Francesco Femia
Co-Founder and Research Director, The Council on Strategic Risks and The Center for Climate and Security
Francesco Femia is Co-Founder and Research Director of the Council on Strategic Risks (CSR) and the Center for Climate and Security, as well as Co-Founder and Senior Advisor at the International Military Council on Climate and Security (IMCCS). He oversees all of CSR’s research and analysis efforts, including at the Center for Climate and Security, the Janne E. Nolan Center on Strategic Weapons. and the Converging Risks Lab, and acts as Editor-in-Chief for all the organization’s publications.
Francesco served as Chief Executive Officer of the Council on Strategic Risks from 2018-2020, President of the Center for Climate and Security from 2011-2018, and Co-Chair of the Climate and Security Advisory Group from 2011-2018 – the primary forum for climate and security dialogue in the U.S. national security community. He also served as Co-Founder and Director of the International Military Council on Climate and Security (IMCCS) from 2019-2020.
He has published extensively on the security implications of climate change, water stress and natural resource mismanagement in Syria and North Africa, including in the seminal report The Arab Spring and Climate Change, the SAIS Review of International Affairs, and the Brown Journal of World Affairs, and has written, ghost-written and edited hundreds of articles and opinion editorials on topics including climate security, ecological security, biosecurity, nuclear proliferation, geostrategic competition and humanitarian affairs. He has also been a regular public commentator on how national security, defense and intelligence communities address climate change-related threats, appearing on a range of television programs and the feature film documentary, Age of Consequences. He has been frequently-cited and interviewed in both mainstream and niche media outlets, including USA Today, Forbes, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Economist, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, NBC News, the National Review, the New Republic, the BBC, the Atlantic, Defense News, Defense One, and Stars and Stripes, among others.
Previously, Francesco was Program Director at the Connect U.S. Fund from 2007-2011, where he led grant programs on climate resilience, nuclear nonproliferation, civil-military affairs, global financial integrity, and mass atrocity prevention and response.
Francesco holds a master’s degree from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), where he focused on European foreign policy and security issues, and a bachelor’s degree from Emerson College. He served as a mentor and strategist for the Obama Foundation Scholars program, and on the Advisory Board of the Nuclear Security Working Group.
Email: ffemia (at) csrisks.org