The Beyond Rio Resource Centre offers information and insight to those interested in new thinking and practical solutions for sustainable futures. A wide variety of resources are featured, from academic papers…
Beyond Rio Resource Centre
Green grabs and biochar: Revaluing African soils and farming in the new carbon economy
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 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…
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…
Shaping agricultural innovation systems responsive to food insecurity and climate change
Climate change and variability present new challenges for agriculture, particularly for smallholder farmers who continue to be the mainstay of food production in developing countries. Recent global food crises have…
Energy Pathways in Low-Carbon Development
Energy and development go hand-in-hand: lighting, cooking, mobility, heating, cooling and communications are all essential to development processes. Moreover, the manner in which energy services are realised has both positive…
Energy Pathways in Low Carbon Development: from Technology Transfer to Socio-technical Transformation
The relationships between energy and development are complex, compounded by increasingly differentiated situations amongst developing countries and within them. Moreover, the manner in which energy services are realised has consequences…
Reframing Resilience
In a world where threats – linked to climate change, epidemic disease, or fluctuating financial markets – loom ever larger, resilience thinking highlights the complex dynamics of social-economic- environmental systems,…
Social-ecological resilience and socio-technical transitions: critical issues for sustainability governance
Technology contributes both positively and negatively to the resilience of ‘social-ecological systems’, but is not considered in depth in that literature. A technology-focused literature on sociotechnical transitions shares some of…