Meet Caroline Sawe, Research Associate

My original training was in sustainable development because I wanted to understand it more broadly. Right after completing my master’s, I started working for the French Wind Energy Association. While doing that work, I realized that climate change mitigation was really something that I wanted to focus on. I then moved back to Kenya to continue my work.

When I was working with local authorities in Kenya and Uganda, I noticed that when you talk about climate change, people often see it as a huge thing that they are not capable of handling, it’s too big. But when you talk about air pollution, they can see the health impacts directly. You can tell someone: this many people are dying in your country because of air pollution, and here’s where you can improve.

People seemed more confident talking about air pollution than climate change, and that’s when I got really interested in the connection between the two. The great thing is, you can address both air quality and climate change at the same time: they’re two sides of the same coin!

When I was in East Africa, I saw that SEI was doing important work on air pollution, especially from their Nairobi office. At that time, I decided to take a step back and reflect on my career and what I really wanted to do. I told myself that if I could find people who would help me combine my interests and knowledge on climate change and air quality, or air pollution, I would be really happy. I asked myself: what do I know? what do I need to know? And then I found York’s research.

What drew me to SEI York in particular was the focus on the nexus between climate change and air quality! SEI York is one of the few institutions working on these two issues together, and when I saw that, I thought, “Yes, I have to work for them!”