Ed Carr

Ed Carr is Centre Director and Senior Scientist at SEI US. Carr arrived at SEI in 2024 after a two-decade career spanning academia and various environment and development institutions, including USAID, the World Bank and the Global Environmental Facility.

Authoring more than 90 publications on issues of global development, agrarian livelihoods, adaptation to climate change, and the changing global environment, Carr’s work focuses on understanding and addressing challenges emerging at the intersection of adaptation, resilience and development. This research is marked by a commitment to linking academic research on development and global change with practical applications in policy, implementation, monitoring, evaluation and learning.

Carr has made contributions to significant global environmental assessments and policy frameworks. He is currently a coordinating lead author of the IPBES Transformative Change Assessment and a member of the Climate-Security Roundtable of the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine. He served as the lead author for three prior global environmental assessments: the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, the United Nations Environment Programme’s Fourth Global Environment Outlook, and the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report.

Carr holds a Ph.D. in Geography from the University of Kentucky, and a Ph.D. in Anthropology from Syracuse University.