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Linking environmental sustainability with poverty reduction and social justice, and making science and technology work for the poor, have become central practical, political and moral challenges of our times. These must be met in a world of rapid, interconnected change in environments, societies and economies, and globalised, fragmented governance arrangements. Yet despite growing international attention and investment, policy attempts often fail. Why is this, and what can be done about it? How might we understand and address emergent threats from epidemic disease, or the challenges of water scarcity in dryland India? In the context of climate change, how might seed systems help African farmers meet their needs, and how might appropriate energy strategies be developed? This book lays out a new 'pathways approach' to address sustainability challenges such as these in today's dynamic world. Through an appreciation of dynamics, complexity, uncertainty, differing narratives and the values-based aims of sustainability, the pathways approach allows us to see how some approaches are dominant, even though they do not produce the desired results, and how to create successful alternative 'pathways' of responding to the challenges we face. As well as offering new ways of thinking about sustainability, the book also suggests a series of practical ways forward - in tools and methods, forms of political engagement, and styles of knowledge-making and communication. Throughout the book, the practicalities of the pathways approach are illustrated using four case studies: water in dryland India, agricultural seeds in Africa, responses to epidemic disease and energy systems/climate change. Published in association with the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)

This short report describes the PASTRES (Pastoralism, Uncertainty and Resilience: Global Lessons from the Margins) project, its objectives and early implementation. PASTRES investigates the principles inspiring the strategies and the practices applied by pastoralists to tackle and live with and through uncertainties. By engaging in a dialogue with other disciplines, we believe that such principles can be applied to other domains relevant for societal uncertainties, including migration governance, the management of critical infrastructure, financial regulation, epidemic control and others. The project started in late 2017 and this report provides some updates on its development.

The urgency of charting pathways to sustainability that keep human societies within a \"safe operating space\" has now been clarified. Crises in climate, food, biodiversity, and energy are already playing out across local and global scales and are set to increase as we approach critical thresholds. Drawing together recent work from the Stockholm Resilience Centre, the Tellus Institute, and the STEPS Centre, this commentary article argues that ambitious Sustainable Development Goals are now required along with major transformation, not only in policies and technologies, but in modes of innovation themselves, to meet them. As examples of dryland agriculture in East Africa and rural energy in Latin America illustrate, such \"transformative innovation\" needs to give far greater recognition and power to grassroots innovation actors and processes, involving them within an inclusive, multi-scale innovation politics. The three dimensions of direction, diversity, and distribution along with new forms of \"sustainability brokering\" can help guide the kinds of analysis and decision making now needed to safeguard our planet for current and future generations.

Agricultural ecologist who promoted sustainable practices by engaging farmers worldwide. Agricultural ecologist who promoted sustainable practices by engaging farmers worldwide. Sir Gordon Conway

On North Borneo's cocoa farms, insects were causing widespread defoliation. Gordon used this experience in his studies at the University of California, Davis: his 1969 PhD thesis in systems ecology focused on understanding insect reproduction and the implications for pest management. Together with Robert Chambers at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) of the University of Sussex in Falmer, near Brighton, UK, he pioneered research approaches in which farmers were active participants and that were rooted in his concept of agroecosystem analysis.

Governance of infectious disease risks requires understanding of often indeterminate interactions between diverse, complex, open, and dynamic human and natural systems. In the face of these challenges, worldwide policy making affords disproportionate status to “ science-based” risk-assessment methods. These reduce multiple, complex dimensions to simple quantitative parameters of “outcomes” and “probabilities,” and then re-aggregate across diverse metrics, contexts, and perspectives to yield a single ostensibly definitive picture of risk. In contrast, more precautionary or participatory approaches are routinely portrayed as less rigorous, complete, or robust. Yet, although conventional reductive–aggregative techniques provide powerful responses to a narrow state of risk, they are not applicable to less tractable conditions of uncertainty, ambiguity, and ignorance. Strong sensitivities to divergent framings can render results highly variable. Reductive aggregation can marginalize important perspectives and compound exposure to surprise. The value of more broad-based precautionary and participatory approaches may be appreciated. These offer ways to be more rigorous and complete in the mapping of different framings. They may also be more robust than reductive–aggregative appraisal methods, in “opening up” greater accountability for intrinsically normative judgements in decision making on threats like pandemic avian influenza.

Farmer-led irrigation is far more extensive in Zimbabwe than realised by planners and policymakers. This paper explores the pattern of farmer-led irrigation in neighbouring post-land reform smallholder resettlement sites in Zimbabwe’s Masvingo district. Across 49 farmer-led cases, 41.3 hectares of irrigated land was identified, representing two per cent of the total land area. A combination of surveys and in-depth interviews explored uses of different water extraction and distribution technologies, alongside patterns of production, marketing, processing and labour use. In-depth case studies examined the socio-technical practices involved. Based on these data, a simple typology is proposed, differentiating homestead irrigators from aspiring and commercial irrigators. The typology is linked to patterns of investment, accumulation and social differentiation across the sites. The results are contrasted with a formal irrigation scheme and a group garden in the same area. Farmer-led irrigation is more extensive but also more differentiated, suggesting a new dynamic of agrarian change. As Zimbabwe seeks to boost agricultural production following land reform, the paper argues that farmerled irrigation offers a complementary way forward to the current emphasis on formal schemes, although challenges of water access, environmental management and equity are highlighted.

The emergence of zoonotic infections that can develop into pathogens of pandemic potential is a major concern for public health. The risks of emergence and transmission relate to multiple factors that range from land use to human–non-human animal contacts. Livestock agriculture plays a potentially significant role in those risks, shaping landscapes and providing hosts that can act as the source or amplifiers of emergent pathogens. The relative risks will be contingent upon the nature of those systems, with comparisons often made between intensive, indoor, biosecure systems and more extensive, outdoor, insecure systems. Microbiological, ecological and veterinary sciences provide useful entry points in specifying and modelling some of the relative risks. Yet, they often do so with little regard for social science inputs and by making assumptions about social and economic conditions. In this article, we respond to recent analyses of relative risks by raising the importance of social and economic drivers of risk. We chart social science insights and research that materially alter the zoonotic risks associated with livestock production. Our purpose is to emphasize the requirement for full appreciation of the social, economic and political components of zoonotic and pandemic risk.