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With an ESRC Centres grant, the STEPS Centre (Social, Technological and Environmental Pathways to Sustainability) was established as a collaboration between the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) and the Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU) at the University of Sussex. Melissa Leach, Ian Scoones and Andy Stirling were the co-directors.

In the first months, the Centre was launched at the UK parliament, along with a dedicated website. This signalled our commitment to communication and engagement from the very beginning, with a strong impact, communications and engagement team.

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2007: Publications on the 'Pathways Approach'

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2007: Publications on the 'Pathways Approach'

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During our first year, the Sussex-based team wrote the first set of STEPS Working Papers (which now number over 100). These laid out our thinking, around the cross-cutting themes (dynamics, governance, methods) and domain areas where our empirical work was focused (agriculture and food, water and sanitation and health and disease).

This was our first attempt to think through what we meant by the ‘pathways approach’ and establish the conceptual grounding for our research projects. It was also a vital process for building the STEPS team, initially at Sussex and then more broadly.

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Our empirical work was launched, with a project with partners in Kenya on maize and crop technologies and with partners in India on peri-urban sustainability, focusing on water and pollution issues.

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Our work on epidemics started with a focus on avian influenza, extending to swine flu during 2009. A wider set of cases were also convened that developed a comparative perspectives, and a wider critique of the consequence of a disease-focused ‘outbreak narrative’.

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Our series of annual symposia kicked off with a debate about ‘resilience’, a term that had risen up the agenda and was in need of critical debate.

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Through the concept of 'Liquid Dynamics', we investigated the complex ways that different aspects of water and sanitation change and interact with each other. An international symposium on Liquid Dynamics explored emerging questions about these dynamic interactions - in climate change, cities & the peri-urban, sanitation & disease, and technologies & the right to access.

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2009-10: Innovation, Sustainability, Development: A New Manifesto

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2009-10: Innovation, Sustainability, Development: A New Manifesto

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In the build-up to the 40th anniversary of the famous Sussex Manifesto on science and technology policy, we initiated a series of discussions about the links between science, technology, innovation and development with partners across the world. Roundtables were held, a wiki-timeline built and a collaboratively-developed New Manifesto was launched in 2010, subsequently winning the EASST Ziman award for "the most innovative cooperation in a venture to promote the public understanding of the social dimensions of science".

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The work on the ‘New Manifesto’ also tied into a discussion about ‘The Knowledge Society’ through a series of debates, particularly in India.

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2010: Conference on the Pathways Approach

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2010: Conference on the Pathways Approach

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As our work on the empirical projects developed and our thinking on the ‘pathways approach’ matured, we held a major conference to discuss the pathways approach, and began working on a book laying out the STEPS Centre’s stall.

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Dynamic Sustainabilities was one of the first books in the new Pathways to Sustainability book series, launched in 2010, and elaborated what we understood as the pathways approach at that time, drawing on our now extensive empirical work. Today, the book series (now with Routledge) numbers 22 books, covering a huge range of STEPS themes and written by STEPS researchers and collaborators.

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2011: Phase 2 - work on energy & climate change

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2011: Phase 2 - work on energy & climate change

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Phase 2 started with the launch of a new domain, focusing on Energy and Climate. Over the subsequent years, the focus was on off-grid energy and sustainability in developing country settings, looking at the politics of a low carbon transition. In 2016, the book Sustainable Energy for All was published, drawing on this body of work.

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 Land Grabbed or Not? By afromusing on Flickr (cc by 2.0) https://flic.kr/p/6JRZYZ 

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The STEPS Centre joined forces with others to host an international conference on ‘Land Grabbing’, responding to the massive explosion of land expropriation for investment across the world since the financial, food and fuel crises of 2008. This signalled a growing interest in ‘resource politics’ – around land, water, nature – among Centre researchers.

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An affiliated project, the Dynamic Drivers of Disease in Africa Consortium – was launched, with STEPS researchers leading. This picked up on our now long-standing work on epidemics, and focused in on the social, ecological and political dimensions of zoonotic diseases.

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As part of Phase 2 work, a new project called ‘Uncertainty from above and below’ was initiated with work in India. This connected several core themes of STEPS work – the importance of understanding the uncertain contexts within which development occurs and the need to understand how this is framed, by those looking at problems ‘from above’ (such as through climate models) and those who are experiencing uncertainties day-to-day ‘from below’. The work included the use of the Photovoice method. This project led to subsequent co-funded work, a STEPS conference in 2016 in Delhi, a further project on uncertainty supported by the Research Council of Norway, and later to a major project, TAPESTRY.

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Our work on ‘resource politics’ continued with a particular focus on the political ecologies of carbon forestry in Africa.

Responding to debates about ‘green grabbing’ through carbon projects, the aim was to explore how such efforts, by then growing across Africa, panned out on the ground. This led to a major book in the STEPS Series in 2015.

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Phase 2 work also kicked off a strong strand of work on innovation, focusing on how this occurs at the grassroots. This chimed with themes raised in the New Manifesto, as well as being part of a critique of a simplistic understanding of technology transitions. Cases from Argentina, India and UK were combined in a powerful statement on the importance of grassroots innovation in the book Grassroots Innovation Movements, published in 2016.

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In order to expand our reach and share ideas with a wider community, we launched the two-week STEPS Summer School in 2012. Around 40 students from all over the world have attended each year for a vibrant set of exchanges, including lectures, discussion sessions, walkshops and more. The alumni group associated with the Summer School now numbers over 350 and is a very active community.

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Our Annual Lecture series, timed to be held in the first week of the Summer School, started also in 2012, and since then we have had a fantastic array of people come and speak and engage with the Centre. One of many highlights was the lecture by Kate Raworth on Doughnut Economics in 2018.

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Twenty years after the Rio Conference on environment and development, and 40 years after the Stockholm conference another major global event was held in Rio. The STEPS Centre engaged in debates leading up to the event, and participated at it, making the case that pathways to sustainability only emerge out of a negotiated, political process.

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Our annual symposium returned to the theme of science-policy interactions, with a great line-up of speakers and rich debates about ‘credibility across cultures’. The keynote speech was by the Chief Scientist to the European Commission, Dr Anne Glover.

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Work on the politics of the resource ‘nexus’, focused with the linked issues of dams, scarcity and securitisation in South and southeast Asia, and led to a book that challenged thinking about ‘nexus’ approaches that had become popular in this period. Again, as with all STEPS work, emphasising the politics of sustainability was central.

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Our work on food and farming contributed to a co-hosted pair of conferences – and subsequent book – on ‘Contested Agronomy’, which took a familiar STEPS analysis on the framing of problems and narratives of policy to the science and practice of agronomy. The events brought together social scientists, agronomists and others in a new critical community engaged in rethinking agricultural research and development globally.

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Our on-going work on epidemics and pandemics, and our critique of standard approaches to preparedness and response became the focus for a major event held in collaboration with colleagues at Sussex.

The pandemic influenza controversies symposium brought together a range of leading researchers and policymakers, leading to a set of key recommendations.

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Bringing together our work in India, now a major focus for STEPS Centre collaboration, our close colleagues at JNU hosted an international symposium on pathways to sustainability in 2014 and later on urban sustainability issues in 2016. This provided a platform for sharing STEPS linked work with Indian colleagues, and also the launch of the South Asia Sustainability Hub & Knowledge Network across JNU that had grown out of STEPS collaborations.

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As our work developed, it was important to reflect on how it was having an impact. Dismayed by the narrow approaches to impact evaluation used for most research, the STEPS team adapted the ‘participatory impact pathways approach’ and applied this to our own projects. A paper describing the methodology was shared, and increasingly our projects became better geared to thinking about impact pathways from the beginning.

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2015: The politics of green transformations

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2015: The politics of green transformations

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Part of the discussions on-going within the Centre at this time centred on understanding ‘transformations’ (as distinct from instrumental ‘transitions’). A number of important papers were published, alongside a book that brought together thinking from a range of Sussex based STEPS researchers on the Politics of Green Transformations, which developed a critique of narrow, technical approaches encapsulated for example in moves towards ‘green economies’ or ‘low carbon transitions’. This signalled a shift in focus of the STEPS work from one focused on describing pathways and how they emerge (or don’t) to thinking more concretely about transformations and their politics. (For more resources, including a video debate, see the web pages on the book launch.)

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Our annual symposium in 2015 returned to Sussex, where we hosted a global conference on ‘Resource Politics’. A key debate at the event was around ‘planetary boundaries’ and the need to move beyond a ‘cockpit’-led managerial approach to one more focused on negotiated politics from the ground. The conference was preceded by a more focused workshop on the Financialisation of Nature that STEPS supported. The 2015 event was also the launch of the Political Ecology Network (POLLEN), which has been a major collaborative platform for STEPS work since then.

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The politics of transformation was central to discussions around the Sustainable Development Goals, which were launched in September 2015. Our publications around this time, as well as wider engagements, emphasised a critical STEPS take on the SDGs. This was subsequently debated, for example at the annual lecture by Achim Steiner, the newly appointed head of UNDP in 2017 and in a Sussex Development Lecture in 2019.

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As we began to consolidate our learning through our empirical work, now increasingly with diverse partners around the world, we developed a methods portal as part of the website. This was a place for reflection on ‘pathways’ methodologies that broaden out and open up debate about possibilities.

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With the Ebola outbreak in West Africa from 2014, much of our work on epidemics in that region shifted focus. The lessons of STEPS Centre research (along with many others’) on the Ebola experience became highly influential in policy circles and was recognised in an ESRC impact prize in 2016.

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Following discussions across our core collaborators, many of whom we’d been working with since the establishment of the Centre a decade before, we launched the STEPS Global Consortium, with 8 partners on 5 continents. This confirmed our international, collaborative approach to research and engagement, and moved the Centre beyond a narrow UK-based ESRC Centre to something more exciting and ambitious

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Funding from the International Social Science Council fostered the relationships between Centre hubs, focusing on collaborative research on transformations to sustainability. This project has generated very important conceptual and methodological insights that have helped frame the STEPS Centre’s work over the most recent period, as well as shifting the way of working.

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Our ten years of generous Centre funding from the UK’s ESRC came to an end in 2016, but our work was not yet done! This was recognised by the ESRC who provided bridge funding for a year, allowing us to bring a new group of people on board, and a set of new projects, aimed at generating new foci for onward research and funding.

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2016: Online course - Pathways to Sustainability

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2016: Online course - Pathways to Sustainability

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During the bridge year, and building on our now long-running and highly successful Summer School, our online course was launched. This helped in the wider sharing of STEPS thinking and approaches, and the course has been widely used.

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Picking up on our now substantial work on the politics of transformation to sustainability, the Centre hosted, with others, a series of ‘transformations events’ around the UK, and in collaboration with the New Weather Institute, STEPS became a partner in the Rapid Transition Alliance, which aimed to learn lessons from previous and on-going transitions to more sustainable pathways.

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As part of a new ESRC policy for concluding Centres, STEPS successfully applied for ‘transition’ limited funding for a four year programme. The was to generate new proposals for on-going funding and the longer-term sustainability of the Centre as an institutional investment. However, following a few near misses with major follow-on proposals combined with a lack of institutional support for onward funding at Sussex, we later reluctantly decided that the Centre would close at the end of 2021.

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Our on-going funding however provided us resources to convene some amazing events/dialogues/research exchanges over the following years. These each drew from long-term work at the Centre, aiming to take it in new directions and to seed ongoing activities outside the umbrella of the Centre at Sussex. In 2018, our focus continued on the theme of ‘transformations’. Our Consortium colleagues in Kenya – now with the Africa Sustainability Hub firmly established – hosted a major event, which drew on and shared our on-going work, and explored the future of sustainability in Africa.

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In the same year, and responding to the wider challenge of ‘authoritarian populism’ internationally, STEPS, together with others hosted a series of events, including a major conference at ISS in The Hague on this theme, galvanising a network to think about transformatory alternatives to regressive, nationalist versions of populism.

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The theme of 2019 was ‘uncertainty’, which had long been a central concept in STEPS Centre thinking and a key part of our conceptualisation of the ‘pathways approach’. In order to foster new ideas and connections around a familiar theme, we invited people working on everything from banking to migration to crime to religion to come and discuss the implications of a new politics of uncertainty. The international symposium (and associated podcasts, videos and blogs) also led to an Open Access book on this theme, encapsulating a STEPS-led reflection on the challenges of navigating a complex, turbulent world.

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The theme of 2020 was ‘Natures’, again picking up on our long-term work on resource politics. Five years on from hosting the launch of the Political Ecology Network (POLLEN), we joined with POLLEN to co-orgainse their biennial conference. Entitled Contested Natures: Power, Politics, Prefiguration, the event was held online due to the COVID-19 pandemic. With over a 1000 participants and 767 papers, and involving people joining remotely from around the world, it was probably the largest event we had ever held, but witness to the convening power of the Centre and the networks that continue to be built nearly 15 years on. A series of events with cutting-edge thinkers and practitioners, and a set of reflective comics co-produced with the artist Tim Zocco, further explored the theme (see the Natures page for a full list).

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The Covid-19 pandemic has put into sharp relief much of the cumulative work the Centre has undertaken over many years, together with multiple collaborators. From our work on epidemics, to our conceptualisations of uncertainty, to our challenges to simplistic modelling approaches in science policy to our wider work on political ecology, resource politics and disease dynamics and the social dimensions of disease, all has contributed to debate around how to respond to the pandemic, which has been reshaping all our intellectual, political and personal lives.

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B5;Relief after Amphan was affected by COVID pandemic

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We decided that the final year of the Centre’s life should focus on ‘methods’, as since the beginning our conceptual advances around the pathways approach are centrally about how we understand the world, and how it is important to open up to different perspectives, framing and pathways.

Bringing a critical, decolonising approach to reversing learning and challenging powerful narratives, the Methods year has been generating a wide conversation, led in particular by our North/Latin America and Africa hubs. By the end of the year, we will see a renewal of our methods portal and sharing of key lessons learned.

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At the end of 2021, we close. There are some regrets, but also some fantastic memories, collaborations, friendships, networks and personal and collective achievements to celebrate. The Centre (remarkably thanks to the strong support from the ESRC, along with many other co-funders) has had a vibrant life over 15 years, generating a strong community and sense of purpose, which will certainly continue. As any exciting endeavour, there are always new seeds sown, notably amongst the Consortium hubs and through our alumni networks, and these will flourish in new forms into the future. The story doesn’t end here!