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This report describes a participatory workshop conducted in February 2020 by the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) and Hivos with residents of non-grid connected villages in Machakos county, Kenya. The exercise used a 'backcasting' methodology, asking participants to imagine a 2030 scenario where their entire villages used electricity for cooking and then determine the necessary sequence of changes required to achieve that goal. The study emphasizes the need to prioritize sociocultural factors—such as gender roles, cultural norms, and cooking practices—over a traditional focus on technical efficiency when scaling clean cookstove access.

The Stockholm Environment Institute developed Aid Atlas to address the complexity of tracking global development finance. While the OECD's Creditor Reporting System provides the most comprehensive data, its design makes it difficult for the public and smaller recipient countries to use. Aid Atlas transforms this data into an intuitive, visual tool to help decision-makers in developing countries understand aid flows and focus on whether funding generates lasting positive impacts.

The report evaluates the European Commission's Circular Economy Action Plan (CEAP) presented on 11 March 2020, arguing that while it makes significant steps in recognizing gaps, it remains too focused on production and products rather than consumption. The authors recommend demand-side policy measures and call for active participation from local, regional, and national authorities to complement EU efforts in transitioning to a circular economy to prevent climate change and ecological collapse.

This policy report from the Stockholm Environment Institute outlines seven essential principles for achieving a just transition to a low-carbon economy, emphasizing the need for parallel implementation of these principles to ensure equity for people and regions dependent on carbon-intensive industries.

The briefing analyzes Green Climate Fund (GCF) funding proposals from 2015 to July 2018, finding that interventions for energy access receive significantly less funding than other energy projects and largely neglect low-income and 'high-impact' countries in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

The study evaluates a parsimonious geospatial tool for mapping monthly water budgets, groundwater recharge, baseflow, and quickflow in Peru and Myanmar. In Peru, the tool's spatial distribution of baseflow contributions showed a strong correlation with an established model (r2 = 0.81). In Myanmar, the model performed satisfactorily in representing month-to-month variation (NSE 0.6–0.8), though it exhibited scale-dependent errors in large basins. The findings suggest that while trade-offs exist between model complexity and accuracy, such simple models can support watershed management in resource-limited settings.

The document details the use of the GAPF-EI tool in Côte d’Ivoire, highlighting its ability to capture emission sources specific to low- and middle-income countries, such as biomass cooking and vegetation fires, to support integrated air quality and climate change mitigation strategies.

The report details a study in rural Kenya where community members imagined a future of fully electric cooking and worked backward to identify the necessary steps to achieve it. Participants linked electric cooking to broader development goals, including improved health, gender equality, and infrastructure. The proposed pathway involves a gradual transition from fuelwood to improved stoves and LPG before reaching full electrification, driven by community savings, civic engagement, and government support.

The research utilizes a water-energy-carbon nexus perspective to analyze renewable power curtailments in China. Through complete and partial depletion experiments, the study finds that reducing curtailments for wind, solar, and hydropower would significantly lower carbon emissions and save water resources compared to fossil-fueled thermal generation, with wind power offering the most substantial environmental benefits.

The document examines the adoption of the Mimi Moto advanced biomass cookstove in peri-urban Kenya, identifying two distinct user archetypes: 'money savers' and 'convenience seekers'. While both groups experienced declines in satisfaction due to inconsistent fuel availability, 'convenience seekers' showed higher overall usage. The study highlights a systemic gap where stakeholders focus on initial awareness and onboarding rather than the long-term 'using' phase, recommending stabilized fuel infrastructure and tailored after-sales support to improve adoption.

The document examines the complex climate finance landscape in Kenya, where a wide range of funding sources and a devolved governance model create coordination challenges. It identifies technical barriers such as capacity gaps and fragmented funding, alongside political barriers including a lack of high-level political will and diverging agendas between the government and development partners. The authors argue that while technical measures are necessary, they are insufficient without addressing underlying political priorities and shifting the government's focus to better include bilateral donors, who provide the majority of the country's climate finance.

The document outlines a methodology employed by the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) to bridge the gap between global climate models and local water resource planning. Because General Circulation Models (GCMs) from the CMIP5 project lack the spatial resolution (40–120km) necessary for local hydrological assessment, SEI uses the k-NN statistical downscaling method. This process involves selecting high-performing GCMs based on eight climate attributes and using them to create synthetic daily series for temperature and precipitation from 2020 to 2100. These series are then integrated into the Water Evaluation and Planning (WEAP) system to explore robust adaptation alternatives for water service providers and environmental agencies.

The document highlights significant gaps in development finance, noting that general environment protection receives only 2% of total disbursements. It examines how the European refugee crisis impacted donor budgets, the difficulty of tracking finance for specific agendas like sustainable oceans, and the lack of data disaggregation by some donors. Additionally, it identifies a notably lower disbursement ratio for climate finance compared to general development aid, suggesting systemic implementation challenges.

The report argues that a successful global low-carbon transition depends on addressing equity concerns to reduce resistance and ensure fairness. It distills seven principles from literature and historical case studies: actively encouraging decarbonization, avoiding carbon lock-in, supporting affected regions, supporting workers and communities, remediating environmental damage, addressing social inequalities, and ensuring inclusive planning. The authors emphasize that these principles must be pursued in parallel and that the need for social support does not justify delaying decarbonization. Historical analysis shows that poorly managed industrial declines lead to poverty, out-migration, and political instability, often with the public sector bearing the costs of private-sector environmental liabilities.

The study assesses the integration of climate adaptation into energy efficiency projects in the Baltic Sea Region, finding that mitigation and adaptation are largely treated as separate policy areas. While new buildings more frequently implement adaptation measures above minimum standards, retrofitted buildings primarily focus on mitigation. The report identifies key synergies, such as green roofs and automated indoor climates, but notes that their implementation is often ad hoc rather than planned. Significant barriers include a lack of legal requirements, funding gaps, and limited awareness among developers.

The paper finds that incorporating stakeholders from business, government, and NGOs into risk assessments for decarbonization significantly expands the scope of identified risks compared to assessments conducted solely by academics and experts. While experts tend to prioritize economic risks using quantitative models, other stakeholders emphasize political risks. The authors argue that qualitative research and stakeholder engagement are essential complements to impact assessment modelling to ensure non-quantifiable risks are not overlooked, thereby improving risk mitigation and the sustainability of the energy transition.

The document highlights the overlooked role of sanitation systems in climate mitigation and adaptation, noting that the sector is a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions while offering opportunities for resource recovery and resilience. It calls for the development of planning frameworks to bridge the gap between sanitation services and global climate policy and financing.

The authors argue that pandemic recovery stimulus should not compromise efforts to address climate change and air quality, but should instead use an integrated approach to identify efficient, low-cost solutions that provide multiple near-term benefits for both the economy and the environment.

The research argues that energy transitions are social and gendered processes, often dominated by male perspectives. By applying an Alternative Pathways framework—categorized into on-stream, off-stream, and transformative pathways—the study examines the impact of excluding women's perspectives in the oil sands of Canada, large-scale renewables in Kenya, and the shift to renewables in Spain, concluding that such exclusions lead to pathways disconnected from local realities and slower sustainable transitions.

The document outlines China's 60-year effort to manage desertified lands, particularly in northern China, through a combination of government policies, forestry programmes, and eco-industrialization. Key interventions such as afforestation and water conservation have helped restore arid and semi-arid ecosystems.