The agreement with Instituto Humboldt was signed at a meeting at Instituto Humboldt on 25 January, by SEI Executive Director Johan Kuylenstierna and Humboldt Director Brigitte Baptiste Ballera. The SEI delegation included David Purkey and Marisa Escobar of the SEI-US Water Resources group, which collaborated with Instituto Humboldt on applying a nexus approach in the Orinoco river basin. “Building closer ties with partners in Latin America is essential at a time when SEI is looking into the possibility of establishing a formal presence in the region,” said Kuylenstierna.
“This relationship builds on some areas of real complementarity between SEI and Instituto Humboldt’s expertise. While Humboldt is the leading research institute on biodiversity in Colombia, SEI is increasingly looking at the drivers and systems that affect biodiversity in the region: water resources, land use, international supply chains,” said SEI Research Director Måns Nilsson.
SEI’s relationship with Lund University has a long history, covering areas such as climate adaptation and low carbon transitions in Sweden, agriculture and food security, and, most recently, the 58 million SEK Mistra Geopolitics programme. Future research collaboration is being explored around areas such as bioeconomy.
“I’m very optimistic about this new agreement,” said Torbjörn von Schantz, Vice-Chancellor of Lund University. “It’s not enough for universities to produce facts and data; we need to work with institutes like SEI that can bring our findings to policy-makers.”
The signing of the SEI-Lund MoU took place at SEI’s Stockholm Headquarters on 30 January. The signing event included a seminar with presentations from both partners on areas of interesting research, such as bioeconomy, electric road transport and the Trase supply chain transparency platform.
“SEI believes in strong partnerships with other academic institutions. Together we are better prepared to address increasingly complex sustainability issues and provide support to policy-makers and decision-makers,” said Kuylenstierna.
