The sustainability at SEED steering group will facilitate collaborations amongst SEED staff and students for promoting and embedding transformative sustainability across teaching, research and other relevant school activities.

Group members:

• Heather Alberro (GDI) - Group lead/coordinator
• Ian Thornhill (PPEM)
• Anna Gilchrist (PPEM)
• Rory Stanton (GDI)
• Nicola Banks (GDI)
• Johan Oldekop (GDI)
• Rose Pritchard (GDI)
• Charis Enns (GDI)
• Raichael Lock (MIE)
• Susan Brown (MIE)
• Erik Swyngedouw (Geography)
• Jennifer O’Brien (Geography)
• Craig Thomas (Geography)
• Kim Forster (Architecture)

“Without questioning the basic framework under which the work toward sustainability occurs…Sustainability risks becoming a cloak under which to hide how injustices are made permanent, suffering made invisible, while maintaining social conflict and systemic inequities…” (von Busch, 2022, pp. 400 - 01).

Sustainability is an ambiguous and contested concept that can mean different things to different people (Vos 2007; Virtanen et al 2020). There is also the question of the extent to which anything can ultimately be sustained in a dynamic world that is in a constant and unending state of becoming and renewal (Barnett 2018, p.44; Ingold 2024, p. 11).

Moreover, ‘sustainability’, like resilience (Ingalls & Stedman, 2016), is not inherently desirable- i.e. if what one is sustaining is a system or process that is antithetical to mutual flourishing. However, if one recalls the etymological roots of the word, connotations include the ability of something- i.e. an activity, process, system- to endure or be maintained indefinitely without exhausting its own conditions of possibility. In the context of sustainable development, as established in the Bruntland Report (1987), development is sustainable if it meets the needs of present generations without undermining the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

A key problematic in contemporary socio-ecological debates revolves around whether global socioeconomic systems predicated on endless economic expansion and material extractivism can in fact be reconciled with biospheric integrity (Ward et al 2016; Hickel 2020). That is, sustainability’s (neo)colonial origins, ‘umbilical links to capitalism’ and its structural imperative of perpetual growth render it incompatible with transformative change (Kashwan & Hasnain, 2025, p. 75).

The ambiguity of the concept ‘sustainability’ is likely why it has so readily been taken up by corporate actors, functioning as an empty signifier that can be applied as a green PR tactic distracting from the need to make fundamental changes in production and consumption patterns (Kashwan & Hasnain, 2025, p. 68). Indeed, only 17% of SDG targets on track and over one-third actually regressing (SDG Report 2024), six of the earth’s nine planetary boundaries have already been breached (Richardson et al 2023), global biodiversity abundance in freefall (WWF, 2024), the increasingly calamitous impacts of climate disintegration, and mounting extreme socioeconomic inequality (Watts and Ambrose 2024). 

Averting the unravelling of the very fabric of life (Ripple et al, 2024) and charting more liveable futures will require profound structural, political, socioeconomic and cultural transformations across a multitude of levels. We all have a stake in this. Sustaining the conditions essential for a habitable planet is the business of all earthlings, regardless of discipline, sector or species (Vos, 2007; Temper et al, 2018).

Taking things a step further, ‘transformative’ (Vogel & O’Brien, 2022) [1] and ‘just’ (Rodríguez, 2023) approaches to sustainability recognise socio-ecological crises and their potential solutions as fundamentally political, rather than technical-managerial (Swyngedouw, 2011). Such approaches are interested not in ‘sustaining’ the status quo but in improving planetary conditions for greater justice and equity; thus, they call for collective mobilisations for resisting power asymmetries, extreme inequality and affluence, and their disastrous socio-ecological impacts (Agyeman 2008, p. 752; Bruckner et al 2022; Akenji et al 2021; Blühdorn, 2022; Hickel, 2019). 

Transformative sustainabilities, like Rupprecht et al’s (2020) ‘multispecies sustainability’, evince a thoroughly ecological orientation, wherein nothing is seen as separate or external (Céspedes & Rist, 2023). Other terrestrials are seen as agentic beings with whom we must continually negotiate, not mere resources for human use. 

With this , drawing on the diverse expertise from our five departments, we hope to further embed (transformative) sustainability as a key theme in teaching and research across SEED, thereby meaningfully contributing to the University of Manchester’s vision in ‘Our Sustainable Future’, as well as wider societal efforts to build more equitable and liveable futures. Amongst other things, the latter would entail more harmonious and respectful socio-ecological integration, wherein levels of resource use and material extraction are justly reduced and kept within the earth’s planetary boundaries.   

[1] For Vogel & O’Brien (2022), transformation involves “going beyond our current ways of being and doing and embracing the unfolding of humanity’s collective capacity and potential to collectively shift systems and cultures, while also ensuring that transformations are equitable, inclusive, and not the least, sustainable. It also involves the recognition that real transformations will be resisted and subverted (Brand 2016; Williamson 2012), and that a combination of transdisciplinary, transgressive, transcendent, and other ‘trans-’ strategies are needed to overcome such resistance and generate radical, equitable, and enduring change” (p. 657). 

SEED SYMPOSIUM - Getting serious about sustainability: Research, education and advocacy
22 - 23 May 2025

The ‘Getting Serious About Sustainability: Research, Education and Advocacy’ symposium, held from 22–23 May 2025, was the first major event organised by Sustainability@SEED. It brought together staff and students from across The University of Manchester, alongside practitioners, artists, and activists from across the UK, to discuss the fundamental transformations needed to challenge systemic drivers of unsustainability and chart more liveable pathways forward.

WORKSHOP- Ecotopian pedagogies for the symbiocene
27 June 2025

This workshop explored ecotopian pedagogies for boosting students' critical and imaginative capabilities against ecological decline. Discover more on the project website, with pictures from the session, including the ideas and resources Padlet.

SEED E-vehicle for staff and PGRs

The School’s e-vehicle (a Nissan Leaf) is available for free use by SEED staff and PGRs for work-related trips. For more information visit SEED Resources | Travel | Electric Vehicle

Sustainable travel and top-up funds

Our Sustainable Travel policy guides all staff in making climate conscious decisions.

Business travel should only take place where there is no reasonable online alternative, and air travel should be avoided wherever possible.

The SEED Sustainable Travel Alternatives Routes Fund (STAR Fund) supports you to travel sustainably by paying the additional costs of the sustainable travel option. This may be to replace flights with train fares, to pay for a more expensive, but more direct longer-haul route, or to support the cost of hotels where slower travel may require stopovers.

Applications to the fund are overseen by SEED’s Director of Social Responsibility.

Resources

• SEED Sustainable Travel Policy
• Apply to the SEED Sustainable Travel Alternative Routes Fund
• Apply for STAR funding through the Academic Absence Form

2023/24 STAR CO2 Savings

In 2023/24 we invested £7,000 into our SEED Sustainable Travel Fund (STAR), supporting colleagues to take the more sustainable travel option, and saving nearly 10 tonnes of carbon equivalent.

To appreciate that statistic, 10 tonnes of CO² is equal to:

• The electricity consumption of 65 households for a whole year
• 5 petrol-fuelled cars driving for one year
• 10 electricity-fuelled cars driving for one year

Another way to consider it is, that 500 trees would have to grow for one year to capture 10 tonnes of CO² emissions.

This carbon saving calculation does not account for those who decided not to travel, which of course is the most sustainable option, so please do consider this when hybrid opportunities exist.

We promote vegetarian and vegan catering for sustainability reasons, and plan to formalise this approach with a School policy to mirror policies in place or being adopted across other schools and faculties.

Another major sustainability issue surrounding catering is food waste. You can help eliminate food waste by making sure that you register for events and notify event organisers in plenty of time if you are no longer able to attend.

For more information on catering visit SEED Resources | Booking rooms and catering

SEED’s Laboratories have been certified as operating to a Gold standard in the Laboratory Efficiency Assessment Framework (LEAF).

The University's Environmental Sustainability Strategy 2023-2028 includes driving efficiencies across our laboratory spaces, and one way we measure this is through the Laboratory Efficiency Assessment Framework (LEAF).

The aim is for all UoM laboratories to achieve a LEAF award (minimum Bronze, with a target of 25% achieving Silver) and adopt the 6R “responsible plastics protocol’ by August 2025.

• ‘Ecotopian toolkit’ - https://ecotopiantoolkit.org/about/
• Ajaps, S., 2023. Deconstructing the constraints of justice-based environmental sustainability in higher education. Teaching in Higher Education, 28(5), pp.1024-1038.
• Misiaszek, G.W. ed., 2025. Ecopedagogy and the Global Environmental Citizen: Critical Issues, Trends, Challenges and Possibilities. Taylor & Francis.
• Taylor, A., Zakharova, T. and Cullen, M., 2021. Common worlding pedagogies: Opening up to learning with worlds. Journal of Childhood Studies, 46(4), pp.74-88.