itself (title: ‘Science and technology by other means: exploring collectives, spaces and futures’) is on 31 August until 3 September in Barcelona,…
Was COP21 a failure or a success?
In the aftermath of the COP21 climate change conference, the debate over whether the Paris Agreement is a success or a failure is going full blast. Among other things, the deal sets a high aspirational goal to limit warming below 2C and strive to keep temperatures at 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. This is a far…
‘This hope is real’: how COP21 frames the future
Who would have bet any meaningful amount of money, a month ago, that most of the world would sign up to 1.5 degrees at COP21? Of course there were celebrations on Saturday when Laurent Fabius banged his little green gavel down to mark the agreement. Most of those in the room had toiled for long…
Video: Andy Stirling on research methods and policy
In this video, STEPS Co-director Andy Stirling talks about the need to fully understand what qualitative and quantitative methods are before evaluating their role in science policy making. Andy’s presentation was part of the National Centre for Research Methods seminar held in British Academy, London on 27 October 2015. More on Methods Browse our Methods…
How to prevent epidemics: an optimist’s blog
“The optimist is someone who believes the future is uncertain.” Leo Szilard When I first studied epidemiology several decades ago, a story made the rounds that was supposed to make us feel that we were smart. If an old man came into a medical clinic with diarrhoea, the doctor would treat it. If…
China’s largest wind farm and the politics of renewable energy
by Wei Shen and Sam Geall As negotiators enter the crucial final week of the UN-led Paris climate-change conference, much of the cautious optimism is pinned on big changes in China’s real economy. A strong climate change agreement is now in China’s self-interest, runs the prevailing argument – in large part, thanks to its aggressive…
Carbon forestry in Africa: who wins?
2015 is a crucial moment for sustainability and climate change, with the Conference of the Parties (COP) in Paris following hard on the heels of the UN’s new Sustainable Development Goals. What to do about carbon, forests, and forest management are crucial questions in reaching global agreements. But as recent research in Africa’s forest landscapes…
‘All eyes on Paris’: climate talks in a heightened security context
For the past few weeks, all eyes have been on Paris because of two major events. The first is the seven coordinated terrorist attacks that hit the French capital on 13 November, killing 130 ordinary citizens, left many in shock, and led to an outpouring of messages of solidarity from around the world. Second, Paris…
Escaping the frames of war
The world is now witnessing yet one further bout in a perennial tragedy. As so often before, organised violence is being used as an instrument of politics. This is no less obscene for being so familiar. And the pathology is all the more distressing, for being so pervasive. A diversity of political perspectives are implicated….
Africa’s land rush
There is a rush on for African farmland – a phenomenon unmatched since colonial times. Africa’s land rush, and the implications for rural livelihoods and agrarian change, is the subject of a new book that I have edited together with Ruth Hall (from PLAAS at UWC, South Africa) and Dzodzi Tsikata (ISSER, University of Ghana at Legon)….
COP21: How can climate-friendly innovation flourish in developing countries?
For low carbon development to work well, innovation is crucial. Both technological hardware like solar panels and grids, and social and institutional structures, need to change as the world looks towards a lower-carbon future. At a side event at the COP21 climate conference on Tuesday, Dr Rob Byrne (STEPS Centre/Sussex Energy Group) talked about how…
How the Water-Energy-Food ‘Nexus’ in Asia affects real lives
By Carl Middleton, Center for Social Development Studies, Faculty of Political Science, Chulalongkorn University In Asia and globally, the water-energy-food nexus has received growing attention from policy makers, researchers, and practitioners. A key premise of ‘the nexus’ is that water use is interdependent with energy and food production. Thus, from a nexus viewpoint, the relationship between…
COP21: how can Southern Africa cope with El Niño?
Today COP 21 opens in Paris. Over two weeks a new climate deal will hopefully be agreed. It is a critical juncture for humanity. As high level officials discuss options in these negotiations, many people around the world are already living with climate change and uncertainty. In Southern Africa, the effects of what is expected…
How to ensure governments stick to their Paris climate commitments
More than 146 countries covering 87% of global greenhouse gas emissions have now submitted their national pledges to tackle climate change in advance of the major climate summit in Paris. These are known as Intended Nationally-Determined Contributions. Note the language: these aren’t commitments and are only “intended”. Since collectively these INDCs would still leave us…
Why climate negotiations should tackle ‘technology injustice’
Climate change is already causing harm to vulnerable people and will continue to do so. If we accept that mitigation and adaptation alone cannot avoid all the adverse impacts of climate change, this means that there will be some unavoidable consequences. This has led to the concept of ‘loss and damage’ appearing in global climate…
Opening up democratic politics for sustainable development: reflections from STEPS America Latina
The event that launched STEPS América Latina earlier this month, ‘Opening up the development agenda’, was a great workshop. It’s rare for a meeting of this kind to be so diverse yet so coherent. And this is especially so, on a topic as challenging as the transforming of development. Despite many differences in terms of…
Spectacular cynicism: Seeing Indonesia’s fire and haze from the margins
Guest post by Zachary Anderson, University of Toronto Recently Indonesia was hit by massive forest fires, which were largely ignored by the Western media, despite their severe scale and impact. I feel moved to respond to George Monbiot’s recent opinion piece in the Guardian about the disaster, as well as comments on social media asking…
Why are some people so keen to link climate change and terrorism?
Friday’s murderous attacks in Paris came just over two weeks before the start of the COP21 conference on climate change. A crisis meeting was held on Saturday morning to determine whether the event should go ahead, with a swift resolution to continue, under heightened security. Christiana Figueres, the UNFCCC’s Executive Secretary, tweeted “Of course #COP21…
What are we doing when we do open science and inclusive innovation?
Last week I participated in the ‘launch’ event of STEPS América Latina, as part of ongoing work with researchers in the region. There, as elsewhere, we are exploring the politics of technology and science in society that support pathways to sustainable development. The event was by turns a fantastically rich, stimulating, humbling, troubling, and inspiring…
Sharing the Open Source Seed Initiative at STEPS América Latina
by Claire Luby, Open Source Seed Initiative (OSSI) Claire Luby presented her work at the STEPS América Latina launch event in November 2015, as part of a panel on ‘horizontal innovations towards sustainability’. In this blogpost, Claire reflects on the impacts of property regimes on plant diversity, and what OSSI is doing to promote a…
Call for proposals: SPRU 50th Anniversary Conference
As part of the Science Policy Research Unit’s 50th anniversary in 2016, it will be hosting a major conference from 7-9 September 2016 at the University of Sussex. The conference will also be complemented by a full programme of activities to celebrate 50 years of SPRU. Over three days, based on the overarching theme of ‘Transforming…
Call for papers: 2016 Initiatives in Critical Agrarian Studies (ICAS) colloquium
A call for papers has been issued for the international colloquium on Global governance/politics, climate justice & agrarian/social justice: linkages and challenges on 4-5 February 2016 in The Hague, Netherlands. Among the speakers will be STEPS Centre director Ian Scoones. The colloquium is organised by the Initiatives in Critical Agrarian Studies (ICAS), a community of…
Opening up science and development in Latin America
STEPS América Latina is the latest regional hub of the Pathways to Sustainability global consortium to be launched. The launch event, which took place on 5-6 November in Buenos Aires, brought together diverse perspectives on how pathways to sustainability can be identified, analysed and nurtured. The first day brought together two highly connected topics: ‘inclusive…
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 first time. The plan, say commentators, will be notably green, with an emphasis on an economic transition to slower, innovation-led growth, and more stringent…
‘Reigning back’ the Anthropocene is hard – but Earth’s worth it
I am very grateful to Laura Pereira, Victor Galaz and Johan Rockström for taking precious time to respond to the points I raise in my earlier blog. It is a huge privilege to benefit from such thoughtful and substantive reflections. This is all the more the case, since we agree that the issues at stake…
Making new worlds together
How could we end up in this world nobody ever wanted? This question, posed by Justyna Swat from POC21 during her talk at Monday’s event on makerspaces and sustainability, has no short answer. It also implies a further question: if you could shape the world you wanted, what would it look like? Shared workshops –…
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 Pereira’s comments on Prof Stirling’s post. I tend to place myself in between the two of you, Andy and Laura. The Anthropocene is nothing more…
Reflections on “Time to Rei(g)n Back the Anthropocene”
By Victor Galaz, Stockholm Resilience Centre. This post was first published on the Resilience Science blog and is reposted here with kind permission of the author. This is a short reflection to Andy Stirling’s recent post “Time to Rei(g)n Back the Anthropocene?” about the Anthropocene, “planetary boundaries” and politics. First of all, I would like to…
Seeing the Anthropocene as a responsibility: to act with care for each other and for our planet
by Laura Pereira, University of Cape Town (UCT), South Africa This post is my contribution to the debate on the Anthropocene initiated by Andy Stirling in his blog. His comments were sparked from a panel discussion at the Transformations conference where we were honoured to find ourselves on a panel together with Marcela D’Souza and…
The political economy of small-scale mining in Zimbabwe
There was much discussion about small-scale and artisanal mining at the STEPS Centre’s Resource Politics conference last month. This is where resources and politics come together; perhaps especially so in Zimbabwe. Ever since the enactment of Zimbabwe’s Mines and Minerals Act, which gives the state rights over mineral resources wherever they are found, mining has been controversial. In the colonial period,…
Making and Sustainability
At an event at the Machines Room in London on 26 October, we discussed the roles that maker communities and the places where they interact can play in sustainable development. Update (13 June 2017): Adrian Smith and Ann Light have written an article arising from their learning from this event (see below). The event was…
Borders and resources: “Across this line, you do not…”
Borders and maps are such a defining feature of modern civilisation that we can’t live without them. At the same time, many of us are subject to the mischievous urge to test, push and redefine them. It’s no coincidence that religious language plays on this tension: sins used to be commonly referred to as ‘transgressions’…
