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…
Innovation, Sustainability, Development: A New Manifesto website
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…
The Pathways Approach of the STEPS Centre
Rapid environmental and social changes – such as climate change, population explosion, urbanisation and globalised economics – are posing urgent practical, moral and political challenges across the globe. Consequently the…
Innovation, Sustainability, Development and Social Inclusion: Lessons from Latin America
This paper is one of a series of working papers relating regional experiences to ideas proposed by the New Manifesto, following on round table discussions held in Venezuela, Argentina, and…
Theoretical foundations of learning processes for sustainable development
Social-ecological systems are co-evolving systems. Of particular relevance are here: (1) co-evolution of the environment and governance, (2) co-evolution of technology and governance, and (3) co-evolution of human behaviour and…
Sustainability
As a consummately effective ‘boundary term’, able to link disparate groups on the basis of a broad common agenda, ‘sustainability’ has moved a long way from its technical association with…
The Politics of Social-ecological Resilience and Sustainable Socio-technical Transitions
Technology-focused literature on socio-technical transitions shares some of the complex systems sensibilities of social-ecological systems research. We contend that the sharing of lessons between these areas of study must attend…
The STEPS Pathways Approach (maize briefing 2)
The term ‘pathways’, in the STEPS project, is used to refer to the particular directions in which interacting social, technological and environmental systems co-evolve over time. A ‘pathways’ approach recognises…
Pathways to Sustainability: the STEPS Centre approach
How do we deal with the spread of HIV/ AIDS or avian ‘flu? How can farmers in dryland Africa cope with the challenges of climate change? How do we address…
Peri-urban sustainability
Over the last five years, the ESRC STEPS Centre has explored the management of resources in peri-urban areas, and how sustainability can be defined and sought in this context. We…