Saleem H. Ali is Chair of the Department of Geography and Spatial Sciences and the Blue & Gold Distinguished Professor of Energy and the Environment at the University of Delaware (USA). He was appointed by UN Secretary General as a member of Advisory board of Eminent Persons on Zero Waste.
Prof. Ali previously served as chair in Sustainable Resource Development and professor of sustainability science and policy at University of Queensland (Australia) and was founding director of the Institute for Environmental Diplomacy and Security at the University of Vermont (USA). He has previously held appointments at The Brookings Institution, The Watson Institute for International Studies, and the United Nations mandated University for Peace (Costa Rica).
Prof. Ali's primary research interests have been in the causes and consequences of environmental conflicts in the mineral sector, and the process of using ecological factors to promote peace.
Before embarking on an academic career, Prof. Ali worked as an environmental health and safety professional at General Electric Corporation.
His laurels include being a National Geographic Explorer, with field experience in more than 160 countries; being selected as a “Young Global Leader” by the World Economic Forum and serving on the boards of notable non-profit charitable organizations including RESOLVE, Adventure Scientists and Mediators Beyond Borders International.
Prof. Ali received his doctorate in Environmental Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), an M.E.S. in environmental law and policy from Yale University, and his Bachelor of Science in Chemistry (summa cum laude) from Tufts University.
Dr. Ali is a citizen of the United States of America by birth; Pakistan by parental lineage; and Australian by naturalization.
Selected publications
Saleem H. Ali's regular columns on sustainability for Forbes can be accessed here.
Ali, Saleem H. Sustainability: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press (January 2025).
Akram, H., Mohazzam, S. and Ali, S.H. (2024) ‘Water-Energy-Food (WEF) Nexus and the SDGs in Central and South Asia’, in Z. Adeel and B. Böer (eds) The Water, Energy, and Food Security Nexus in Asia and the Pacific: Central and South Asia. Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp. 191–205. Available open source at: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29035-0_10
Ali, S.H. (2024) ‘Material conflicts', Science, 383(6681), pp. 374–374. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adk9387.
Sarupriya, M., Sultana N., Ali, Saleem H. 2023. SDG 12 needs an oceanic interface: sand mining, saltwater intrusion (SWI) and coastal sustainability. Sustainable Earth Reviews. https://doi.org/10.1186/s42055-023-00061-8
Ali, Saleem H. 2023. Soil to Foil: Aluminum and the Quest for Industrial Sustainability. New York and London: Columbia University Press.
Ali, Saleem H., Martin Clifford, Dominic Kniveton, Caroline Zickgraf, and Sonja Ayeb-Karlsson. 2023. “Adaptive Governance to Manage Human Mobility and Natural Resource Stress.” Elements in Earth System Governance, Cambridge University Press https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009357708.
Ali, Saleem H. 2022. Earthly Order: How Natural Laws Define Human Life. Oxford University Press.
Ali, S. H.; Kalantzakos, S.; Eggert, R.; Gauss, R.; Karayannopoulos, C.; Klinger, J.; Pu, X.; Vekasi, K.; Perrons, R. K. Closing the Infrastructure Gap for Decarbonization: The Case for an Integrated Mineral Supply Agreement. Environ. Sci. Technol. 2022, 56 (22), 15280–15289. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.2c05413.
Gloaguen, R., Ali, S., Herrington, R., Ajjabou, L., Downey, E., & Stewart, I. 2022. Mineral revolution for the Wellbeing Economy. Global Sustainability, 1-11. https://doi.org/10.1017/sus.2022.13
Zickgraf, C., Ali, S. H., Clifford, M., Djalante, R., Kniveton, D., Brown, O., & Ayeb-Karlsson, S. 2022. Natural resources, human mobility and sustainability: A review and research gap analysis. Sustainability Science, 17(3), 1077–1089.
Rosa, L., Rulli, M. C., Ali, S., Chiarelli, D. D., Dell’Angelo, J., Mueller, N. D., Scheidel, A., Siciliano, G., & D’Odorico, P. 2021. Energy implications of the 21st century agrarian transition. Nature Communications, 12(1), 2319
Zhu, Y., Xu, D., Ali, S. H., & Cheng, J. 2021. A hybrid assessment model for mineral resource availability potentials. Resources Policy, 74, 102283. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resourpol.2021.102283
Ali, Saleem H. 2020. “Environmental Urgency versus the Allure of RCT Empiricism.” World Development 127 (Invited article for special issue on the methodologies leading up to the 2019 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences).
View all publications on Google Scholar.
Videos
Presentation by Saleem Ali at TED Salon: The Rockefeller Foundation, “The fight over minerals for green energy — and a better way forward,” May, 2024
Lecture at Harvard on Soil to Foil: Aluminum and the Quest for Industrial Sustainability, December, 2023
Interview of Saleem H. Ali with Oxford University Press regard his latest book Earthly Order: How Natural Laws Define Human Life, July, 2022
Presentation by Saleem Ali at TEDxUniversityofDelaware, “Reinventing Borders for Environmental and Social Harmony,” April, 2019