The STEPS (Social, Technological and Environmental Pathways to Sustainability) Centre

环境、粮食和经济危机现在是全球公众和政策制定者关注的焦点。世界面临着涉及社会、技术和生态过程的复杂相互作用的重大挑战。科学和技术正在迅速发展，但其带来的好处并不均衡，非洲、亚洲和拉丁美洲的边缘人群和地区往往会受到影响。在应对复杂局面的同时，要满足减轻贫困、社会正义和环境可持续性的道德和政治要求，这是一项艰巨的挑战。然而，从公民主导的可持续能源和水管理倡议，到解决健康与环境联系或在气候变化中为小农建立粮食安全的新方法，许多机会正在出现。我们比以往任何时候都更需要打破过去的分类的理解和行动模式，优先考虑努力摆脱贫困和边缘化的人们的观点、优先事项和创造力，并让政治和机构参与支持他们的努力和愿望。苏塞克斯的STEPS（通往可持续发展的社会、技术和环境途径）中心与世界各地的合作伙伴在研究、政策参与和能力建设方面合作，以应对这些挑战，并建立通往可持续发展的途径。在第一阶段成就的基础上，在今天新的关键背景下，我们现在提出一项方案，以丰富和深化中心与新的紧迫问题有关的标志性“途径”方法。将发展研究与科学技术研究结合起来，并与自然科学家和用户进行全面接触，我们的目标是在“在一个动态的世界中协商复杂性”和“使科学技术为人类和环境服务”方面取得理论和实践上的进展。为此，我们将对“动态”、“治理”和“设计”的主题如何相互作用有新的理解。我们将通过参与六个关键概念领域来推进路径建设的理论和过程：“过渡和转型”；“多样性和复杂性”；“政治生态与经济”；“知识与想象”；“公民和参与”；“创新和分配”。我们将利用与苏塞克斯能源集团的联系，发展一个关于能源和气候的新领域，补充在水和卫生、粮食和农业以及健康和疾病方面的持续工作。我们将与合作伙伴、自然科学家和潜在的研究用户一起，开发和开展一系列新的、跨部门和跨专题的项目，整合成四个集群。风险和安全：复杂系统的机构将解决全球系统中的证券化和风险问题，以及城市环境中的正式和非正式问题。气候变化中的社会技术转型将解决粮食和能源的生态位途径和可持续性转型，以及应对气候变化的“下”和“上”的不确定性。全球转型的政治生态学将解决与非洲农村土地和生计有关的碳问题，以及全球商品链的动态，重点是肉类和大豆。疾病的社会生态动态将处理强化畜牧生产系统中的人畜共患疾病风险，以及综合病媒管理的新方法。我们还将开展两个主要的跨领域工作流程：开发一个新的跨学科方法和方法工具箱，用于分析可持续发展问题；扩展和整合我们在影响、沟通和参与方面的工作；跟进我们备受瞩目的《新宣言》项目，并将新的想法、证据和方法引入到2010 + 20、千年发展目标等国际进程中。这些工作流程将进一步整合中心的工作，并能够开展广泛的外联活动，以便在各种情况下建立通往可持续性和社会正义的途径。

Environmental, food and economic crises now pre-occupy global publics and policymakers. The world faces critical challenges involving complex interactions of social, technical and ecological processes. Science and technology are advancing rapidly but its benefits are felt unevenly, and marginal people and places in Africa, Asia and Latin America often lose out. Navigating complexities, while meeting moral and political imperatives for poverty alleviation, social justice and environmental sustainability, present formidable challenges. Yet many opportunities are coming into view, from citizen-led initiatives in sustainable energy and water management, to novel approaches to address health-environment linkages or build food security for small farmers amidst climate change. More than ever, we need modes of understanding and action that break with past categories, give priority to the perspectives, priorities and creativity of people struggling to escape poverty and marginalisation, and engage politics and institutions to support their efforts and aspirations.The STEPS (Social, Technological and Environmental Pathways to Sustainability) Centre at Sussex works with partners around the world in research, policy engagement and capacity building to address these challenges and build pathways to sustainability. Building on Phase I's achievements and in today's newly vital context, we now propose a programme to enrich and deepen the Centre's hallmark 'pathways' approach in relation to new, pressing issues. Integrating development studies with science and technology studies, and in thoroughgoing engagement with natural scientists and users, we aim to achieve theoretical and practical advances in 'negotiating complexity in a dynamic world', and 'making science and technology work for people and the environment'. To do this, we will develop new understandings of how the themes of 'dynamics', 'governance' and 'designs' interact. We will advance theory and processes of pathway-building by engaging with six key conceptual areas: 'transitions and transformation'; 'diversity and complexity'; 'political ecology and economy'; 'knowledge and imaginaries'; 'citizenship and participation'; 'innovation and distribution'. We will build on links with the Sussex Energy Group to develop a new domain on Energy and Climate, complementing continuing work on Water and Sanitation, Food and Agriculture, and Health and Disease. And we will develop and undertake, with partners, natural scientists and potential research users, a new set of located, cross-sectoral and cross-thematic projects, integrated into four clusters. Risk and security: institutions for complex systems' will address issues of securitization and risk in global systems, and of formality and informality in urban environments. 'Socio-technical transitions in a changing climate will address niche pathways and sustainability transitions in food and energy, and 'uncertainty from 'below' and 'above' in responding to climate change. Political ecologies of global transformation will address carbon in relation to land and livelihoods in rural Africa, and the dynamics of global commodity chains, focusing on meat and soybean. The socio-ecological dynamics of disease will address zoonotic disease risks in intensifying livestock production systems, and new approaches to integrated vector management. We will also undertake two major cross-cutting workstreams, developing a toolbox of novel interdisciplinary Methods and Methodologies for analysing sustainability issues, and expanding and integrating our work on Impact, Communications and Engagement, following up our high profile New Manifesto project and bringing new ideas, evidence and approaches to international processes around Rio plus 20, the MDGs and beyond. These work streams will further integrate the Centre's work, and enable a wide range of outreach activities geared to building pathways to sustainability and social justice in diverse contexts.