History of SLUSE

The SLUSE program - or formally the Danish University Consortium on Sustainable Land Use and Natural Resource Management - started in 1998 and was initially funded by the Danish Co-operation for Environment and Development (DANCED), but was taken over by the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Danida) in late 2001. The external funding of the program ended in 2003 and the collaboration has since been funded by internal university funds. The consortium was initially composed of University of Copenhagen, the Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University (which later merged with University of Copenhagen) and Roskilde University. 

Joint teaching programmes were set up with partners in Malaysia, Thailand and Southern Africa and a number of joint courses and teaching was developed, including the 'Joint basic field course' (now entitled 'Practicing Interdisciplinary Field Research on the Environment') and 'Environmental Impact Assessment', both of which are still running. MSc Programmes were also set up in Thailand and Malaysia, and the Malaysian SLUSE programme at University Malaysia Sarawak is still running, see SLUSE-M (unimas.my).

The field course remains one of the most prominent legacies of the SLUSE programme and numerous new international partnerships have been developed over the course of time, including changing field destinations. Besides the initial partners, universities in Cambodia, Indonesia, Kenya, Poland, Italy, and Nepal have been (or still are) key partners.