The ESRC STEPS Centre's Legacy Initiative: Future Natures

As an ESRC Legacy Centre, the Future Natures initiative builds on the past 15 years of ESRC STEPS Centre (STEPS) work around the politics and possibilities of pathways to sustainability and takes it in new and exciting directions. The initiative aims to challenge pervasive assumptions about pathways to addressing the effects of climate change, environmental degradation, environmental injustice and deepening inequalities and exclusions. Many people assume that these challenges can only be addressed by powerful leaders and top-down management approaches favoured by dominant international institutions. In contrast, the work of the STEPS Centre has cumulatively shown that there is no single pathway to a sustainable future and no one 'solution' to the global challenges we face. Rather, there are innumerable possibilities for transformation to more just and sustainable society based in diverse experiences, knowledge(s), histories, everyday politics, lived experiences, social creativity and grassroots innovation. The more that stories and learning from these are shared, amplified and brought into debates, the more possibilities expand, and more concrete pathways become visible - many better futures are possible and many already exist in-the-making.

The Future Natures initiative brings together an unprecedented international network of researchers and people involved in practical action to build futures beyond the environmental and social crises. Through a coordinated programme of activities, we will work with partners to open up and explore the politics, histories and transformative potentials of 'commoning' for meeting sustainability challenges. Commoning refers to diverse practices that create, reproduce and defend the social values and social wealth of the contemporary commons. A key area of activity for Future Natures is to develop new and engaging ways of communicating about research evidence that are inclusive and useful to a diverse variety of audiences, including researchers, policymakers, civil society and the public. In developing a new online knowledge and learning platform to curate STEPS Centre legacy materials and share stories of change from our network of partners, we aim to build a knowledge community that cuts across academic disciplines, sectors of society and researcher vs. practitioner divides. In doing so, we aim to broaden and open up debates on practical pathways to sustainability, extending the relevance and reach of the STEPS Centre's legacy to new audiences. Small grants will encourage collaboration among partners and benefit both practitioners and early career researchers. A series of online workshops will use storytelling as the starting point to explore practices and challenges of commoning and pathways to sustainability across six themes: Agrarian Landscapes; Urban and Peri-urban Contexts; Municipal Spaces; Economy and Work; Nature and Natural Resources and Technology, Knowledge and Culture. The Future Natures initiative's online platform will host virtual dialogues and an online speaker series, and members of the partnership will be able to use the platform to share blogs and resources that have been created within the broader network. A biannual online magazine with bespoke artwork will collect multimedia stories, essays, blogs, artistic contributions and reflections from Centre events in a publicly accessible, engaging format.

Through these activities that engage with the evolving global politics of alternatives, Future Natures will shine a light on how diverse initiatives around the world are responding to escalating socio-ecological crises and shrinking democratic space in ways that dominant institutions and policy approaches cannot, creating, in the language of the STEPS Centre, new pathways to sustainability that are just, equitable and sustainable. Learning from (and across) these initiatives and their challenges is a vital part of creating more sustainable futures.