Lawrence Flint is Coordinator of Research into Climate, Vulnerability and Adaptation at Environmental Development Action (ENDA), based in Dakar, Senegal. He is also affiliated to the Centre of African Studies at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark where he is an occasional lecturer and the Institute of Social and Economic Research (INESOR) at the University of Zambia. Image
Lawrence researches across the disciplinary interface of social and ecological sciences. Specifically, he works on issues of climate change and variability, social and ecological vulnerability and adaptation in Sub-Saharan Africa. A particular feature of this work is community scale adaptation to climate related human and ecological vulnerability. Another feature of this work is developing human capacity in its various forms in order to be able to engage in adaptation action, thereby contributing to overall sustainable development.
Lawrence is a human and environmental geographer by discipline and has been working in the fields of social and environmental history and identity construction in southern and southern central Africa over the last ten years. He has published widely across these and the above themes.
Lawrence founded an NGO called Barotseland.com in Western Zambia in 2004 which works on issues such as HIV/AIDS prevention and education, as well as the valorisation of AIDS orphans and others in the community affected by this pandemic (working in unison with a national donor NGO). The NGO also works on themes of history and heritage and how local communities can extract value from these cultural attributes without losing their authenticity. The organisation has published several booklets relating to the latter theme.
Prior to these activities Lawrence spent 20 years in business management in Europe and Africa both for major trans-national corporations and in his own business. Linking all these activities is the theme of 'putting people first' while seeking social and economic development that respects the environments that local communities have shared for countless generations in the past.
Joined 2009
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