Interview: Development Expert Relies On Resilience of Villagers

Geographer Edward Carr has spent much of his time working in sub-Saharan Africa, where climate change and other environmental threats present a growing challenge to the local people. In an interview with Yale Environment 360, he describes how his experience in Ghana taught him that villagers were “repositories of information about how to improve the human condition cheaply and with minimal environmental impact.” Carr contends that any outside aid, including funds for adapting to a warming world, must build on this inherent resilience. “One of the most important and fascinating things that comes out of my experience,” says Carr, “is that people are enormously capable with access to very limited resources, while managing serious economic and environmental instability.”
Read the interview