The Council on Strategic Risks (CCS) has announced it has selected Erin Sikorsky as its new director of the Center for Climate and Security.

Sikorsky previously served as the CCS Deputy Director. CSR is a nonprofit, non-partisan security policy institute devoted to anticipating, analyzing and addressing core systemic risks to security in the 21st century, with special examination of the ways in which these risks intersect and exacerbate one another. 

“As we’ve seen repeatedly this summer, no corner of the world is safe from climate change-driven hazards. In 2021 alone, these hazards have taken thousands of lives and done millions of dollars of damage to critical infrastructure,” said Sikorsky. “Beyond these first order impacts, however, are a series of more complex security concerns that arise as climate change compounds other risks — including extremism, poor governance and corruption, rising inequality and state fragility, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and other health security risks.

Prior to joining CCS, Sikorsky served on the U.S. National Intelligence Council where she led the U.S. intelligence community’s environmental and climate security analysis and co-authored the quadrennial Global Trends report, the U.S. government’s unclassified strategic forecasting effort.

She is also the founding chair of the Climate Security Advisory Council, a Congressionally mandated group designed to facilitate coordination between the intelligence community and U.S. government scientific agencies on climate security matters. Sikorsky is an adjunct professor at George Mason University, a visiting fellow at University of Pennsylvania’s Perry World House, and serves on the advisory board of the Smith College Center for Environment, Ecological Design and Sustainability.

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