Erin Sills

Erin Sills is a Professor and Department Head in the Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources at North Carolina State University (College of Natural Resources). Her work bridges forest economics, policy evaluation, and sustainable development, focusing on global environmental challenges.

• Education: B.A. from Princeton University (1990), M.A. (1996) and Ph.D. (1998) from Duke University.

Dr. Sills' research centers on markets for non-timber forest benefits, forest livelihoods, and international forest policy. Key projects include analyzing community forestry impacts in Nepal, sociohydrology of the Brazilian Amazon, and energy poverty mitigation in Southern Africa. She specializes in impact evaluation using matching methods and panel data.

Recent publications address topics like carbon offset policies, REDD+ effectiveness, financial access impacts on deforestation, and pandemic disruptions in forest sectors. Her work integrates interdisciplinary frameworks spanning economics, ecology, and climate science.

Grants from NSF, USDA Forest Service, and Sida support her research on:

• Community Forestry and Integrated Socio-Environmental Systems (2021–2026)
• Post-pandemic Forest Economy Recovery (2022–2025)
• Energy Poverty Mitigation (2018–2025)
• Sociohydrology of the Amazon (2018–2024)

She also leads initiatives on gender analysis in environmental economics through the Environment for Development Initiative (2021–2024).