David Lopez-Carr's Page

What is your name?

David

What is your job title?

Professor

What organisation do you work for?

University of California, Santa Barbara

Website

http://www.geog.ucsb.edu/~carr/

What aspects of biodiversity are you most interested in?

Agriculture, Education, Forests, Oceans, Poverty and biodiversity, Protected areas

What languages do you speak?

English
Spanish
Portuguese
French
Italian
Qeqchi Maya

Please use this section to introduce yourself in more detail, adding any other relevant information not included in your previous answers. The site administrator will use this answer to decide whether to approve your membership

David López-Carr works on links among population, health, rural development, agriculture,
and marine and forest resource use and conservation through ongoing projects in Latin America,
Africa, and Asia. López-Carr received his BA in Spanish Literature (with a minor in Geology) from
Bates College, and his PhD in Geography from the University of North Carolina, where he also held
a NIH post-doctoral fellowship in Biostatistics in the School of Public Health and Carolina
Population Center. López-Carr has lived, worked, and traveled extensively in Latin America and in
66 countries worldwide.
López-Carr has worked as a consultant for the Guatemalan Planning Ministry on the
implementation of the Millenium Development Goals; for World Wildlife Fund on integrated population,
health, and environment programs in global priority conservation zones; for USAID on the Regional
Plan for Amazonian Biodiversity Conservation, and on the conceptual framework for Emerging Trends in
Environment and Economic Growth in Latin America and the Caribbean; for National Geographic and
Population Reference Bureau on the AP Population Teaching Initiative; for Direct Relief International
on mapping health-environment dynamics; for The Nature Conservancy on population, environment
dynamics and conservation planning in Latin America; for Conservation International on population,
health, and environment monitoring; and for the Obama administration’s $63 billion six year Global
Health Initiative.
López-Carr is the former Chair of the Human Dimensions of Global Change (HDGC) and
the Population Specialty Groups (PSG) of the Association of American Geographers (AAG). He is a
steering member of the International Geographical Union (IGU) Land Use/Cover Change (LUCC)
Commission, of the Population-Environment Research Network (PERN), of the International
Human Dimensions Program, and of the UN-sponsored Project on Global Environmental Change
and Human Health (GECHH). Nationally, he has served on research proposal review and planning
committees for the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). He is
the Cultural Ecology and Population Geography Representative for the Association of American
Geographers Outreach Project and serves as associate editor for the journal Population and
Environment. López-Carr also served on the Eco-agriculture action committee at the 2002 World
Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Currently an Associate Professor of Geography at the University of California, Santa
Barbara, and director of the Human-Environment Dynamics Lab (HED), Dr. López-Carr holds
affiliate positions in three interdepartmental programs: Latin American and Iberian Studies, Global
and International Studies, and Marine Studies. López-Carr is the UCSB representative to the
University of California Global Health Institute (UCGHI) and is a steering member of the University
of California’s Center of Expertise on Migration and Health (COEMH). López-Carr has served on
over 20 University and Departmental committees at UCSB. Among these, he currently serves on the
UCSB Faculty Senate Committee for Equity and Diversity and the Committee for Sustainability.
While at UCSB, he has served on over 25 PhD committees (12 as a principal advisor), and
has authored over 70 articles, books, and reports on migration, population, health, development, and
environmental change. His research is conducted with colleagues and students thanks to over two
million dollars raised through over 50 fellowships, grants, and awards from NASA, NSF, NIH, the
Mellon and Fulbright Foundations, and numerous other sources. Notable among his scholarly
achievements are paper awards from the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, the Latin
American SG of the AAG, the Population SG of the AAG, the Nystrom Prize for best paper based
on a dissertation in Geography, a University of North Carolina Post-doctoral Award for Research
Excellence, and a shared Nobel Peace Prize for his participation in the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC).