Environments, technologies and societies are changing at a growing pace and scale. Examples include climate change, diseases like BSE, HIV/AIDS and avian 'flu, novel chemical and biotechnologies, and rapid population and information flows and growth of market relationships. What new concepts, methods and policy arrangements are needed to respond to such 21st century challenges? How in the contemporary world can environmental sustainability and advances in science and technology be linked with assuring better livelihoods, health and social justice for poorer people in developing countries?
STEPS is a new Centre at Sussex that provides a global hub for interdisciplinary research and policy engagement to meet these challenges. Funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), its first phase will formally start on 1st October 2006 and run for five years.
The Centre brings together researchers in the KNOTS team at IDS with those at SPRU (Science and Technology Policy Research), enabling a new and valuable integration of work in environment and development studies, and science, technology and innovation studies. Hosted administratively at IDS, the centre is directed by Melissa Leach with co-direction from Ian Scoones (IDS) and Andy Stirling (SPRU)
STEPS will explore the pathways through which technologies, ecologies and social systems interact in development and how these can contribute to processes and outcomes that are more resilient, sustainable, socially just and favourable for the poor. The Centre will develop a 'pathways approach' which recognises rapid change in Social systems; Technologies and their spread, and Environmental conditions. These interact in complex, uncertain and non-linear ways creating multiple Pathways - some threatening poor people's livelihoods and health, but others creating opportunities for Sustainability.
A pathways approach challenges conventional theories which often treat environmental change, socio-economic development and technology separately, and do not fully address local specificities or contested values. Consequently, they often lead to policy prescriptions that prove environmentally ineffective, politically infeasible or have negative impacts on the poor. In contrast, a pathways approach recognises that there are many possible pathways and outcomes which different people prioritise in different ways. Yet what actually happens in practice will be influenced by the institutional and governance arrangements existing. Thus it is the interaction of dynamic pathways with institutional, policy and governance arrangements that affect whether sustainable and pro-poor outcomes are achieved or not.
The STEPS Centre will develop, test and apply this approach through interdisciplinary, interactive research. It will build new, integrative theory, drawing together work on dynamic ecology, complex systems, grounded ethnography, science and technology studies, critical political ecology, ecological economics, and the social and political dimensions of institutions and governance. It will link theory with the design of methods and tools to understand actual and potential pathways, and to engage policy actors and poor people themselves in shaping sustainable futures. To do this, the Centre's research programme will link projects in three domains: A) food and agriculture; B) health and disease, and C) water and sanitation, with work around three themes:
Dynamics: the interlinked processes of social, technological and environmental change in different settings, and how these create possibilities for alternative pathways to sustainability.
Governance: the institutional, political and policy processes across global and local scales that enable or constrain different pathways to sustainability in favour of poorer and marginalised people.
Designs: decision-making procedures, appraisal methods and analytical tools which enhance citizen engagement and the capacity for negotiating pathways to sustainability under uncertainty.
Through cross-cutting, interdisciplinary analysis; through a highly interactive style of research involving close collaboration with scientists, policy-makers and civil and private sector partners in global and local settings, and STEPS will connect the development of new theory with practical approaches that create opportunities for the poor. As a Centre, STEPS aims to become a focus for debate, a source of critical, informed policy advice, and a locus for convening researchers and users and training the next generation of social scientists, equipped with analytical tools and practical concepts relevant to the 21st century challenges of rapid social, technological and environmental change.