STEPS conference 2010: pathways to sustainability
Background to the conference
Amidst unprecedented evidence of rapid environmental change and complex ecological dynamics, addressing environmental sustainability has become a central practical, moral and political challenge of our times.
With social systems changing rapidly too, linked to population growth, urbanisation, mobility and globalized economic change, core development challenges around alleviating poverty and inequity are also becoming more complex.
In this context, how might pathways to sustainability – that link environmental integrity with social justice – be conceptualised and built? As the world prepares to unite for the ‘Rio+20’ Earth Summit in 2012, what ideas, concepts and agendas can best inform effective action? How can we enrich and (re)invigorate our intellectual and practical repertoires towards a new politics of environment, development and social justice?
Conference themes
- The five themes of the conference are:
- Contesting sustainabilities
- Framing narratives
- Dynamics and sustainability
- Uncertainty, ambiguity and surprise
- Pathway-building and governance
Call for participation
The conference will comprise a mixture of invited keynote talks, perspectives and provocations which respond to the overall conference questions and themes, with a series of parallel panel sessions.
For the panel sessions, papers were invited which speak to one or more of the five themes outlined above, in relation to grounded issues and cases relevant to developing country settings.
These might address :
- agriculture, forestry, water, health-environment linkages
- sustainability in cities,
- climate change or energy,
- or issues which connect across these.
Publication of conference presentations
Publication plans for conference presentations will depend on the nature and outcome of our discussions, and we will explore possibilities with participants at and in follow up to the event. Provisionally, however, we would hope to draw together a selection of plenary and parallel session papers into a special issue of a journal plus associated briefings to feed into the preparations and events surrounding Rio+20.