Sida is a government agency working on behalf of the Swedish parliament and government, with the mission to reduce poverty in the world. Through our work and in cooperation with others, we contribute to implementing Sweden’s Policy for Global Development (PGU).
We work in order to implement the Swedish development policy that will enable poor people to improve their lives. Another part of our mission is conducting reform cooperation with Eastern Europe, which is financed through a specific appropriation. The third part of our assignment is to distribute humanitarian aid to people in need of assistance.
We carry out enhanced development cooperation with a total of 33 countries in Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America. Our selection of cooperation countries are based on political decisions made by the Swedish government.
Sida’s mission is to allocate aid and other funding. Our operations are managed by the government’s guidelines, describing the goals for each year’s operations and the size of the development aid budget.
Our staff members and their expertise assist the government with the assessments and the information it needs, in order to decide and implement its development assistance policy. We participate in the advocacy work for Sweden’s prioritised issues within the international development cooperation field, and we are in constant dialogue with other countries and international organisations. Part of our assignment is also to report statistics and disseminate information about our operations.
Our work is financed by tax money and we administer approximately half of Sweden’s total development aid budget. The other part is channelled through the ministry for Foreign Affairs. All our work should be performed in a cost-effective way with a strong focus on results.
Sida has more than 700 employees, located in our three offices in Sweden as well as abroad in our cooperation countries.
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Displaying 51 - 55 of 273Forest and agrarian transition, smallholder practices and the new forms of land governance: Building research
General
Questions of governance and access to resources have become even more important with new and emerging forms of land control in the global South. These have implications for smallholder livelihoods and forest futures. The analytical approaches used to deal with the processes of deforestation and agricultural changes, i.e. forest and agrarian transition models, are ill equipped to explain the complex interaction of forest conservation initiatives and local smallholding practices. There is a need to better understand the way new forms of land governance, such as REDD+, unfold locally and what effects they have on smallholders’ lifeworlds. An interdisciplinary team of researchers from SLU (Sweden), Nepal, and Brazil are working on these issues through country specific cases and cross-country comparisons. This project intends to strengthen the ongoing collaboration and also draw in Peruvian colleagues to deepen the comparative analysis. The collaboration among the researchers is expected to provide a solid ground for contextually informed relational analysis, producing high quality scientific outputs and cutting edge questions for future research. The proposed activities include analytical workshops, joint field work, stakeholder workshops and seminars in three countries, and will provide more space for networking and collaboration. We also plan to develop further research applications and lay groundwork for writing a book.
How tree cover affects groundwater resources across African tropical drylands
General
An estimated 80% of the global population lack secure water resources. Many also lack ready access to fuel wood and other tree derived benefits. However, the current scientific paradigm says that we must choose which problem to solve as increasing tree cover always reduces water availability. Consider the costs if this thinking is wrong. In Africa, 175 M ha of degraded lands are judged suitable for tree planting which could significantly enhance people’s livelihoods. Our previous research in the seasonally dry tropics indicates that an intermediate tree cover can often improve groundwater recharge. This need testing on a larger scale, but if confirmed will upend the prevailing view in hydrology and have profound implications for policies affecting millions of livelihoods and the environment. Thus, the aim of this project is to provide evidence for better policies and management that will benefit poor people in drylands by evaluating the novel “optimum tree cover theory” for groundwater recharge across African drylands. The project involves four leading institutions; SLU, ICRAF, WU and NMBU. We will use the Land Degradation Surveillance Framework; a unique dataset that is available across Africa. It consists of multiple variables, including tree cover and key soil variables. We will do complementary strategic measurements of soil water flow and tree water use to model groundwater recharge as a function of tree cover under common conditions of the seasonally dry tropics.
Agroforestry for sustainable livelihoods, environmental resilience and climate change adaptation
General
Steep slopes of the upland areas of Montane Mainland Southeast Asia are rapidly exploited for agriculture leading to challenges of surface runoff, erosion and soil degradation in turn leading to low yields and profitability of agriculture. Agroforestry (AF) with contour farming techniques is suggested as a solution to reduce soil erosion and land degradation, while improving farm productivity, food and nutrition security and aid in climate change adaptation. This project will assess options for profitable, sustainable, diversified farming systems on sloping land through integration of fruit trees, annual crops and perennial fodder crops. Specific objectives are to evaluate AF-contour farming systems´ potential (1) to buffer extreme weather events and contribute to climate change adaptation and resilience, (2) for soil conservation, system productivity and profitability, and identify success factors, (3) redesign mature AF systems to optimise productivity and profitability, and (4) to sustainably enhance smallholder livelihoods and factors affecting adoption. The proposed project will utilize existing on-farm field trials and demonstrations, and base-line data from an on-going project (Agroforestry for Livelihoods of Smallholder Farmers in Northwest Vietnam 2012-2021) and thus be able to carry out complementary and more in-depth research on mature AF systems. It will also include participatory data collection and AF system evaluation with farmers and extension officers.
The resilience and sustainability of soil microbial functions to climate change induced-drought in Ethiopia
General
Climate change will cause extreme fluctuations in precipitation and temperatures generating intense drought and rainfall events. This will affect the functioning of most ecosystems, but the most severely affected include the world’s poorest and food security challenged nations, including Ethiopia. Microorganisms control decomposition of organic matter (OM), and dominate the terrestrial contribution to the global carbon (C) cycle. Water availability is a decisive regulator of microbial processes, but they also depend on C-availability, creating a strong feedback with plants. We will investigate how microbial processes are influenced by changes in water availability across a gradient from cool moist to hot arid Ecosystems in Ethiopia. We will evaluate the effect of different land-uses and field experimental drought on the resilience of microbial functions. Insights will be included in ecosystem models, and used to guide land-use policy in Ethiopia. The aims are: 1. Defining the microbial moisture dependence, and the resilience of the microbial functions to rewetting a soil. 2. Determining both long-term (gradient across Ethiopia) and short-term (within site field-experiments) legacy effects of drought and dry-wet cycles on 1. 3. Disentangling the relative influence of the soil microbial community and land-use on 1. 4. Distinguishing how land-use, restoration of degraded soils, and plant material additions can affect the microbial resilience to drought and variable moisture.
Forest and agrarian transition, smallholder practices and the new forms of land governance: Building research
General
Questions of governance and access to resources have become even more important with new and emerging forms of land control in the global South. These have implications for smallholder livelihoods and forest futures. The analytical approaches used to deal with the processes of deforestation and agricultural changes, i.e. forest and agrarian transition models, are ill equipped to explain the complex interaction of forest conservation initiatives and local smallholding practices. There is a need to better understand the way new forms of land governance, such as REDD+, unfold locally and what effects they have on smallholders’ lifeworlds. An interdisciplinary team of researchers from SLU (Sweden), Nepal, and Brazil are working on these issues through country specific cases and cross-country comparisons. This project intends to strengthen the ongoing collaboration and also draw in Peruvian colleagues to deepen the comparative analysis. The collaboration among the researchers is expected to provide a solid ground for contextually informed relational analysis, producing high quality scientific outputs and cutting edge questions for future research. The proposed activities include analytical workshops, joint field work, stakeholder workshops and seminars in three countries, and will provide more space for networking and collaboration. We also plan to develop further research applications and lay groundwork for writing a book.