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2,826 documents from Stockholm Environment Institute
Historical Review Report
The report examines the transition from linear to circular resource use in wastewater management, focusing on the socio-cultural barriers to recycling sewage sludge as fertilizer. It analyzes historical practices in the EU and provides detailed case studies from three river basins in Sweden, Poland, and Finland, highlighting how perceptions of risk and regulatory gaps hinder the adoption of eco-technologies.
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Document type: Report
Ozone effects on crops: consideration for crop models
The paper reviews the mechanisms of ozone uptake and internal plant damage across scales from cellular metabolism to whole canopy processes. It argues for the development of dynamic crop growth models—including empirical, radiation use efficiency, and photosynthesis-based models—that can simulate ozone impacts alongside other abiotic stresses. The authors suggest that international collaborations like the Agricultural Modelling and Improvement Intercomparison Project (AgMIP) can help standardize and improve these simulations for better national, regional, and global risk assessments.
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Document type: Research paper
Preparing for HECC
The paper examines the use of high-end climate change (HECC) scenarios in adaptation planning across the EU, Hungary, Portugal, and Scotland, finding that decision-makers generally view these scenarios as low-probability and do not routinely integrate them into current actions, often prioritizing non-climate drivers over climate change.
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Document type: Research paper
Navigating the Water-Energy Governance Landscape: Climate Change Adaptation Strategies in the Northern Patagonia Region, Argentina
The paper applies the Robust Decision Support (RDS) framework to address water resource challenges in northern Patagonia, Argentina, through a participatory process involving researchers and decision-makers. Using simulation modeling and decision space visualization, the study identifies significant climate change impacts on the basin, which are potentially exacerbated by the expansion of agricultural areas. The findings emphasize that addressing these impacts is critical for maintaining environmental flow requirements and meeting reservoir level goals.
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Document type: Research paper
Fourteen Actions and Six Proposals for Technology-based Disaster Risk Reduction in Asia
The document emphasizes the urgent need to strengthen science and technology-based disaster risk reduction (DRR) capacity in Asia to meet 2030 global goals. It advocates for a shift from managing disasters to reducing risks by improving the understanding of risk dimensions, integrating risk governance into planning, and utilizing cost-benefit analyses for resilience investments. The text highlights Asia's vulnerability to high-frequency, high-intensity hazards and argues that global DRR targets cannot be achieved unless disaster casualties and property losses decrease within the region.
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Document type: Research paper
Vegetation Matters: Correcting Chamber Carbon Flux Measurements Using Plant Volumes
The paper demonstrates that accounting for the volume of peatland dwarf shrub vegetation significantly alters carbon flux calculations, with the effect increasing as plants occupy more of the chamber volume. It also establishes that plant volumes can be accurately estimated in the field non-destructively following an initial destructive laboratory assessment of each species.
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Document type: Research paper
How can sanitation policy deliver in Africa?
The document examines sanitation governance in Rwanda and Uganda, arguing that top-down policies often fail because they ignore the socio-cultural drivers of household behaviour and lack adequate national funding. It highlights a significant 'implementation gap' where international targets drive policy, but households—who provide approximately 60% of sector investment—face cultural and emotional barriers to adoption. The brief advocates for 'backward mapping' to include ground-level stakeholders in design and a deeper understanding of behavioural drivers to ensure sustainability.
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Document type: Policy brief
Narratives, data and assumptions used to model development scenarios and climate sub-scenarios for Rwanda
The document outlines three development pathways for Rwanda—reference, pessimistic, and optimistic—to explore the synergies and trade-offs between agricultural transformation and energy transition. It provides the specific quantitative inputs and qualitative assumptions used in the Long-range Energy Alternatives Planning (LEAP) and Water Evaluation and Planning (WEAP) models, including GDP growth, population trends, land-use changes, and cookstove penetration rates.
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Document type: Report
Where is the added value?
The review finds that while the WEF nexus concept is widely used to expand the scope of analysis, it lacks a uniting methodology and has not yet demonstrated a clear ability to improve resource management or governance outcomes.
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Document type: Research paper
Powering Africa: Unlocking Opportunities for Energy Development
Southern Africa faces an energy crisis characterized by a lack of electricity access and a coal-dominated energy mix. The document argues that overcoming this requires a combination of regional cooperation to manage hydropower resources and the deployment of decentralised solutions like mini-grids for rural areas, while addressing systemic barriers such as poor project preparation and inadequate regulatory frameworks.
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Document type: Research paper
Confronting Carbon Lock: Canada's Oil Sands
This policy brief examines the economic resilience of Canada's oil sands and the resulting 'carbon lock-in,' arguing that continued production could create a global oil oversupply that hinders the low-carbon transition and undermines international climate action.
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Document type: Policy brief
United States: Making Arctic Nation
The paper examines the evolution of US Arctic policy, noting a transition from a 'reluctant' actor to an active proponent of regional cooperation. Using frame analysis, it identifies a recurring focus on economic development and national competitiveness, while observing a shift in security perspectives from military-centric nation-building toward energy supply and climate change implications.
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Document type: Research paper
Who uses sustainable land management practices and what are the costs and benefits: insights from Kenya
The research identifies that simple SLM practices like manuring and intercropping provide high benefit-to-cost ratios and positive net present value through 2030, whereas high-cost practices like terraces and agroforestry have lower ratios and longer break-even periods. The study recommends prioritising simple practices in policy while using subsidies and economic measures to support high-cost practices that offer broader societal benefits.
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Document type: Research paper
Unravelling past impacts of climate change and land management on historic peatland development using proxy-based reconstruction, monitoring data and process modelling
The study compares TA-based reconstructions of water-table depth (WTD) against instrumentally monitored data and MILLENNIA model predictions. While monitored and modelled WTD showed strong agreement, TA reconstructions were consistently deeper. The research suggests that discrepancies between TA predictions and model outputs, particularly between 1830 and 1930, may be explained by grouse moor management and drainage, which lead to predicted carbon losses and reduced methane emissions.
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Document type: Research paper
UrbanCircle
The UrbanCircle project, an initiative by the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI), focuses on transforming urban waste streams—including wastewater, excreta, and food waste—into valuable products like fertilisers, biogas, and dry fuels. Using the Naivasha sub-county in Kenya as an initial study site, the project employs a three-step process: inventorying waste and demand, co-developing future scenarios with stakeholders, and using the REVAMP (Resource Value Mapping) tool to estimate economic costs and benefits. The initiative argues that shifting from a linear to a circular economy can reduce environmental degradation, mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, and create new business opportunities for local entrepreneurs.
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Document type: Briefing
Powering Africa
The SADC region faces a significant electricity supply-demand gap, with 68% of residents lacking access and a heavy reliance on coal, primarily driven by South Africa. The report argues for a dual approach: strengthening the Southern African Power Pool (SAPP) through better regional regulation and transboundary projects, and scaling up renewable energy mini-grids in rural areas. It highlights that while the region has vast solar, wind, and hydro potential, investment is hindered by poor policy frameworks and the financial insolvency of national utilities.
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Document type: Report
Rethinking Southern Africa’s energy crisis
The document analyzes the energy crisis in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and Southern African Power Pool (SAPP) regions, highlighting a significant gap between electricity generation and demand. It identifies key obstacles, including inadequate infrastructure investment, the insolvency of national utilities due to low tariffs, and the disproportionate influence of South Africa's coal-dominated energy system. The authors argue that while energy crises often push states toward inward-looking policies, regional cooperation, harmonized regulation, and transboundary projects offer the most viable path to energy security and economic development.
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Document type: Briefing
Confronting carbon lock-in: Canada’s oil sands
The document argues that existing Canadian oil sands projects are 'locked in' because their low operating costs make them resilient to oil price drops. This resilience may lead to a global oversupply of oil, which slows the transition to low-carbon energy outside Canada. The author estimates that limiting Canadian oil production to current levels (1.5 billion barrels annually) instead of following projected growth to 2.1 billion barrels by 2030 could avoid 50 to 150 million tonnes of CO2 globally. The brief suggests that managing oil production levels could have a climate impact comparable to Canada's domestic sectoral emission reductions under the Pan-Canadian Framework.
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Document type: Briefing
Contemporary coal dynamics in Indonesia
The document analyzes the rapid expansion of Indonesia's coal sector, driven by political decentralization and intertwined interests between politicians and mining companies. It examines the resulting environmental and social legacies, recent government attempts to regulate the sector through licensing reforms and production caps, and the impact of global shifts toward renewable energy and divestment from coal.
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Document type: Research paper
Cascading biases against poorer countries
The document critiques a study by Robiou du Pont et al. which claimed that wealthier nations, such as EU members, have made more equitable contributions to Paris Agreement goals than poorer nations like India and China. The authors of the letter contend that the study's methodology is skewed, specifically citing the over-prominence of "grandfathering" as an allocation principle when representing IPCC equity categories.
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Document type: Statement