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…
Outgrowing the twin simplifications of Growth and Degrowth: part 3
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,…
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…
A year of STEPS: 2015 highlights
As it’s nearing the end of 2015, here are some highlights you may have missed from the STEPS Centre’s last 12 months. We’ll see you next year! Our coverage of the COP21 climate conference STEPS members wrote blogs, organised events and reflected on the future of climate change action around the Paris conference in December….
‘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…
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…
Time to rei(g)n back the Anthropocene?
I was very lucky to be able to participate in last week’s Stockholm Resilience Centre conference on ‘Transformations 2015: People and Planet in the Anthropocene‘. Involving a dynamic and highly policy-influential global interdisciplinary community, this was a large, friendly and very interactive meeting. It more-than-fully lived up to the very high standards set by earlier…
Giving flesh to the science and innovation we need to see
by Ben Ramalingam, Research Fellow, Institute of Development Studies Science, technology and innovation have been integral in successful development and poverty-reduction efforts, whether in Europe, Latin America, Asia or Africa. But time and time again, the real lessons of how this contribution actually worked — the genuine pathways of development change — have been lost…
SDGs: time to rethink energy infrastructure?
As the new Sustainable Development Goals are launched this week, attention will be focused on some of the great global challenges that face our world. They also give us a chance to think about how to do things differently. One of the big questions is how processes of industralization and innovation can really create the…
Will the Sustainable Development Goals make a difference?
This week heads of state assemble in New York to launch the Sustainable Development Goals. The agreed text lays out 17 goals and 169 targets. It is an ambitious agenda for all of humanity. But will they make any difference? We have had the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which were launched with similar fanfare in…