Environment for Development

"The Environment for Development initiative is a capacity building program in environmental economics focusing on research, policy advice, and teaching in China, Central America, Ethiopia, Kenya, South Africa, and Tanzania."

This is what EfD says on the theme of agricultural research:

"Land degradation threatens food security and the sustainability of agricultural production in many developing countries. In response, government and development agencies have invested substantial resources in promoting sustainable land management technologies (SLMTs). In spite of the great efforts to promote bunds, SLMTs have not been widely adopted by smallholders in many developing countries.

Not only are the technologies not widely adopted but there is even some evidence that conservation structures, once constructed, are partially or fully removed. In some cases, pilot demonstration projects remain unreplicated on smallholder farms. These findings raise the following questions:

• Why are promoted resource conserving measures not widely adopted by land users?
• Why is there limited success in promoting resource conserving measures?

The research activities on SLM in each EfD center, which depend on the agricultural policy of the specific  country, were developed to answer these critical policy questions."

Also other themes such as Forestry and Climate Change are important.
I recommend visiting the organization's project and research pages for further (scientific) information.

Here is an interesting short article found on the website:
Climate change financing - what is the role of development cooperation? 

"Together with his colleague Emelie César he (Olof Drakenberg) has written the report, Old, New and Future Funding for Environment and Climate Change - the Role of Development Cooperation, which is a background study commissioned by Sida that feeds into the ongoing work on Swedish government policy on environment and climate change.

Weak rule of law, lack of transparency and low administrative capacity risk hamper climate funding to poor countries. The experience of climate finance coming through the Clean Development Mechanisms is illustrative. The least developed countries have attracted about 5 per cent of climate finance with the large majority ending up in China and India.

”The most important role for development cooperation in relation to environment finance in general and climate change finance specifically is to reduce the bottlenecks that inhibit financial flows and effective delivery, so that even the poorest countries benefit from climate change funds. In practice, support for strengthening institutional capacity, increase transparency and combat corruption becomes even more important. In addition, Sida and other donors should prevent the proliferation of funds and conditions that increase transaction costs and reduces national ownership.""