This study investigates the impact of elected politicians geographical representation on distributive decisions in a solar energy safety net program in Northern Bangladesh. Using a unique dataset on solar home system installations and political leaders’ biographies, we find strong evidence of political capture in the form of birthplace favoritism, leading to an uneven distribution of solar home systems among villages. Heterogeneous voting power within a rural council further amplifies political capture at the local level.

The authors evaluated the effects of a large-scale ethanol cooking fuel promotion program in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and found substantial uptake of ethanol cooking. However, alternative fuels were not fully replaced under this scheme. The report concludes that improving the relative convenience of ethanol as a cooking fuel is needed to achieve broader positive impacts. 

Federal policy and programs can play a critical role in helping communities—especially those with limited resources—ensure both security and economic vitality in the face of increasing threats from natural hazards. This summary builds on legislative history in the hopes that past priorities can provide some indication of who may be Congressional leaders and where opportunities lie for legislative action to help promote resilience against potential risks.

Extreme heat is an escalating public health and economic threat, particularly in rural, low-income communities across the Southeastern United States. In these areas, aging infrastructure, high energy burdens, and chronic health disparities intersect to create acute vulnerability during periods of excessive heat. Cooling Communities is a seed initiative that brings together community leadership, trusted faith-based institutions, and financial innovation to explore scalable, locally rooted strategies for heat resilience.

Addressing the dual needs of development and decarbonization in low- and middle-income countries requires significant increases in public and private investment and project implementation. Announced in 2022 by the US Department of State, The Rockefeller Foundation, and the Bezos Earth Fund, the Energy Transition Accelerator (ETA) aims to drive such increases by leveraging carbon credits as a sector-wide channel for energy transition finance.

The Energy Transitions and Investment in Emerging Markets: Navigating Shifting Undercurrents summit was convened on April 8, 2025, during a moment of profound disruption and transformation. In an era marked by the dismantling of US foreign assistance programs and rising pressures on multilateral systems, the event brought together the Duke University community and leading practitioners to take stock and ask urgent questions about what comes next.

Clean cooking technologies have the potential to deliver substantial health, environmental, climate, and gender equity benefits. We use the BAR-HAP model to conduct the first global analysis of the regional and global costs and benefits of several subsidy and financing policies supporting household transitions to cleaner technologies. The analysis provides evidence-based estimates of these interventions' impacts, while remaining conservative about factors such as stove usage, subsidy leakage, and exposure levels, for which there remains considerable uncertainty.

Exertional heat illness poses a significant risk for workers, athletes, and military personnel participating in outdoor activities during hot weather. An important component of heat safety is monitoring environmental conditions through heat stress indices like the wet bulb globe temperature (WBGT), which accounts for factors such as air temperature, humidity, wind, and sunlight, and adjusting activity as conditions get progressively hotter.

Oceans@Duke Director Stephanie Rousso discusses her personal experience working with women fisherfolk to promote sea turtle conservation in an opinion for Frontiers in Ocean Sustainability. "Globally, women are blending traditional knowledge with modern science, taking on challenges head-on, and redefining what it means to work toward a sustainable ocean," she writes. "While these global initiatives are empowering women at a large scale, my personal journey has shown me how deeply transformative their contributions can be at the grassroots level."

This report empirically examines the determinants of private participation in flood mitigation programs that use a payment for ecosystem services (PES) framework and suggests improved PES program designs and enhancements to their flood mitigation effectiveness. It offers evidence suggesting income from farming and potential participants' past experiences with PES programs may increase participation in programs aiming to mitigate flooding and that in turn could reduce economic damages from flooding impacts.