Scholars@Duke
Erika S. Weinthal

Erika S. Weinthal

John O. Blackburn Distinguished Professor
Environmental Sciences and Policy
erika.weinthal@duke.edu
Box 90328, Durham, NC 27708-0328
9 Circuit Drive, Environment Hall 4119, Durham, NC 27708

Selected 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 Cite

Failing 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 Cite

The water consumption reductions from home solar installation in the United States.

Journal Article The Science of the total environment · January 2023 Installation of rooftop photovoltaic (PV) solar is expected to change the electricity landscape in the U.S. through reducing greenhouse gas emissions and mitigating global warming, as well as eliminating environmental impacts from fossil fuels utilization. ... Full text Cite

Introduction

Journal Article Global Environmental Politics · August 1, 2022 Full text Cite

What is climate security? Framing risks around water, food, and migration in the Middle East and North Africa

Journal Article Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Water · May 1, 2022 From academics to practitioners, many voices have amplified an increasingly popular narrative posing a climate–conflict–migration nexus. This essay reviews the literature on climate security, exploring the human security impacts of climate change in the Mi ... Full text Cite

Klimat: Russia in the age of climate change

Journal Article International Affairs · March 7, 2022 Full text Cite

Introduction

Journal Article Global Environmental Politics · February 4, 2022 Full text Cite

Health and environmental tolls of protracted conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa

Journal Article Current History · December 1, 2021 The effects of conflict on public health and ecosystem well-being are understudied and rarely figure in public debates about war-making. Protracted conflicts are particularly damaging to people and environments in ways that are inadequately documented. In ... Full text Cite

Is Food Irrigated with Oilfield-Produced Water in the California Central Valley Safe to Eat? A Probabilistic Human Health Risk Assessment Evaluating Trace Metals Exposure.

Journal Article Risk analysis : an official publication of the Society for Risk Analysis · August 2021 Reuse of oilfield-produced water (OPW) for crop irrigation has the potential to make a critical difference in the water budgets of highly productive but drought-stressed agricultural watersheds. This is the first peer-reviewed study to evaluate how trace m ... Full text Cite

Introduction

Journal Article Global Environmental Politics · August 1, 2021 Full text Cite

The Oxford Handbook of comparative environmental politics

Book · July 14, 2021 The complexities and scope of environmental issues have not only outpaced the capacities and responsiveness of traditional political actors but also generated new innovations, constituencies, and approaches to governing environmental problems. In response, ... Full text Cite

Introduction

Journal Article Global Environmental Politics · May 1, 2021 Full text Cite

The past and future(s) of environmental peacebuilding

Journal Article International Affairs · January 1, 2021 Environmental peacebuilding is a rapidly growing field of research and practice at the intersection of environment, conflict, peace and security. Focusing on these linkages is crucial in a time when the environment is a core issue of international politics ... Full text Cite

Disclosing Influence: Hydraulic fracturing, interest groups, and state policy processes in the United States

Journal Article Energy Research and Social Science · December 1, 2020 This paper examines copy-and-paste regulating in hydraulic fracturing (HF) fluid disclosure regulation across US states. Using text analysis, cluster analysis and document coding, we compare HF regulations of twenty-nine states and two “model bills” drafte ... Full text Cite

The impact of using low-saline oilfield produced water for irrigation on water and soil quality in California.

Journal Article The Science of the total environment · September 2020 The consecutive occurrence of drought and reduction in natural water availability over the past several decades requires searching for alternative water sources for the agriculture sector in California. One alternative source to supplement natural waters i ... Full text Cite

The water-energy nexus in the Middle East: Infrastructure, development, and conflict

Journal Article Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Water · July 1, 2020 Water and energy are closely linked in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) through coupled networks of infrastructure. This review explores the water-energy nexus of infrastructure to explicate different patterns of development and de-development in th ... Full text Cite

Water law and governance in post-conflict settings

Journal Article Review of European, Comparative and International Environmental Law · April 1, 2020 In the aftermath of conflict, managing water is critical, as access to water and sanitation is necessary for meeting basic human needs, restoring livelihoods, ensuring food security, rebuilding the economy and promoting reconciliation. This article argues ... Full text Cite

Introduction

Journal Article Global Environmental Politics · February 1, 2020 Full text Cite

Introduction

Journal Article Global Environmental Politics · January 1, 2020 Full text Cite

The Human Right to Water: Theory, Practice and Prospects

Journal Article JOURNAL OF HUMAN RIGHTS · 2020 Cite

Introduction

Journal Article Global Environmental Politics · January 1, 2020 Full text Cite

Environmental Knowledge Cartographies: Evaluating Competing Discourses in U.S. Hydraulic Fracturing Rule-Making

Journal Article Annals of the American Association of Geographers · November 2, 2019 In this article, we evaluate competing environmental knowledge claims in U.S. hydraulic fracturing (HF) regulation. We conduct a case study of the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) rule-making process over the period from 2012 to 2015, which was the first ... Full text Cite

Introduction

Journal Article Global Environmental Politics · November 1, 2019 Full text Cite

Human-wildlife interactions and attitudes towards wildlife and wildlife reserves in Rajasthan, India

Journal Article ORYX · July 1, 2019 Human-wildlife interactions affect people's livelihoods, attitudes and tolerance towards wildlife and wildlife reserves. To investigate the effect of such interactions on people's attitudes and livelihoods, we surveyed 2,233 households located around four ... Full text Cite

The development of Ethiopia's Climate Resilient Green Economy 2011–2014: implications for rural adaptation

Journal Article Climate and Development · March 16, 2019 Anthropogenic climate change is predicted to have severe impacts on national economies and individual livelihoods, particularly for the world’s poorest populations. Measures to address climate change include both mitigation to reduce emissions and adaptati ... Full text Cite

Targeting infrastructure and livelihoods in the West Bank and Gaza

Journal Article International Affairs · March 1, 2019 State and non-state actors across many protracted conflicts and prolonged occupations in the Middle East and North Africa have systematically targeted civilian infrastructures. We use the cases of the West Bank and Gaza, characterized by more than five dec ... Full text Cite

Introduction

Journal Article Global Environmental Politics · February 1, 2019 Full text Cite

Can shareholder advocacy shape energy governance? The case of the US antifracking movement

Journal Article Review of International Political Economy · January 2, 2019 Research on socially responsible investing (SRI) and investor-led governance, especially in the climate sector, suggests that shareholders adopt social movement tactics to influence corporate governance, including building networks, engaging directly with ... Full text Cite

Introduction

Journal Article Global Environmental Politics · November 1, 2018 Full text Cite

Why does industry structure matter for unconventional oil and gas development? Examining revenue sharing outcomes in North Dakota

Journal Article Energy Research and Social Science · October 1, 2018 Scholars have identified many determinants of regulatory outcomes in unconventional oil and gas development, but few have focused on industry structure. We examine the effects of company size and ownership on revenue sharing outcomes in North Dakota (ND), ... Full text Cite

Communities coping with risks: Household water choice and environmental health in the Ethiopian Rift Valley

Journal Article Environmental Science and Policy · August 1, 2018 Resource-constrained households are often forced to make complex tradeoffs across multiple environmental health risks. In the Ethiopian Rift Valley, households face tradeoffs between relatively plentiful but fluoride-contaminated groundwater sources and se ... Full text Cite

Introduction

Journal Article Global Environmental Politics · August 1, 2018 Full text Cite

Agenda-Setting at the Energy-Water Nexus: Constructing and Maintaining a Policy Monopoly in U.S. Hydraulic Fracturing Regulation

Journal Article Review of Policy Research · May 1, 2018 Despite calls to increase federal oversight of hydraulic fracturing (HF), the U.S. Congress has maintained a regulatory system in which environmental regulatory authority is devolved to the states. We argue that this system is characterized by a long-stand ... Full text Cite

Editors’ Introduction

Journal Article Global Environmental Politics · February 2018 Full text Cite

Compensation as a Policy for Mitigating Human-wildlife Conflict Around Four Protected Areas in Rajasthan, India

Journal Article Conservation and Society · January 1, 2018 In India, human-wildlife conflict (HWC) around protected areas (PAs) has magnified social conflict over conservation and development priorities. India introduced financial compensation for HWC as a policy solution to simultaneously promote human security w ... Full text Cite

Post-war environmental peacebuilding: Navigating renewable and non-renewable resources

Chapter · January 1, 2018 Since the 1990s, the environmental security and peacebuilding community has sought to understand the mechanisms by which the environment can produce conflict and foster peace and security. The early literature on environmental security largely emphasized t ... Full text Cite

Seeing complexity: visualization tools in global environmental politics and governance

Journal Article Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences · December 1, 2017 Can visualization tools and applications help scholars of global environmental politics and governance understand problems that are complex, linked, and cross-scalar—the critical characteristics of contemporary environmental problems? Surprisingly, such to ... Full text Cite

Debating Unconventional Energy: Social, Political, and Economic Implications

Journal Article Annual Review of Environment and Resources · October 17, 2017 The extraction of unconventional oil and gas-from shale rocks, tight sand, and coalbed formations-is shifting the geographies of fossil fuel production, with complex consequences. Following Jackson et al.'s (1) natural science survey of the environmental c ... Full text Cite

Targeting environmental infrastructures, international law, and civilians in the new Middle Eastern wars

Journal Article Security Dialogue · October 1, 2017 Research in conflict studies and environmental security has largely focused on the mechanisms through which the environment and natural resources foster conflict or contribute to peacebuilding. An understudied area of research, however, concerns the ways i ... Full text Cite

Mitigating Mistrust? Participation and Expertise in Hydraulic Fracturing Governance

Journal Article Review of Policy Research · November 1, 2016 In Canada's Yukon Territory, a legislative committee was tasked with assessing the risks and benefits of hydraulic fracturing. The committee designed an extensive participatory process involving citizens and experts; however, instead of information access ... Full text Cite

Scaling up site disputes: strategies to redefine ‘local’ in the fight against fracking

Journal Article Environmental Politics · July 3, 2016 ABSTRACT: Plans to replace an aging diesel backup energy plant with liquid natural gas (LNG) generators in Whitehorse, Yukon, resulted in a public outcry, involving community meetings, massive petitions, and demonstrations. Are these civil society protests ... Full text Cite

Water Availability for Shale Gas Development in Sichuan Basin, China.

Journal Article Environmental science & technology · March 2016 Unconventional shale gas development holds promise for reducing the predominant consumption of coal and increasing the utilization of natural gas in China. While China possesses some of the most abundant technically recoverable shale gas resources in the w ... Full text Cite

Social capital, trust, and adaptation to climate change: Evidence from rural Ethiopia

Journal Article Global Environmental Change · January 1, 2016 Climate change is expected to have particularly severe effects on poor agrarian populations. Rural households in developing countries adapt to the risks and impacts of climate change both individually and collectively. Empirical research has shown that acc ... Full text Cite

Securitizing Water, Climate, and Migration in Israel, Jordan, and Syria

Journal Article International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics · September 24, 2015 Protracted droughts and scarce water resources, combined with internal and cross-border migration, have contributed to the securitization of discourses around migration and water in much of the Middle East. However, there is no clear understanding of the c ... Full text Cite

The world bank and negotiating the red sea and dead sea water conveyance project

Journal Article Global Environmental Politics · November 19, 2014 Full text Cite

Network environmentalism: Citizen scientists as agents for environmental advocacy

Journal Article Global Environmental Change · November 1, 2014 Citizen science - public participation of non-scientists in scientific research - has become an important tool for monitoring and evaluating local and global environmental change. Citizen science projects have been shown to enable large-scale data collecti ... Full text Cite

Fluoride exposure from groundwater as reflected by urinary fluoride and children's dental fluorosis in the Main Ethiopian Rift Valley.

Journal Article Sci Total Environ · October 15, 2014 This cross-sectional study explores the relationships between children's F(-) exposure from drinking groundwater and urinary F(-) concentrations, combined with dental fluorosis (DF) in the Main Ethiopian Rift (MER) Valley. We examined the DF prevalence and ... Full text Link to item Cite

Oil for food: the global food crisis and the Middle East, by Eckart Woertz

Journal Article Journal of Natural Resources Policy Research · August 14, 2014 Full text Cite

The effect of non-fluoride factors on risk of dental fluorosis: evidence from rural populations of the Main Ethiopian Rift.

Journal Article Sci Total Environ · August 1, 2014 Elevated level of fluoride (F(-)) in drinking water is a well-recognized risk factor of dental fluorosis (DF). While considering optimization of region-specific standards for F(-), it is reasonable, however, to consider how local diet, water sourcing pract ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Water and post-conflict peacebuilding

Chapter · January 1, 2014 Water is a basic human need, and despite predictions of “water wars,” shared waters have proven to be the natural resource with the greatest potential for interstate cooperation and local confidence building. Indeed, water management plays a singularly imp ... Full text Cite

Shoring up peace: Water and post-conflict peacebuilding

Chapter · January 1, 2014 Water is essential to human health, poverty alleviation, sustainable livelihoods, and food security. Yet 780 million people worldwide still lack access to safe drinking water, and 2.5 billion live without access to basic sanitation (UNICEF and WHO 2012). O ... Full text Cite

Harnessing water management for more effective peacebuilding: Lessons learned

Chapter · January 1, 2014 Water resources play an important and multifaceted role in post-conflict peacebuilding. Immediately after conflict ceases, access to water and sanitation is vital for meeting basic human needs. In the longer term, effective water resource management can pr ... Full text Cite

Methods and global environmental governance

Journal Article Annual Review of Environment and Resources · October 1, 2013 This review analyzes the methods being used and developed in global environmental governance (GEG), an applied field that employs insights and tools from a variety of disciplines both to understand pressing environmental problems and to determine how to ad ... Full text Cite

Corporate Social Responsibility: Out of the Shadows of Environmental Regulation

Chapter · 2012 Combining the theoretical tools of comparative politics with the substantive concerns of environmental policy, experts explore responses to environmental problems across nations and political systems. ... Cite

Water and post-conflict peacebuilding: Introduction

Journal Article Water International · March 1, 2011 Water resources assume a unique and varied role in post-conflict recovery and peace-building. This article examines the ways in which water, sanitation and infrastructure play an integral role in meeting basic human needs, maintaining public health, suppor ... Full text Cite

Climate change, water resources, and the politics of adaptation in the Middle East and North Africa

Journal Article Climatic Change · February 1, 2011 Through an examination of global climate change models combined with hydrological data on deteriorating water quality in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), we elucidate the ways in which the MENA countries are vulnerable to climate-induced impacts on ... Full text Open Access Cite

The politics of assessment: water and sanitation MDGs in the Middle East.

Journal Article Development and change · January 2011 The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is generally considered to be making adequate progress towards meeting Target 10 of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which calls for halving the proportion of the population with inadequate access to drinking ... Full text Cite

Water and Conflict: Moving from the Global to the Local

Chapter · December 16, 2010 The Routledge Handbook of Global Public Health explores this context and addresses both the emerging issues and conceptualizations of the notion of global health, along with expanding upon and highlighting the critical priorities in this ... ... Cite

The search for credible information in social and environmental global governance: The Kosher label

Journal Article Business and Politics · October 28, 2010 Hundreds of "eco-labels" and "social labels" exist for consumer products. These labels claim to provide information about characteristics of these products, which consumers cannot directly observe but which many of them consider desirable, such as low envi ... Full text Cite

Transnational environmental activism in central Asia: The coupling of domestic law and international conventions

Journal Article Environmental Politics · September 23, 2010 Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, local environmental activism in Central Asia was widespread. While environmental activists had managed to create mutually beneficial alliances with the titular elite during the Soviet period, these alliances disi ... Full text Cite

Oil Is Not a Curse: Ownership Structure and Institutions in Soviet Successor States

Book · August 30, 2010 This 2010 book argues that these outcomes are linked to the ownership structure that petroleum-rich states choose to manage their wealth. ... Cite

Institutions and policies to protect rural livelihoods in REDD + regimes

Journal Article Global Environmental Politics · January 1, 2010 Full text Open Access Cite

Is an exemption from US groundwater regulations a loophole or a noose?

Journal Article Policy Sciences · July 21, 2008 In the United States, the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) regulates most groundwater used for drinking water. The Act covers most urban areas but because it does not cover small water systems, it implicitly exempts nearly half of those living in rural Ameri ... Full text Cite

Authors' reply

Journal Article Ground Water · November 1, 2007 Full text Cite

Rethinking the resource curse: Ownership structure, institutional capacity, and domestic constraints

Journal Article Annual Review of Political Science · July 14, 2006 Most political scientists and economists unequivocally accept the proposition that abundant mineral resources are more often a curse than a blessing, particularly for developing countries. We argue that the widely accepted contention that an abundance of m ... Full text Cite

Combating the resource curse: An alternative solution to managing mineral wealth

Journal Article Perspectives on Politics · March 1, 2006 Countless studies document the correlation between abundant mineral resources and a series of negative economic and political outcomes, including poor economic performance, unbalanced growth, weakly institutionalized states, and authoritarian regimes acros ... Full text Cite

The water crisis in the gaza strip: prospects for resolution.

Journal Article Ground water · September 2005 Israel and the Palestinian Authority share the southern Mediterranean coastal aquifer. Long-term overexploitation in the Gaza Strip has resulted in a decreasing water table, accompanied by the degradation of its water quality. Due to high levels of salinit ... Full text Cite

The EU Drinking Water Directive: The Boron standard and scientific uncertainty

Journal Article European Environment · January 1, 2005 In 1998 the European Union (EU) revised its Drinking Water Directive, which is responsible for regulating the quality of water in the EU intended for human consumption. Specifically, the EU added a new standard for the element boron in drinking water (1 mg ... Full text Cite

Natural boron contamination in Mediterranean groundwater

Journal Article Geotimes · May 1, 2004 Within the past few decades, the water quality in many of the coastal aquifers along the Mediterranean Sea has rapidly degraded. Overexploitation of the groundwater basins, particularly during the tourist season, has resulted in the lowering of groundwater ... Cite

Natural boron contamination

Journal Article GEOTIMES · May 1, 2004 Link to item Cite

Contra Coercion: Russian Tax Reform, Exogenous Shocks, and Negotiated Institutional Change

Journal Article American Political Science Review · January 1, 2004 The view of institutions as coercion rather than as contracts dominates the comparative politics literature on both institutional creation and the politics of economic reform. The emergence of a collectively optimal tax code in Russia demonstrates the limi ... Full text Cite

From Environmental Peacemaking to Environmental Peacekeeping

Journal Article Environmental Change and Security Project Report · 2004 Cite

Contra Coercion: Russian Tax Reform, Exogenous Shocks, and Negotiated Institutional Change

Journal Article American Political Science Review · 2004 The view of institutions as coercion rather than as contracts dominates the comparative politics literature on both institutional creation and the politics of economic reform. The emergence of a collectively optimal tax code in Russia demonstrates the limi ... Cite

Two Steps Forward, One Step Backward: Societal Capacity and Israel's Implementation of the Barcelona Convention and the Mediterranean Action Plan

Journal Article Global Environmental Politics · February 2003 A large literature exists regarding explanations for the emergence of cooperation in the Mediterranean basin, but there is less information regarding the effectiveness of Mediterranean cooperation and its programs. Through a case study of Israel's imple ... Cite

State Making and Environmental Cooperation: Linking Domestic and International Politics in Central Asia

Book · January 2002 A study of the relationship between environmental cooperation and state building in post-Soviet Central Asia. (* Recipient of the 2003 Chadwick Alger Prize of the International Organization Section of the International Studies Association. * Recipient of t ... Cite

New friends, new fears in Central Asia

Journal Article Foreign Affairs · January 1, 2002 Full text Cite

One Resource Two Visions: The Prospects for Israeli-Palestinian Water Cooperation

Journal Article Water International · January 1, 2002 With the signing of the Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements (Oslo Accords) in 1993, the Israelis and Palestinians embarked upon a difficult path to share their joint water resources. Despite international efforts to encourage ... Full text Cite

Energy wealth and tax reform in Russia and Kazakhstan

Journal Article Resources Policy · December 1, 2001 Resource-rich states throughout the developing world are prone to rent-seeking, excessive borrowing, wasteful spending, and unbalanced growth as well as states with weak institutions and authoritarian regimes. Are the five energy-rich Soviet successor stat ... Full text Cite

Sins of omission: Constructing negotiating sets in the Aral Sea Basin

Journal Article Journal of Environment and Development · January 1, 2001 Following the Soviet Union's collapse, the Central Asian states introduced new institutions for interstate environmental cooperation in the Aral Sea basin. This article examines why Central Asian elites and the international community could not choose the ... Full text Cite

Prelude to the resource curse: Explaining oil and gas development strategies in the Soviet successor states and beyond

Journal Article Comparative Political Studies · January 1, 2001 The literature on resource-rich states leaves a key and prior question unexplored: Why and how do states choose to develop their natural resources? The authors address this gap by explaining the divergence in oil and gas development strategies in five ener ... Full text Cite

The NGO Paradox: Democratic goals and non-democratic outcomes in Kazakhstan

Journal Article Europe - Asia Studies · November 1, 1999 The promotion of local non-governmental organisations (hereafter LNGOs) in the successor states of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe has increasingly become the focus of international democracy-building efforts, orchestrated through the active involvemen ... Full text Cite