Development and Aid Policy

The Development and Aid Policy Team at SEI Headquarters is a group of researchers working on topics related to human development and environment. We conduct research from local to global scale, providing state of the art interdisciplinary research, analysis and training to inform policy and practice at the nexus of environment and development research and policy.

We offer a unique “life cycle support” facility to support the design and implementation of aid programmes. Working with partners around the world, we aim to support more equitable and sustainable development through demand driven and solution-oriented research and decision support.

We bring knowledge and expertise in the following thematic areas: international development, aid policy and aid governance, sanitation, water, energy access and household energy, development finance, conflict and peacebuilding, and development intervention design.

We see a growing acceptance across national governments, global institutions, practitioners and the research community that there is a need to embrace more consciously inter- and transdisciplinary perspectives to addressing future developmental and environmental challenges. This will require drawing on research capacity from an array of different academic disciplines and involving a range of stakeholders from local to global to provide well informed solutions to the most pressing development challenges.

Given SEI’s decades-long commitment to both environmental and development research and the diversity of skills within our team, we are in a very strong position to occupy a leading position in the future in this interdisciplinary research area.