Overview
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”.
Current Appointments & Affiliations
Recent Publications
Critical mineral mining in the energy transition: A systematic review of environmental, social, and governance risks and opportunities
Journal Article Energy Research and Social Science · October 1, 2024 To address climate change, countries must decarbonize and shift to renewable energy. Renewables like solar and wind are mineral intensive, meaning the world must rapidly scale up mining and processing of critical minerals such as lithium and cobalt. Such a ... Full text CiteFailing septic systems in Lowndes County, Alabama: citizen participation, science, and community knowledge
Journal Article Local Environment · January 1, 2024 The United Nations has estimated that 2.8 billion individuals across the world will not have access to safely managed sanitation in 2030. In the accounting of global sanitation access, local inequities often are invisible to those counting, especially give ... Full text CiteRights, resilience, and water in turbulent times
Chapter · March 7, 2023 CiteRecent Grants
Duke-DKU Collaboration on Environmental Politics and Justice, Duke Workshop
ConferencePrincipal Investigator · Awarded by Global Knowledge Initiative · 2025 - 2026North Carolina Black Alliance Environmental Justice
Public ServicePrincipal Investigator · Awarded by North Carolina Black Alliance · 2022 - 2023Targeting Environmental Infrastructures: Water, Energy, and Civilians in the New Middle Eastern Wars
ResearchPrincipal Investigator · Awarded by Gerda Henkel Foundation · 2017 - 2021View All Grants