A short history

STEPS: 10 years in the making

The spark

A decade ago, during investigation of the relationship between environmental change and society, the idea for the STEPS Centre took root. The ESRC’s Global Environmental Change Programme, which ran from 1991 to 2000, brought social science expertise to bear on global environmental research and took environmental concerns to the heart of the social sciences. Directing the Programme's final year and a half was the first joint venture between researchers from the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) and and policy researchers SPRU Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Sussex in the UK.

Gestation

Among those working in the Global Environmental Change Programme were Melissa Leach and Ian Scoones of IDS and Frans Berkhout, Andy Stirling and Alister Scott of SPRU. The Programme, which originally concentrated on major global environmental issues such as climate change and biodiversity, increasingly turned its attention to sustainable development. It began to investigate smaller-scale measures and processes - at local, national and regional levels - which contribute to the achievement of sustainability. It began to tally the major global issues with the human dimensions of environmental change.

These different institutions and disciplines were themes that IDS and SPRU researchers were already pursuing, although from different angles. Thus the IDS Environment Group and colleagues worked through the 1990s on environment and development issues and on the social dimensions of landscape and livelihood change in Africa and Asia, often challenging conventional wisdoms. SPRU's energy and environment group, for its part, brought a science, policy and innovation lens to sustainability questions, often in developed country settings. Interacting through the Global Environmental Change programme began to make clear the potential gains to be had from bringing these streams of work together.

Germination

The idea of linking IDS and SPRU approaches in marrying environmental sustainability with poverty reduction was set down in 1999 in a funding proposal submitted to the ESRC from Leach, Scoones, Scott and two other SPRU academics, Andy Stirling and Adrian Smith.

The bid – a first attempt at creating what would become the STEPS Centre - was positively received but ultimately turned down. Not to be put off, the interactions between IDS and SPRU researchers continued over the following years around environmental, health, science, technology and innovation work. Interactions between Leach, Scoones and SPRU's Andy Stirling particularly blossomed around questions of citizenship and participation in science, environment and development.

Growth

Meanwhile a book pulling together the Global Environmental Change Programme thinking - Negotiating Environmental Change - was published. The 2003 title mapped the influence international agreements, national politics and local actions may have on environmental change, and its effects on the planet and its peoples. It traced some major transformations in environmental social science over the previous decade.

A year later, in 2005, Leach and Scoones began work on a pamphlet for the think-tank Demos called The Slow Race (published 2006), which argued that innovation should be citizen-led, with the development and use of technology designed around specific local needs.

After decades of relative neglect, science and technology are again seen as vital tools for international development, said Leach and Scoones. But the race to global economic success and the race to find a universal fix for the problems of developing countries raise some difficult questions about who will win the prizes and who will be left behind. What is needed, they argued, is a third (slow) race to make investment in science and technology work for the poor.
Citizens should be seen as contributors to the success of technology, said the Slow Race. Innovation should respond to local needs and regulation should be attuned to local concerns. It means putting citizens at the heart of development, starting a slow race to citizens’ solutions.

Goal

When the ESRC put another call out for Research Centre funding proposals in the summer of 2005 – The Slow Race pamphlet and Negotiating Environmental Change book served as touchstones. This time the Council was seeking ideas linking environment and society. Leach, Scoones and Stirling now with a little more of the pre-requisite age and gravitas – saw their chance. With colleagues in SPRU and IDS and inputs from other IDS colleagues they wrote a proposal for the Social, Technological and Environmental Pathways to Sustainability Centre, or STEPS.

The proposal set out the STEPS mission to address the two global challenges facing development: Linking environmental sustainability with better livelihoods and health for poor people and making science and technology work for poverty reduction and social justice.

Evidence of the urgent need to respond to these global challenges hits the news headlines every day –rapid environmental, technological and social change is producing long term shifts in climate, the global spread of diseases such as BSE, HIV/Aids or avian ‘flu, or innovation in biotechnologies.

STEPS would address the challenges in an era of rapid change by ‘exploring the pathways through which technologies, ecologies and social systems interact…and how these can contribute to processes ad outcomes that are more resilient, sustainable, socially just and favourable for the poor.’

Fruition

In May 2006, 10 years after STEPS was first discussed, the wait was finally over: the ESRC announced the award of £3.8m to create the STEPS Centre. Professor Ian Diamond, Chief Executive of ESRC, said: "The research that the STEPS centre will engage in has the potential to have a vital impact on global society."
As the celebrations died down, the recruitment of a 17-strong core membership began, drawing on experts from the fields of anthropology, engineering and ecology to economics, physics, philosophy and medicine at IDS, SPRU and other world-class institutions. By October 2006, with 15 researchers, a co-ordinator and full-time communications officer in place, the Centre came in to being, marked by the inaugural STEPS Centre Retreat where members began the process of discussing how best to respond to the two global challenges.

Future

The Centre’s initial set of Working Papers set out the key challenges and ideas involved with the Centre’s three cross-cutting domains – food/agriculture, health/disease, water/sanitation – and three themes – dynamics, governance and designs. They outline central elements of the novel pathways approach that the STEPS Centre is developing. Five initial research projects, investigating the domains and themes with partners in India, China, Kenya and Latin America have been identified, relating the Centre's concerns to major global processes including climate change, urbanisation, economic globalisation, and epidemics.

And on June 25 2007, the Centre holds its official launch, chaired by Ian Gibson MP at the UK Parliament’s Portcullis House. September 2007 will see members, partners and the international advisory committee come together for the first time at the inaugural STEPS Symposium, being held alongside the Development Studies Association Conference whose theme this year is ‘Connecting science, society and development’. A month later, STEPS first five research projects begin.

 

Tell a friend about this site