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Erika S. Weinthal, John O. Blackburn Distinguished Professor  

Office Location: 9 Circuit Drive, Environment Hall 4119, Durham, NC 27708
Duke Box: 90328
Email Address: erika.weinthal@duke.edu

Areas of Expertise

  • Environment and Energy, Environmental Law, Regulation and Policy

Education:
Ph.D., Columbia University, 1998
M.Phil., Columbia University, 1994
MA Political Science, Columbia University, 1993
B.A., Oberlin College, 1989

Teaching (Spring 2025):

  • Culanth 148.01, Israel/palestine Synopsis
    Grainger 2102, TuTh 10:05 AM-11:20 AM

Recent Publications   (More Publications)

  1. Carr-Wilson, S; Pattanayak, SK; Weinthal, E. "Critical mineral mining in the energy transition: A systematic review of environmental, social, and governance risks and opportunities." Energy Research and Social Science 116 (October, 2024). [doi]  [abs]
  2. Albright, EA; Coleman Flowers, C; Kramer, RA; Weinthal, ES. "Failing septic systems in Lowndes County, Alabama: citizen participation, science, and community knowledge." Local Environment 29.2 (January, 2024): 135-142. [doi]  [abs]
  3. Patel, E; Weinthal, E. "Rights, resilience, and water in turbulent times." Global Environmental Politics in a Turbulent Era March, 2023. 37-48.
  4. Vengosh, A; Weinthal, E. "The water consumption reductions from home solar installation in the United States.." The Science of the total environment 854 (January, 2023): 158738. [doi]  [abs]
  5. Daoudy, M; Sowers, J; Weinthal, E. "What is climate security? Framing risks around water, food, and migration in the Middle East and North Africa." Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Water 9.3 (May, 2022). [doi]  [abs]

Highlight:

Dr. Weinthal specializes in global environmental politics and environmental security with a particular emphasis on water and energy. Areas of research include (1) global environmental politics and governance, (2) environmental conflict and peacebuilding, (3) the political economy of the resource curse, (4) climate change adaptation, and (5) global energy transitions). Dr. Weinthal is author of State Making and Environmental Cooperation: Linking Domestic Politics and International Politics in Central Asia (MIT Press 2002), which received the 2003 Chadwick Alger Prize and the 2003 Lynton Keith Caldwell Prize. She co-authored Oil is not a Curse (Cambridge University Press 2010) and Water Quality Impacts of the Energy-Water Nexus (Cambridge University Press 2022). She has co-edited Water and Post-Conflict Peacebuilding: Shoring Up Peace (2014), The Oxford Handbook on Water Politics and Policy (Oxford University Press 2017) and The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Environmental Politics (2023). She was a founding Vice President of the Environmental Peacebuilding Association. In 2017 she was a recipient of the Women Peacebuilders for Water Award under the auspices of “Fondazione Milano per Expo 2015”. 

Bio/Profile
Dr. Weinthal specializes in global environmental politics and natural resource policies with a particular emphasis on water and energy. The main focus of her research is on the origins and effects of environmental institutions. Her previous research examined the impact of multilateral and bilateral development organizations on water resource management and institution building in the Aral Sea basin in Central Asia. Her research on water politics in conflict regions (e.g. the Gaza Strip in the Middle East) focuses on how the environment might be harnessed for peace building. Her current book project on the resource curse explicates the links between a countrys natural resource base and its institutional capacity through systematically comparing the energy-rich Soviet successor states with other energy-rich developing countries.

Erika S. Weinthal