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2,826 documents from Stockholm Environment Institute
Assessing Climate Change Impacts on River Flows in the Tonle Sap Lake Basin, Cambodia
The study addresses the lack of hydrological monitoring in the tributaries of Cambodia's Tonle Sap Lake, which contribute 25–30% of the annual flow and are critical for maintaining dry-season lake levels. It aims to simulate baseline flows and project future climate change impacts across 11 sub-basins to support water resource management in a country where 80% of the population depends on agriculture.
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Document type: Research paper
Sustainable Management and Resilience of Arctic Wetlands
The report details the first phase of an Arctic Council project led by the CAFF Working Group, focusing on the inventory and scientific review of Arctic wetlands. It emphasizes the role of these environments in biodiversity, hydrology, and carbon storage, while highlighting the necessity of integrating indigenous knowledge into wetland management to counter historical misconceptions of wetlands as wastelands.
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Document type: Report
Agriculture-deforestation emissions
The analysis finds that between 2010 and 2014, tropical deforestation for agriculture and forestry caused approximately 2.6 gigatonnes of CO2 emissions annually, with cattle and oilseed products accounting for over half. International trade drove between 29% and 39% of these emissions, with Europe and China identified as major importers. In EU countries, deforestation emissions represent about 15% of the total carbon footprint of food consumption.
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Document type: Research paper
Large-scale scenarios as boundary conditions
The paper introduces a simplified cross-impact balance (CIB) approach for cross-scale scenario development, allowing global scenarios to serve as stable external conditions for local and regional analysis.
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Document type: Research paper
Environmental financialization: what could go wrong?
The authors examine the 'financialization of nature,' arguing that securitizing ecosystem services creates incentives to maximize a narrow set of commodifiable outputs at the expense of overall ecosystem health. They contend that the fungibility required for financial markets ignores the complex, location-specific nature of ecosystems. While they identify limited exceptions—such as tradable permits for widely-dispersed gases (e.g., CO2 and SOx) and socially responsible investing (SRI) for already-managed lands—they warn that most environmental credits and offsets fail to protect biodiversity or ensure genuine additionality.
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Document type: Research paper
Future biomass and bioenergy deployment and trade
The paper examines bioenergy trade flows and the necessity of developing sustainable supply chains and governance to meet 2050 global energy and climate scenarios. It emphasizes the need for innovative, integrated value chains and flexible biogenic carbon supply networks to reduce stakeholder risk and ensure economic and environmental benefits.
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Document type: Research paper
Old habits die hard: using the energy cultures framework to understand drivers of household-level energy transitions in urban Zambia
The study examines cooking behaviours in urban Lusaka, Zambia, finding that dominant cooking cultures are reinforced by social interactions, national policy, and market accessibility. It identifies a mismatch between household perceptions, which view change as a complex result of 'softer' intertwined factors, and expert views, which prioritise 'harder' determinants like fuel price and availability.
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Document type: Research paper
Capital Stranding Cascades
The report introduces a framework combining Input-Output and network theory to identify sectors that trigger and are exposed to capital stranding cascades. In a sample of ten European countries, mining is identified as a high-trigger sector, while electricity, gas, and refined petroleum are most affected by decarbonisation. The report estimates that transition-related stranding risks affect between 0.6% and 8.2% of the overall productive capital stock in these countries.
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Document type: Report
What is equitable resilience?
The document argues that traditional resilience concepts often ignore power dynamics and social inequalities. Based on a review of 171 articles, the authors define equitable resilience as a form of human-environmental resilience that accounts for social vulnerability and differentiated access to power, knowledge, and resources. They propose four essential elements for practice: recognizing subjectivities, ensuring inclusion and representation, working across geographical and temporal scales, and promoting systemic transformation. The brief emphasizes that resilience indicators alone are insufficient and that practitioners must engage with the politics of social change to avoid entrenching existing vulnerabilities.
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Document type: Briefing
Understanding sustainable lifestyles and consumer behaviour
The document outlines a review of sustainable consumption drivers, emphasizing that behaviour is shaped by a complex matrix of pricing, technology, social norms, and infrastructure. It argues for a shift from targeting individuals to addressing the 'organization of practices' and whole systems to avoid rebound effects. The report also notes a lack of nuanced research on the intersection of gender and consumption patterns.
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Document type: Report
Towards more sustainable production – perspectives, challenges and opportunities along palm oil commodity chains
The document examines the failure of private-sector sustainability initiatives in the palm oil supply chain, highlighting barriers such as lack of consumer demand, poor coordination among smallholders, and conflicting regulations in producer countries. It suggests that 'hybrid governance' involving private, public, and civil society actors is necessary to improve sustainability performance.
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Document type: Case study
Perspectives on sustainability – making supply chains work for smallholders
The study examined the alignment between the sustainability perspectives of palm oil smallholders in Indonesia's Riau province and the frameworks of the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) and Indonesian Sustainable Palm Oil (ISPO) schemes. While smallholders define sustainability through the long-term viability of their families and communities—emphasizing access to credit, inputs, and fair pricing—the study found that the rhetoric of both RSPO and ISPO has evolved to include these priorities. However, the effectiveness of these schemes remains limited by low smallholder participation; as of 2016, only 3,500 independent households and 80,300 'plasma' scheme producers in Indonesia were certified, despite smallholders accounting for 36% of total production.
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Document type: Report
PRINCE Policy Relevant Indicators for National Consumption and Environment
The PRINCE project, led by Statistics Sweden with SEI as a key partner, created a tailor-made model combining the EXIOBASE3 multiregional input-output (MRIO) model with Swedish national environmental-economic accounts. This framework allows for detailed tracking of environmental impacts—including greenhouse gas emissions, water use, and hazardous chemicals—linked to Swedish consumption across international supply chains. The model was adopted in 2018 by Statistics Sweden and the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency for national greenhouse gas emissions statistics to support Sweden's 'Generational Goal' of solving environmental problems without exporting them.
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Document type: Fact sheet
Gender, social equality and sustainability certification in Thai smallholder rubber production
The report examines the application of FSC certification, particularly the Small and Low-Intensity Managed Forest (SLIMF) scheme, among Thai smallholder rubber farmers. It finds that certification has primarily benefited processing companies rather than farmers, who see little direct economic gain. The study highlights systemic gender inequalities, where women are active in production but excluded from governance and training, and notes that land tenure issues prevent many smallholders from achieving certification. It concludes that FSC standards must move beyond labour rights to address systemic inequalities and land rights to be effective for smallholders.
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Document type: Report
Testing transitions: A new model to explore how producer- and consumer-led sustainability strategies could affect macroeconomic stability
The Stockholm Environment Institute has developed a new macroeconomic model to test how different sustainability strategies affect economic stability. Unlike traditional models, this version assumes people act based on past experience rather than optimal future knowledge. Initial experiments show that 'downshifting' (reducing working hours/workforce participation) can slow GDP growth and consumption without causing instability, whereas simply reducing consumption levels while maintaining the workforce can lead to recession and economic instability.
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Document type: Executive summary
SEI-PCS: Spatially Explicit Information on Production to Consumption Systems
The document introduces SEI-PCS, a modeling tool designed to overcome the limitations of traditional country-level footprinting by providing spatially explicit data on production-to-consumption systems. By integrating subnational production data, domestic trade flows, and international customs data, SEI-PCS allows for the tracing of commodities back to their origin to assess impacts such as carbon emissions, biodiversity loss, and deforestation. The tool is the foundation for the Trase initiative, which specifically monitors deforestation risks associated with agricultural commodities like soy in Brazil, Indonesia, and Latin America, helping companies and governments evaluate the effectiveness of zero-deforestation commitments and identify policy 'leakage' effects.
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Document type: Briefing
Calculating consumption impacts at the local level: a new approach in Umeå, Sweden
The Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) collaborated with Umeå municipality to translate a 2018 resident survey into a climate footprint estimation tool. This tool allows the municipality to compare local consumption-based emissions with national averages and identify specific demographic drivers of emissions. Findings revealed that while residents in their 20s have more climate-smart diets, they have higher footprints for furniture, and that higher-income groups generally have larger footprints due to increased consumption of red meat, clothing, and flights.
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Document type: Case study
Citizen science and food waste
The project aimed to address knowledge gaps regarding consumer food waste by leveraging citizen science to gain insights into behaviors and decision-making. Key activities included a literature review, the identification of network members, and a workshop in Geneva on 6 June. The resulting network connects researchers, experts, and practitioners to foster collaborative research proposals.
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Document type: Executive summary
Operationalising knowledge on and for societal transformations in the face of climate change
The document argues that while scientific evidence of climate change is mounting, concerted societal action remains elusive. It calls for a shift from describing the climate challenge to operationalizing knowledge and devising effective societal solutions to prevent and address catastrophic impacts. The paper identifies knowledge gaps and research priorities by synthesizing previous scoping efforts from JPI Climate regarding societal transformation, climate services, and decision-making.
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Document type: Report
The end of coal? Planning a just transition in South Africa
The report examines the economic, political, and environmental risks associated with a potential decline in South African coal production, drawing on stakeholder workshops and interviews to identify the institutional arrangements and policy mechanisms required for a just transition.
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Document type: Report