Erika Weinthal is Associate Professor of Environmental Policy at the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University. From 1998 to 2005, she taught in the Department of Political Science at Tel Aviv University. Her research focuses on environmental and natural resources policy in the former Soviet Union and the Middle East. She has published widely in journals such as Perspectives on Politics, Comparative Political Studies, the American Political Science Review, Foreign Affairs, Ground Water, Global Environmental Politics and the Journal of Environment and Development. She is the author of State Making and Environmental Cooperation: Linking Domestic Politics and International Politics in Central Asia. She has received funding from a variety of institutions to support her research, including the National Research Council for Europe and Eurasia, the United States Institute of Peace, the John T. and Catherine D. MacArthur Foundation, the Fifth Framework Programme of the European Union and the USDA. She is a member of the UNEP Expert Advisory Group on Environment, Conflict, and Peacebuilding.