In the central highlands of Madagascar, deforestation and erosion have carved massive gullies called lavaka into the grass-covered lands cultivated by local farmers, threating to destroy their very livelihood. But the farmers, part of a long lineage of laborers who had tilled the land for generations, turned an environmental catastrophe into an advantage.
Recognizing that organic matter in the lavaka had turned the steep-walled chasms into fertile pockets of soil, they planted fruit trees and crops inside of them, creating a new form of agroforestry.
University of Miami alumna Alizé Carrère first heard about their remarkable story of adaptation while sitting in an undergraduate geography class in Montreal, Canada. “I was intrigued and wanted to learn more,” she recalled. So, with National Geographic funding in hand, she traveled to and lived in Madagascar for three months, riding dirt bikes throughout the island nation’s central highlands and talking to farmers about how they learned to adapt to severe erosion.
“And that’s what kick-started it all,” Carrère said of her unquenchable thirst to learn more about what it means to adapt to climate change and environmental challenges.
As a National Geographic Explorer, she has traveled the world, meeting with locals and documenting their on-the-ground methods to adapt to a changing climate. In Bangladesh, she reported on farmers who subsist through severe monsoon floods by planting crops on rafts made of water hyacinth and bamboo rods.
Carrère talks with Tania Rashid, co-host of the Floating Gardens of Bangladesh episode of the ADAPTATION series, about methods to create floating gardens to grow crops during monsoon season. Photo: Andy Maser
On the Pacific archipelago of Vanuatu, she reported on the efforts of Nguna and Pele island residents to control outbreaks of crown-of-thorns starfish that feed on climate-stressed corals.
And in India’s remote Ladakh region, she documented the efforts of an engineer and a Buddhist monk who create ice stupas—large, artificial cone-shaped glaciers that store winter meltwater and release it during the growing season, when water is scarce.
Her globe-trotting scientific exploits were featured as part of the PBS Digital Studios series “ADAPTATION.”
Today, with a newly minted Ph.D. in ecosystem science and policy, Carrère is still raising awareness of the strategies some people are coming up with to adjust to climate stresses. And after a year that saw 27 individual weather and climate disasters with at least $1 billion in damages, her research couldn’t be timelier.
Her latest endeavor: an in-depth study of climatopias—architectural projects such as floating settlements and green structures that address climate change adaptation through design.
“It’s much more than glossy city projects,” Carrère explained. “A climatopia must be a project that asks, what are the political, economic, and social dimensions of this design that are going to influence the lives of the inhabitants?”
Globally, dozens of climatopia projects are either on the drawing board or under construction—chief among them, a 15-acre floating community in the South Korean port city of Busan. But are such futuristic projects feasible, and will they benefit all groups, even the marginalized?
“Those are the million-dollar questions I’ve attempted to answer in my research,” Carrère said.
In a peer-reviewed study recently published in the journal One Earth, she collaborates with researchers from the Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science as well as the School of Architecture to evaluate the promise of climatopias, analyzing their effectiveness, justice, and feasibility. Her analysis concluded that climatopias can be transformational climate solutions when they consider their embodied carbon footprint, are participatory and affordable designs, and could actually be built or provoke critical thought about decarbonization and adaptation.
In a second study, published in the journal Environmental Research: Climate, Carrère evaluates some 66 climatopia proposals from around the world, identifying six primary types (fortify, forest, float, reduce, reuse, and retreat). She concluded that two of those (reduce and reuse) show the most promise for advancing transformative climate response, while climatopia projects such as forested skyscrapers, while visually appealing, only replicate the status quo.
While the Madagascar trip piqued Carrère’s interest in climate adaptation, it was a centuries-old oak that put her on the path to environmental awareness. “My childhood home was wrapped around a 300-year-old oak tree,” said Carrère, who, during her time at the University, conducted research in the Rosenstiel School’s Department of Environmental Science and Policy and the Abess Center for Ecosystem Science and Policy. “In our family, nature was a huge part of our lives.”
She sees “hope and possibility” for the future of adaptation.
“Adaptation can be about people living an experience in real time and trying to make their way through to the next day,” she said. “I witnessed that in Vanuatu. I saw it in Bangladesh, and I saw it in India. And something I’ve struggled with is trying to talk about adaptation in a way that celebrates human ingenuity and resourcefulness without downplaying the gravity of the challenges we face. We must tell stories in a way that doesn’t make us take the foot off the gas pedal for the transformational change we need.”
