Research Expertise and Interest

international rural development and conservation; international resource policy, water resources, international aid policy. extractive industries in developing countries/global south.

Research Description

Claudia Carr is professor emeriti in the Department of Nutritional Science and Toxicology.  She is primarily involved in research concerning alternative types of rural development policies in terrestrial (especially drylands and river basin environments) and coastal and offshore resources in the ‘Third World.’ Her approach to development problems, for a number of years in Africa but also in parts of Latin America and Asia, entails identifying the global, national and local processes involved in development (and conservation), including the constraints they present for state and locally based policy and practice. The international aid process provides a major focus of this work, largely because of its pervasive influence on development policy and practice in developing countries. Beyond the consideration of international and national level political and economic influences in local development policies, my work focuses on internal ethnic and socioeconomic conditions and the changing nature of the natural resource base itself as factors of recent historical change and future resource management options. Much of her research has involved ‘indigenous’ populations and their resources, from African agropastoral to coastal agro-fishing economic contexts, including in western Latin America and the southern Pacific region.