Biochar currently attracts technological and market optimism, promising multiple wins – for climate change, food security, bioenergy and health – not least for African farmers. This paper examines the political-economic and discursive processes constructing…
Green grabs and biochar: Revaluing African soils and farming in the new carbon economy
Green Grabbing: a new appropriation of nature?
Across the world, ‘green grabbing’ – the appropriation of land and resources for environmental ends – is an emerging process of deep and growing significance. The vigorous debate on ‘land grabbing’ already highlights instances…
Special issue: Green grabbing
A special issue of the Journal of Peasant Studies, edited by James Fairhead, Melissa Leach and Ian Scoones. This issue draws new theorisation together with 17 cases from African, Asian…
Innovation, Sustainability, Development: A New Manifesto website
The STEPS Centre hosts a website dedicated to our project Innovation, Sustainability, Development: A New Manifesto. On the website you can find a multimedia version of the New Manifesto, a…
Health Biotechnology Innovation for Social Sustainability – A Perspective from China
China is not only becoming a significant player in the production of high-tech products, but also an increasingly important contributor of ideas and influence in the global knowledge economy. This…
Contested Agronomy: Agricultural Research in a Changing World
Edited by James Sumberg and John Thompson Routledge, 2012 Buy this book This book in our Pathways to Sustainability series looks at the how debates in crop and land science…
Seeds and Sustainability: Maize pathways in Kenya
This short film from the STEPS Centre brings together an engaging cast of characters including a farmer, a scientist, a regulator and a seed policy analyst. Each has a different…
Tipping towards sustainability: emerging pathways of transformation
This article explores the links between agency, institutions, and innovation in navigating shifts and large-scale transformations toward global sustainability. Our central question is whether social and technical innovations can reverse…
Water and Justice: Peri-urban pathways in Delhi
This short film from the STEPS Centre tells the story of three people and their relationship with water in the towns and villages on the edge of Delhi, India. The…
Opening Up the Politics of Knowledge and Power in Bioscience
Recent years have seen growing worldwide discussions, experiments, and expectations around various kinds of public engagement in the biosciences. This is especially so, in the governance of biotechnology—in research policy,…