Globally, billions lack access to safe water and sanitation. Despite widespread recognition that the situation is unacceptable, the tragedy of this failure persists. Increasingly, the development world is realising that…
Liquid Dynamics
Health in a Dynamic World
The world has faced a number of health major health challenges over the past few decades – HIV, pollution, chronic illness, SARS. We need national and global health systems that take into account complex interactions between ecology, technology and social organisation.
Agri-Food System Dynamics: pathways to sustainability in an era of uncertainty
The ‘modernist’ project that has come to dominate food and agricultural policy has failed to provide sustainable outcomes for many poor people in developing countries. Countering orthodox notions, this paper makes a case for a deeper understanding of diverse ‘rural worlds’ in an era of short-terms shocks and long-terms stresses like climate change.
Empowering Designs: towards more progressive social appraisal of sustainability
The challenges of designing new frameworks for social appraisal aimed at sustainability and social justice are reviewed by this paper.
Dynamic systems and development challenges
Today’s world is experiencing accelerated rates of change in social, technological and environmental processes, therefore taking the dynamics of systems seriously in policy and practice is essential. Dynamic systems are…
Managing complex adaptive systems – A co-evolutionary perspective on natural resource management
The overexploitation of natural resources and the increasing number of social conflicts following from their unsustainable use point to a wide gap between the objectives of sustainability and current resource…
Negotiating Environmental Change: New Perspectives from Social Science
Edited by Frans Berkhout, Melissa Leach and Ian Scoones This book by leading researchers presents a critical review of debates in environmental social science over the past decade. Three broad…