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Opinion

What transformative sustainability studies should learn from environmental justice movements

By Alexandra Tost. This blog was first posted by the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS-Potsdam) on 1 August 2022.  In April’s session of the IASS focal topic “Justice in Sustainability” lecture series, Dr Leah Temper shed light on “just transformations towards sustainability” from the perspectives of those fighting on the ground to achieve them. Her discussion […]

Finding common ground in transformative sustainability narratives

The latest Transformations to Sustainability knowledge brief explores discourses and narratives around transformations to sustainability. James Waddell finds out more. Stories help us understand others and ourselves. They unite us by forging connections and conveying shared values, culture and history. In other words, they provide meaning to our collective life. From childhood tales to political discourses embodying our hopes […]

Coronavirus, crisis and the real Argentine economy: Post-pandemic challenges

By Anabel Marin. This article was first published in Spanish in the newspaper Pagina12 on 10 May 2020. Read the original article A window of opportunity is opening to reshape the organization of society, to take better advantage of new technologies and to make it more sustainable and more humane. Argentina, through its successive crises, has […]

Food in the time of COVID-19: How can local action and national coordination work together?

This blog was first posted on the STEPS centre website on 7 May 2020. As we approach the end of week 7 of the UK government’s Covid-19 social distancing measures, we have been witnessing a combination of remarkable efforts to sustain the country through this challenging time.  Workers from the National Health Service (supplemented by volunteer […]

T-learning with change drivers in South Africa

Mitigating climate change and transforming to more sustainable pathways will require learning about new activities and new, more sustainable and more just social systems. The T-Learning network is working with different groups across nine countries to understand how transgressive learning (t-learning) processes emerge, what they look like, and how they can contribute to transformations to […]

How to create spaces for the transformation of extractive sectors in Latin America?

Extractive sectors like mining and agriculture are of high importance for Latin American countries as a source of foreign currency and revenues. In 2018 mining represented 56% of Chile’s total exports and agriculture 47% of Argentina’s exports. However, in the last few decades, they have been facing several challenges related to their own techno-productive dynamics […]

Transformations 2019: Coda

This post originally appeared on the SDG Transformation Forum blog. October 20, 2019. The world is rolling with thunder. Thunder of very different kinds. Two days ago, it was the thunderous applause of appreciation and celebration at the conclusion of the fourth international conference on social transformations to sustainability – Transformations 2019 – held for the first time […]

Why we need alternatives to development

By Ashish Kothari, Ariel Salleh, Arturo Escobar, Federico Demaria, and Alberto Acosta. This post originally appeared on the EADI blog. The seductive nature of development rhetoric, sometimes called developmentality or developmentalism, has been internalized across virtually all countries. Decades after the notion of development spread around the world, only a handful of countries that were […]

Transformations for Early Career Researchers: Envisioning shared utopias

Witnessing transformation as an early career researcher is a very interesting prospect. For one, to understand the resistances that people all over the world are part of, what that utopia that we envision for ourselves really is, and how we are able to relate and connect with these struggles. Being part of a system that […]

Unpacking language and power

“Una mañana colombiana, un grupo de gente hablaba del lenguaje, que es language y significa idioma. En fin, hablaban de hablar.” (Almendra Cremaschi, from a forthcoming ‘tiny book’) This blog was written by Anna James and generated by the Living Aulas collective, June 2018. At the Living Aulas in Colombia we took some time to […]