Centre for Development and the Environment
The Centre for Development and the Environment (, SUM) is a research institute which is part of the University of Oslo. Its focus areas are international development and environmental studies. History The Centre for Development and the Environment was established in 1990, following the work with the report Our Common Future (the Brundtland Report), presented by the Brundtland Commission chaired by Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland, and the increased focus on the environment and sustainable development. In 2000, the Program for Research and Documentation for a Sustainable Society (ProSus), formerly called the Project for an Alternative Future (established 1984), was merged into the Centre for Development and the Environment. ProSus was established on the initiative of 17 organisations and was funded by parliament over the Norwegian state budget; it was part of the Norwegian Research Council for Science and the Humanities from the early 1990s and became part of the University of Oslo in 1996. ProSus was discontinued as a separate programme in 2006. SUM is currently one of the few institutions in Scandinavia advancing synergic, interdisciplinary research on development and the environment, combining insights from the social sciences, natural sciences and humanities. SUM was also the academic home of