The overarching goal of this project is to support the implementation and monitoring of the 2030 Agenda through collaborative partnerships between five Swiss higher education institutions and two partner institutions from Kenya and Ethiopia and their multi-thematic and multi-stakeholder networks. The partnerships are designed to enhance societal dialogue and support policy processes, by developing and testing innovative, multisectoral approaches for data and knowledge sharing at the land-health-conflict nexus.
Concretely, the project aims to develop and test a showcase - that would act as an incubator - for scaling out new knowledge generation approaches by amalgamating periodical official data sources with near real-time big data from earth observation and social media sources.
Combining these different data sources is expected to lead to enhanced knowledge provision for dealing with trade-offs and synergies between the target dimensions, which are often contradictory. The project will then test the new approaches and processes in dealing with conceptual challenges inherent in the 2030 Agenda. This is intended to lead to improved steering and monitoring of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), as well as to more informed policy processes amid interrelated targets in differing sociopolitical contexts. The project has selected to focus on the interlinkages of SDGs 15, 3, and 16 (i.e. “Life on Land”, “Good Health & Well-being”, “Peace, Justice & Strong Institutions”).

Project summary
 

Swiss Partners

Centre for Development and Environment (CDE), University of Bern
Prof Dr Thomas Breu,

Hochschule für Technik Rapperswil (HSR), University of Applied Sciences of Eastern Switzerland (FHO)
Prof Stefan Keller

Swiss Peace Foundation, University of Basel,
Prof Dr Laurent Goetschel

Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute (Swiss-TPH), University of Basel
Prof Dr Jurg Utzinger

Pädagogische Hochschule Bern (PHBern)
Matthias Probst

South partners

Centre for Training and Integrated Research in ASAL Development (CETRAD), Kenya
Dr. Boniface Kiteme

Water and Land Resource Centre (WLRC), Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia
Dr. Gete Zeleke