As Senior Analyst for Early Warning within the Environmental Early Action and Risk Tracking Hub (EEARTH), Chris is responsible for developing climate security scenarios and providing real-time monitoring updates through EEARTH. He also acts as a resource for the wider organisation on famine and food security, especially in conflict.

Chris has worked on multi-hazard early warning systems with the World Food Programme, the Food and Agriculture Organization, and REACH. His main focus has been famine and conflict early warning, including for five years in South Sudan and shorter periods in Afghanistan and Nigeria. He has also remotely supported similar work for Ethiopia, Sudan, and the Gaza Strip. He is a visiting fellow at the Feinstein International Center at Tufts University.

• Early warning
• Famine
• Starvation as a weapon of war
• South Sudan

• “‘Not Never Again, but Next Time’: Armed Conflict and Mass Starvation in South Sudan 2013–2019”, in Bridget Conley, and others (eds), Accountability for Mass Starvation: Testing the Limits of the Law, Oxford Monographs in International Humanitarian & Criminal Law (Oxford, 2022; online edn, Oxford Academic, 15 Dec. 2022).

• Famine in a NIAC’s Shadow–Other Situations of Violence and a Challenge for UNSCR 2417. 

• Sarkar, A., Spatz, B. J., de Waal, A., Newton, C., & Maxwell, D. (2021), The Political Marketplace Framework and Mass Starvation: How Can Humanitarian Analysis, Early Warning and Response Be Improved?, Journal of Humanitarian Affairs, 3(3), 43-55.