This document summarizes Melissa Leach's presentation on pathways to sustainability at Beijing Normal University. It discusses the challenges of environmental change, technological change, social and economic instability, poverty and inequity. It introduces the STEPS Centre's "pathways approach" to conceptualizing sustainability pathways that integrate ecological integrity, human wellbeing and social justice. Key points include working across disciplines, understanding knowledge politics and narratives, examining power relations and pathways, and integrating research with action through policy engagement and building networks. The focus on China highlights its role in managing change and opportunities for mutual learning around sustainability pathways.

1. Pathways to Sustainability:
Meeting the challenges
Melissa Leach
International conference on ‘Pathways to
Sustainability in a Changing China’
Beijing Normal University
20 April 2015

2. Sustainability challenges
in dynamic contexts
• Environmental change, rapid and complex dynamics,
impending threats and thresholds
• Technological change – opportunities, threats
• Social, economic and political change and instabilities;
shifting geographies of power and privilege, emergent
social hierarchies
• Poverty, inequity, (in)justice
• Scientific, policy and public concern – and politicisation

3. How might pathways to sustainability – that link technology and
environmental integrity with social justice – be conceptualised and built – in
a complex, dynamic world?

4. The STEPS Centre’s
‘pathways approach’
Pathways approach -
a guide to thinking and action
Building pathways to sustainability,
integrating:
• Ecological integrity
• Human wellbeing
• Social justice

5. Working across disciplines and sectors
• Development studies, Science and Technology Studies
• Social sciences (anthropology, sociology, political
science, economics) and natural sciences (medicine,
ecology, climate science, hydrology, engineering,
others…)
• Food and Agriculture, Health and Disease, Water and
Sanitation, Energy and Climate

6. Pathways and the politics of knowledge
under-determined realities

7. ‘scope’
‘system’
‘focus’
picture of the world –
stylised representation
of a system
‘cause’
Pathways and the politics of knowledge
‘effect’
under-determined realities
System: social,
ecological and
technological
elements
interacting in
dynamic ways

8. environment‘scope’
‘system’
‘focus’
picture of the worldreflexive framing
Pathways and the politics of knowledge
‘effect’
under-determined realities
‘cause’local people

9. environment
‘system’
under-determined realitiesdiverse picturesplural frames
Pathways and the politics of knowledge
‘effect’
‘cause’
local people
‘scope’
‘focus’

10. plural frames
‘system’
‘cause’
‘effect’
under-determined realities
local people
Pathways and the Politics of Knowledge
diverse pictures
‘scope’
‘focus’

11. Narratives
Framings often become part of narratives – underlying
storylines
• Produced by people and institutions
• Beginning – a system, framed
• Middle – a set of envisaged actions
• Construction of publics – who will act, who will change their
behaviour, respond
• Towards particular futures (desired, averting what is feared,
possibilities, values, goals?) and ends – catastrophe averted,
outcome achieved, ‘sustainability’ enhanced

12. environment
plural frames
Pathways and the Politics of Knowledge
‘system’
under-determined realities
local people
time
‘effect’
‘cause’
diverse pictures
‘scope’
‘focus’‘pathway’

13. Pathways and power
• Some narratives justify and become interlocked with
powerful pathways – particular directions in which systems
change over time
• Alternative narratives, hidden narratives, exclusions….
• Power relations and governance shape which pathways come
to dominate, and which remain marginalised or excluded
• Challenge dominant pathways, open up appreciation of
alternatives

14. Agriculture in East Africa
‘Growing food deficits require
massive boosts to agricultural
productivity – modern plant
breeding and genetic engineering
can deliver solutions which need
to be rolled out at scale’
‘Food insecurities are shaped by
local ecological, social and
institutional contexts, requiring
socio-technical solutions centred
on farmer knowledge and local
innovations’

15. Climate change, drought and
maize in Kenya
• Understanding and challenging ‘lock in’ to the
dominant pathway – breeding and
commercialization of drought-tolerant maize,
geared to ‘resilience in the seed’, towards farm
and national food security goals
• Opening up to alternative pathways – especially
for ‘low potential’ areas (e.g. Sakai), geared to
resilience of farming livelihoods

16. Multiple pathways –
in and out of maize
• Local maize varieties predominate and are highly
valued
• Important but under-recognised role of seed
selectors
• In future – some farmers want drought tolerant
maize varieties
• But many farmers are trying to move out of maize
and into other crops – dryland staples and
horticultural crops

17. Social innovation
• Innovations and new
technologies - critical roles in
meeting sustainability challenges
• Problems of mainstream
approaches to innovation
• Do inclusive and grassroots
innovation approaches offer
better prospects, especially for
people marginalised by
mainstream growth?
• What are the opportunities and
challenges for ‘niche’ innovations
to inform more powerful
pathways to sustainability and
justice?

18. • Historical and comparative research
shows different encounters with policy
in India and Latin America
• In some cases a politics of
instrumentality sees the grassroots
innovation movement inserted into
formal policy programmes, often
reducing empowerment aspects
• In others, broad mobilisation through the grassroots innovation
movement can act as a force to open up formal innovation
systems to support more diverse and empowering activities
Grassroots Innovation movements

19. Tackling epidemics
‘Outbreaks are threatening humanity.
They need to be controlled through
effective surveillance and large-scale
roll out of singular technological
solutions’
‘Underlying causes need to be tackled,
requiring a rethink of surveillance and
diverse social, cultural ecological and
technological responses’

20. The Ebola crisis in West Africa
Pathways of structural violence
•The crisis (rapid spread of disease, resistance
to outbreak control efforts) reflects longer-
term pathways of political-economic change
and ‘development’
• Causal dynamics include failures of global
health governance and health systems;
conflict; ecology; mining; urbanisation; gender
inequalities; poor community engagement

21. Community logics, institutions and learning
• Role of local social and cultural
practices in Ebola transmission –
caring for the sick, funerals
• Understanding cultural logics and
local institutions (gender,
chieftaincy, initiation societies)
• Importance of community
learning, adaptation and
innovation – key to turning the
epidemic around
• Building resilient, community-
embedded health systems

22. Integrating understanding with action
Opening up, building new pathways
• Methodologies and methods for appreciating alternative
pathways
• Fostering and supporting deliberative fora – bringing different
actors and perspectives together
• Influencing policy processes and effecting policy change
• Supporting and informing mobilisation processes
• Building networks and alliances

23. Integrating understanding with
action
International policy engagement

24. Pathways to Sustainability Global Consortium

25. China’s key role
• Scale
• Diversity
• Growing international role
• Rapid change in all domains – agriculture,
urbanisation, energy, health….
• Valuable experience of managing change
at national and sub-national levels
• Opportunities for mutual learning around
pathways to sustainability
• Links with IDS-based Centre for Rising
Powers and Global Development, and
growing importance of China-UK
partnership in international development

26. Conference aims
• Sharing research, ideas, examples around innovation
and pathways to sustainability
• Informal networking – laying the grounds for
stronger, broader collaboration
• Planning for the future
Enjoy the debate!