Institutional framework for sustainable development
Research at Sussex has made a number of significant contributions to debates about the appropriate global governance architecture for sustainable development. These include critiquing proposals for a World Environment Organisation and contributions to a paper in Science magazine outlining seven building blocks for institutional reform: upgrading the UN environment program, integration, regulation, mainstreaming in economic governance, qualified majority voting, accountability and equity.
The STEPS Centre’s Innovation, Sustainability, Development: A New Manifesto project built on 40 years of science and technology for development research at IDS and SPRU by commissioning new papers, creating interactive online wiki resources and holding more than 20 round table consultations across the globe. The New Manifesto recommends five areas for action, including new approaches to institutional architecture to allow diverse interests and new voices, including those of the poor and marginalised, to be included in agenda-setting. These already guided a submission to the zero draft of the Rio+20 Outcome document.
Much work at Sussex builds on the pioneering book, Negotiating Environmental Change (Berkhout, Leach, Scoones, 2003), which remains a key text on the complex relationship between institutional frameworks and environmental and social change.
Experts
- Adrian Ely, STEPS Centre Research Fellow, SPRU Lecturer
- Ian Scoones, STEPS Centre co-director, IDS Professorial Fellow
- Andrew Stirling, STEPS Centre co-director, SPRU Professor of Science & Technology Policy
Publications
- Berkhout, F., Leach, M. and Scoones, I. (2003) Negotiating Environmental Change, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing
- Biermann, F. et al. (2012) Navigating the Anthropocene: Improving Earth System Governance, Science, vol. 335, no. 6074, pp. 1306-1307
- Leach, M., Bloom, G., Ely, A., Nightingale, P., Scoones, I., Shah, E. and Smith, A. (2007) Understanding Governance: pathways to sustainability, STEPS Working Paper 2, Brighton: STEPS Centre
- Leach, M., Scoones, I., and Stirling, A. (2010) Dynamic Sustainabilities: Technology, Environment, Social Justice, London: Earthscan
- Lockwood, M. and Pendleton, A. (2009) Escaping climate policy Groundhog Day Public Policy Review (February 2009) 159-167
- Newell, P. (2002) A World Environmental Organisation: The Wrong Solution to the Wrong Problem, The World Economy, The World Economy, Volume 25, Issue 5, pp. 659–671
- STEPS Centre (2010) Innovation, Sustainability, Development: A New Manifesto, Brighton (STEPS Centre)
