Dr Carmenta is an environmental social scientist specialising in interdisciplinary research at the intersection of environment and development, environmental risk and the relationship between place and well-being. She is particularly interested in the design, performance and social equity of environmental governance. Her work engages with an interdisciplinary set of collaborators, scales of analysis and analytical lenses in order explore what strategies perform better to reconcile the imperatives of food production, forest protection and human wellbeing in dynamic forest agriculture landscapes of the global South. In these contested frontiers, uncontrolled, recurrent and catastrophic wildfires have become a “new normal” in the context of the Capitalocene. A central strand of Rachel's work centers on the tropical wildfire complex -a leading environmental challenge at the interface of social and natural systems.

Her current research seeks to recognize the diverse interests, politics and burdens of land use change and uncontrolled fire, with a particular focus on expanding conventional impact metrics to capture the often invisible, place-based impacts of landscape flammability, fire governance and conservation and development interventions on food security, health and locally defined human well-being. She is also working to explore the ways in which the plural values of nature can be embedded in policy decisions including through futures work. Rachel’s work is focused primarily in the Brazilian Amazon and Indonesian peatland frontiers where she has lived collectively for 9 years, and can be summarized along the following broad themes:  

• Political ecology of agrarian and environmental change
• Human dimensions of tropical fire - particularly rainforest fires
• Environmental justice and bio-cultural approaches to natural resource management  
• Relationship between the environment, plural values of natuer and human-wellbeing
• Conservation and development

Rachel is Associate Editor for People and Nature the journal of relational thinking from the BES, and PLOS Sustainability and Transformation. She Chairs the Forests, Fires and Peoples working group hosted by FLARE, is Chapter Lead for the IUFRO Global Forest Expert Panel (GFEP) on Forests for Social and Economic Resilience, is part of the Scientific Committee for the Forests and Livelihoods network (FLARE) and sites on the Advisory Board of the Global Diversity Foundation. Rachel has served as consultant to a number of professional bodies (including for Global Landscapes Forum, UNESCO, Natural England and Bioversity International). 

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Rachel is accepting PhD students with shared interests. Please get in touch if you are pursuing a scholarship or self-funded. Competitative studentships may also be available. 

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Dr Rachel Carmenta is Tyndall Centre Lecturer in Climate Change and Global Development, a position held between the Tyndall Centre and the School of Global Development. Rachel co-leads the Achieving well-being with Climate Action research theme within the Tyndall Centre, is a member of the Global Environmental Justice Research group, and contributes to post-graduate and undergraduate teaching within the School of Global Development. 

Before joining the Tyndall Centre and School of International Development at UEA, Rachel held a Frank Jackson Research Fellowship at the University of Cambridge with Wolfson College, the Conservation Research Institute (UCCRI) and the Department of Geography, prior to which she was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) and based in Indonesia. She holds a PhD from Lancaster Environment Center at Lancaster University. Her orginal training was in Ecology, BSc Hons at the University of East Anglia.

Current PhD students:

Alice Hsu (ENV): Fighting fire with fire: global impacts of climate change on wildfire mitigation using prescribed burns

Heather Gray (DEV): Tides of Change: Gender, Wellbeing and Governance in Scotland’s Buchan Fishery. 

Cherie Leman-Richardson (LAW): Ecocide in the Amazon: the Right Law for the Right Place? A Qualitative Exploration of Eligibility, Social Justice and the Genocide-Ecocide Nexus

Grania Power (DEV): Following the light: grounding a ‘brightspots’ approach to avoid future Amazonian fires. 

Natasha Hill (DEV): Warming the heart: identifying how transforming tropical fire discourses can contribute towards more effective and equitable governance.