Environment Cluster

Understanding how political, economic and social structures drive environmental change is vital to tackling the destruction of ecosystems and the lives that depend on them. The Environment Cluster aims to advance social and environmental justice through critical research on the causes and consequences of environmental harm and social inequalities, and alternatives that imagine and create more just and sustainable economic systems and social organisation.

The cluster advances critical approaches to topics including:

• Environmental inequalities of race, gender, class, and age 
• Climate change vulnerability, adaptation, and resilience 
• Low carbon transitions, infrastructure, and industrialisation 
• Social movements and environmental justice 
• Governance of water, energy, forests, food, agriculture, extraction and conservation 

Our research reflects the disciplinary diversity of the department, drawing on strands of political economy, postcolonialism, political ecology, geography, politics, sociology, and economics. Members have expertise in Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and with global institutions, working in collaboration with practitioners from the UNFCCC to governments, community groups and grassroots collectives. 

We are committed to creating more equitable research partnerships, recognising how colonial relationships can be reproduced through project design, funding modalities, and institutional structures of higher education.

The cluster’s research informs teaching across the department’s interdisciplinary programmes, including the BA Global Development, MSc Environment, Politics and Development, and postgraduate distance learning programmes in Climate Change and Development and Sustainable Development.

• Essex, S., Caprotti, F., de Groot, J., Phillips, J., Baker, L., Wolpe, P., & Reddy, Y. (2024). The ‘capability’ of South African energy governance to deliver urban sustainable transitions. Urban Research & Practice, 17(4), 515-542.
• Lombardozzi, L. (2024) Structural Transformation Through a Multi-vector Geo-economic Governance? BRI and Upgrading of the Uzbek Gas Industry. European Journal of Development Research 36, 695–717 (2024). 
• McBain, B., Phelan, L., Ferguson, A., Brown, P., Brown, V., Hay, I., ... & Tilbury, D. (2024). Collaboratively crafting learning standards for tertiary education for environment and sustainability. International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, 25(2), 338-354.
• Newsham, A., Naess, L. O., Mutabazi, K., Shonhe, T., Boniface, G., & Bvute, T. (2024). Precarious prospects? Exploring climate resilience of agricultural commercialization pathways in Tanzania and Zimbabwe. Climate and Development, 16(5), 395-409.
• Obrestad, K. H., Cottrell, L., & Njeri, S. (2024). Mine Action and Climate Change: The Legacy of Explosive Ordnance Contamination and Future Needs. Climate. Changes. Security., 251.
• Siciliano, G., Cantoni, R., Lonn, P., Por, N., Kry, S., Morn, C., & Oudom, H. (2025). “Leave no one behind”. A power-capabilities-energy justice perspective on energy transition in remote rural communities in Cambodia. World Development, 185, 106793.
• Sinha, S. (2024). India's Farmers' Movement and the Agrarian Questions: Authoritarian Populism vs Agrarian Questions. In C. Moliner, & D. Singh (Eds.), The Indian Farmers’ Protest of 2020–2021 Agrarian Crisis, Dissent and Identity. Routledge. pp 23-36
• Tansel, C. B., & Tilley, L. (2024). Reproducing socio-ecological life from below: Towards a planetary political economy of the global majority Review of International Studies, 50(3), 514-533.

• Commonwealth Futures Climate Research Cohort - Our staff have led the Urban Resilience theme of this Early Careers Fellowship scheme, examining the role of informal systems of enhancing climate resilience in informal settlements in Mumbai, India and Lagos, Nigeria. 
• China is reshaping central Asia’s energy sector as Russian influence fades (The Conversation) - Dr Lorena Lombardozzi explores the geo-economics of energy in Central Asia under China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

• Climate Change and Vulnerable Coastal Communities in Ghana (Catherine Doe Adodoadji-Dogbe)
• The political economy of low carbon, climate resilient development in Bangladesh (Maliha Muzzamil)
• Human Right to Water, Climate Change and Justice: Exploring Multiple Interaction. Case Study: India (Birsha Ohdedar)
• Shaping Room for Manoeuvre: A Political Ecology of REDD+ in Indonesia (Aled Williams)
• A political ecology of mobility and translocality in Laikipia, Kenya (Caitlin Sturridge) 
• Water Aid and Trade Contradictions: Dutch Aid in the Mozambican Waterscape Under Contemporary Capitalism (Chris Büscher)
• Overcoming the Constraints to On-Grid Renewable Energy Investments in Nigeria (Fadekunayo Adeniyi)
• Shaping Room for Manoeuvre: A Political Ecology of REDD+ in Indonesia (Aled Williams)
• Just Add Water: The Alchemy of Authoritarian Rule in Desert Land Reclamation Projects in Egypt during the Mubarak Era (Musa McKee)
• Contesting Conservation: Shahtoosh Trade and Forest Management in Jammu and Kashmir, India (Saloni Gupta)
• The Politics of Development in Rural Rajasthan, India: Evidence from Water Conservation and Watershed Development Initiatives since the Early 1990s (Saurabh Gupta)
• Integrating Landscape Change and Food-Systems Change: Modifiers of Food Choice in a Swidden – Oil Palm Transition in West Kalimantan, Indonesia (Dominic Rowland)