SEI’s new strategy sets a clear and ambitious path for the organization. Learn how we are adapting our research agenda for the coming five years.
SEI’s strategy for 2025–29 brings continuity, as it builds on the strength of our legacy, our successes, our identity and core principles. But it is also about renewal: it adapts our research agenda to a turbulent world, with revised priorities for change, an updated theory of change, five strategic directions, and a concerted global effort to work even better together as One SEI. This strategy prepares us to serve as an effective partner in driving change for a better future.
There is an urgent need for greater action on climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution. Economic and social divides are deepening, while drastic shifts in geopolitical relations and alliances make international cooperation much more challenging.
But opportunities for sustainable development are growing, with rapid advances in technology and investment in renewable energy, electrified transport and industry processes. This has driven surging demand for minerals and competition for land resources, creating new tensions and vulnerabilities. Entirely new challenges and opportunities are emerging as AI technologies scale at intense speed.
Photo: Camila Garcia / SEI.
As multiple crises converge, the world must match goals with action and seize opportunities for change. Our response will be guided by five new strategic directions.
| Direction | In detail |
| Boost research for implementation | Because the world must act faster on commitments and goals, we are launching a new strategic outcome to help accelerate implementation. |
| Pursue innovative research on emerging topics | Our new research directions include critical raw materials and mining, the sustainability dimensions of AI, and links between climate transitions and international security. |
| Deepen engagement in research-to-policy networks | We will provide shared resources and opportunities to connect research to policy and generate trust and ownership among stakeholders. |
| Strengthen data use and analysis | We will focus on quantitative datasets and time-series data, as well as developing analytics, including AI tools, to better interpret and make use of datasets. |
| Promote “One SEI” | Better collaboration and integration between our teams and centres will drive synergies and creativity, making a stronger offer to partners and tapping the full potential of our global organization. |
Vision: A sustainable, prosperous future for all.
Mission: To support decision-making and induce change towards sustainable development around the world by providing integrative knowledge that bridges science, policy and practice in the field of environment and development.
This strategy continues to build on the foundations that have enabled us to serve the sustainability agenda for 35 years.
Stockholm Environment Institute is a research institute established in 1989 under Swedish law as a non-profit foundation. It is founded on the principles of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in 1972 and the Stockholm Declaration, from which its name is derived.
SEI focuses on the connection between human development and the environment.
Our mandate, as established in our statutes by the Swedish Parliament, is to “initiate, conduct and disseminate studies and other research, and disseminate knowledge within the field of environment”. In doing so SEI “shall co-operate with organizations, public authorities, institutions, companies and individuals worldwide”.
Today, we describe this as “research and engagement”: we lead with high quality research, which provides opportunities for engagement.
Our researchers and specialists carry out a wide range of scientific studies and assessments, produce transdisciplinary knowledge, develop software tools, build networks, engage with policy and decision making, capacity building, and much more.
To deliver on our vision, mission and mandate, we rely on a distributed centre structure, a culture of creative and effective collaboration, and our capable and trusted people.
We place a strong emphasis on research integrity and ethical practice, and uphold six core principles. SEI is:
Photo: Eduar Monsalve / SEI.
We realize it is a complex task to bring about societal change through research and engagement, because change is often the result of many factors, both within and beyond any single agent’s sphere of influence.
Over the past 35 years, SEI has developed a way of working – a theory of change – that has partnership at its core, because we understand that close collaboration with partners and stakeholders is central to results and change, alongside gathering, understanding and applying evidence of what works.
Our core focus is on three areas where we are best equipped to make an impact: climate transitions, nature and resources, and health and wellbeing. For each area, we have identified a set of priorities that will guide our efforts, and where we can make a unique, evidence-based contribution.
| 1. Climate transitions | 2. Nature and resources | 3. Health and wellbeing |
|---|---|---|
| We work to bring about the transitions that limit further climate change through reduced emissions, and to enhance resilience and adaptation to the climate change that will happen. | We work on the governance of natural resources and ecosystems to promote sustainability. | We work toward better health and wellbeing across major environmental and resource domains. |
| Priorities for change | ||
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Within the impact areas outlined above, we work for results in four main ways, which we call outcomes: SEI seeks to change agendas, enhance capacity, improve decision-making, and accelerate implementation. Accelerating implementation is a new outcome for this strategy, and has been included to reflect the urgent need to move faster on enacting goals and agreements. The outcomes are outlined below, alongside just a few examples that illustrate our track record of results.
SEI’s Ploy Achakulwisut, left, and Sivan Kartha, centre, speak with Niklas Hagelberg of UNEP about the Production Gap Report at COP28 in Dubai, 2023.
Photo: Lynsi Burton / SEI.
SEI informs and influences agendas and discourse, including formal policy agendas, international agreements and treaties. We also aim for increased ambition in policies and agreements, to shift views, values and norms, and to focus greater attention on neglected but critical issues.
SEI has been a pioneer in turning the spotlight on fossil fuel production and its role in global climate policy. The agreement at COP28 to transition away from fossil fuels marked a historic milestone, reflecting the long-standing evidence presented by SEI and partners in the Production Gap Report. The pathway to impact started in 2019, when SEI and partners released the first data on the fossil fuel supply gap, which garnered worldwide coverage and the attention of government ministers, UN negotiators, journalists, civil society and high-profile activists. UN Secretary General António Guterres cited key findings from the report and called for states to do more to close the gap. Several countries soon announced new commitments to phase down fossil fuel supply as part of their climate mitigation policies. The Danish parliament voted to end offshore gas and oil extraction. Costa Rica also became the first country to include limits to fossil fuel production in its climate action plan under the UNFCCC. SEI’s research has also played a part in court rulings, for example in the District Court of The Hague, which in May 2021 ruled that Shell must cut its carbon dioxide emissions by 45%, with the judgement quoting the 2019 Production Gap Report.
SEI researcher Jessica Slater, right, works with trainees in Pakistan to learn LEAP, SEI’s flagship energy modelling software.
Photo: SEI.
SEI provides knowledge support, tools and guidance to empower individuals, communities, organizations and societies. This can mean support for educational programs or training on and co-development of methods and tools. SEI also helps to build networks, relationships and trust between different actors.
The Sustainable Mekong Research Network (SUMERNET) is a long-standing research network that informs and advances policy for sustainable development in the Mekong Region. SUMERNET aims to catalyse the transition to sustainability in the Mekong by delivering independent, policy-relevant knowledge on regional and transboundary sustainable development issues. Over the past two decades, SUMERNET has supported research that has driven a range of outcomes. For example, SUMERNET has enabled residents of Ban Phai, Thailand, to co-create a flood-risk map and early warning system, embedding their knowledge in the official flood management plan. This successful model resulted in THB 1.5 billion in government funding for sustainable solutions. At the local level, research in Ban Phai City led to a large-scale flood management project that has brought many benefits for local livelihoods. SUMERNET collaborates with a wide range of partners and builds cross-border ties among countries: it has grown from 14 founding members to now embrace more than 800 individual members from around 430 organizations.
Group photo at the SUMERNET Partners Meeting, 28-31 May 2024, Bangkok, Thailand.
Photo: SEI Asia.
SEI informs and supports decision-making via insights from our tools and published research, as well as more direct collaboration on strategies, policies and plans. SEI also empowers people to take a bigger role in decision-making.
SEI supports more than 20 low- and middle-income countries in developing strategies that integrate planning to achieve both the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals. Our long-term research and engagement in these countries has raised their climate ambitions and in doing so paved the way to achieve other social and economic co-benefits. In each country, SEI has applied its flagship energy modelling and co-benefit tools, LEAP and LEAP-IBC, together with government agencies and academics to enhance countries’ climate action plans (i.e. nationally determined contributions, or NDCs) and integrate sustainable development benefits into updated NDCs. Using our LEAP-IBC tool, SEI also supported the inclusion of the first-ever quantified statement in an NDC of local health gains that could be achieved by meeting climate change mitigation targets: in Nigeria, 30 000 premature deaths could be prevented by 2030 by implementing its updated NDC.
This strategy introduces this new strategic outcome because of the acute need to enact climate and development goals more urgently and effectively. We support action by developing roadmaps, guidelines and frameworks for investment, as well as through research to understand and co-create best practice and fresh approaches.
SEI’s Trase program provides strategic data and insights for governments and companies to understand, measure and implement policies to reduce deforestation and meet international commitments. Trase worked with the French government to support the implementation of its strategy to end deforestation linked to imports of agricultural commodities. In Brazil, SEI and partners deployed Trase insights to catalyse action among leading private and public sector actors on illegal deforestation in Brazil’s soy supply chain. Based on this work, the European Feed Manufacturers’ Federation (FEFAC) signed a Statement of Support for the Cerrado Manifesto, and, in October 2020, global food companies including McDonald’s, Unilever and Tesco called for greater ambition from the UK government on due diligence to address global deforestation.
Lone cattle roam dry, degraded areas cleared for pastures from the Amazon rainforest. São Félix do Xingu, Brazil. August 2023.
Photo: Mairon G. Bastos Lima / SEI.
Our strategy for 2025–29 not only sets a clear and ambitious path for the organization, it also acts as the umbrella under which our centres and core functions develop their strategic roadmaps, annual plans and results reports.
The strategy is accompanied by a dedicated Results and Learning Framework designed to guide follow-up, learning and reporting against our strategic objectives.
The Results and Learning Framework is used to:
By annually following up on our planned activities, and learning both from successes and setbacks, we hold ourselves accountable to our plans and demonstrate to donors and stakeholders whether and how we have met our goals.
Our strategy steers our research direction and operational policies in five-year periods.
Journal article / The authors present a protocol to systematically map the application of "charisma" in biodiversity conservation within peer-reviewed academic literature.
Media coverage / Use of solar tent dryers, fish smoking kilns, and solar-powered freezers.
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