Sweden’s top aid priorities in the year ahead are climate change and climate financing; gender equality and sexual reproductive health rights; and conflict prevention and peacebuilding, Isabella Lövin, the country’s minister for international development cooperation told Devex in an interview.

Sweden’s development aid budget for 2018 is 49 billion Swedish krona ($6.19 billion), which is about 1 percent of the country’s gross national income. The country is also expected to reduce the amount of money that is set aside in its aid budget for asylum costs in Sweden.

Devex caught up with Lövin for a Q&A.

How do you approach your three priorities of climate change, gender equality, and conflict prevention?

It’s about giving the world a chance and if we don’t tackle climate change and if we don’t adjust the inequalities between men and women worldwide, we will never attain a sustainable world. We also need to work with conflict prevention and peacebuilding but that is trying to mend something that is already broken. So we need to build sustainable societies, and I think women have a central part in that.

Read more from the interview with Lövin on Sweden's world priorities by Adva Saldinger at Devex