This week, gold prices surged to record highs, reshaping both the financial and geopolitical landscape. The University of Delaware’s Saleem Ali can explain the potential environmental, social and economic ripple effects of this gold rush and the opportunities and risks it creates. He says a controlled release of global gold reserves could help ease market pressure and mitigate the negative impacts.
Ali, a professor of energy and the environment, can discuss the following main points:
The record gold price (which dipped slightly today) has implications for new gold mining projects becoming more financially attractive which could have environmental and social implications in those areas.
Major gold trading hubs like Switzerland and Dubai will need to be more vigilant as gold will become more attractive for the illicit economy for commodities.
We have major global bank reserves of gold even though the gold standard is no longer used to back currency. Some of these reserves could be liquidated to reduce pressure and negative externalities. Such a controlled release of gold reserves could help to manage the price rise.
Ali also serves on the Independent Governance Committee for the Dubai Multicommodity Center, which manages all of the gold coming into the United Arab Emirates.
To reach Ali directly and arrange an interview, visit his profile and click on the “connect” button. Interested reporters can also send an email to MediaRelations@udel.edu.
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2 min
As the world races to build cleaner energy systems and powerful AI technologies, the demand for critical minerals—like lithium, cobalt, and rare earths—is soaring. But with this demand comes rising global tension over who controls these resources. University of Delaware Professor Saleem Ali, an international expert in environmental policy and chair of UD's Department of Geography and Spatial Sciences, is suggesting a new way forward.
In a new article published in Science, along with a United Nations policy brief, Ali and his coauthors propose the creation of a Global Minerals Trust. The article notes how the international plan would help countries work together to manage and share critical minerals fairly and sustainably—avoiding political fights, price shocks and environmental damage.
“Without a shared framework, we risk deepening global inequalities, triggering unnecessary resource conflicts and undermining our ability to deliver on climate goals,” says Ali, who also leads the Critical Minerals and Inclusive Energy Transition program at the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health.
The proposed Trust would use independent checks—similar to those used in nuclear safety—to make sure countries are meeting environmental and social standards. Each nation would keep control of its own resources but agree to prioritize sales of those minerals at market prices so that they can be used for clean energy infrastructure.
The article builds on a TED Talk that Ali gave last year as part of the Rockefeller Foundation's "Big Bets" initiative.
Ali is available for interviews on the topic and can be reached by clicking on his profile.
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1 min
What exactly is resourced-backed financing and how does it relate to Ukraine-United States relations?
That is what Blue and Gold Distinguished Professor of Energy and the Environment Saleem Ali has been investigating.
Resource-backed financing has emerged as a significant strategy for countries rich in natural resources to bolster economic growth. This financial model allows nations to leverage their mineral wealth by using future revenues or production of resources as collateral for obtaining loans or investments today. Ali can put this practice into context of a potential deal that is currently being negotiated between Ukraine and the U.S.
"The minerals deal could potentially be a win-win for Ukraine and the United States if the agreement is framed around a broader plan for reconstruction and infrastructure development," Ali recently said in an article for Forbes. A regular contributor to Forbes, Ali's expertise has also been featured in The Houston Chronicle, The Guardian and Bloomberg. He can be contacted to speak more on this topic by clicking on his profile.
Media
Social
Biography
Saleem H. Ali was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts (USA) but grew up in Lahore, Pakistan until his college years, receiving his Bachelor's degree in Chemistry from Tufts University, and his Masters and Ph.D. degrees in environmental policy and planning at Yale and MIT, respectively. He 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 is also a member of the United Nations International Resource Panel. 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 and all continents; 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. His books include Earthly Order: How Natural Laws Define Human Life (Oxford Univ. Press) and Treasures of the Earth: Need, Greed and a Sustainable Future (Yale Univ. Press). Dr. Ali is a citizen of the United States of America by birth; Pakistan by parental lineage; and Australian by naturalization.
Industry Expertise
Environmental Services
Safety
Areas of Expertise
Environmental Health
Environmental Policy
Environmental Planning
Health and Safety
Media Appearances
Map Shows Where US Will Start Deep Sea Mining in the Pacific
Newsweek online
2025-08-07
Saleem Ali, professor of energy and the environment, told Newsweek that deep sea mining would allow The Cook Islands to diversify its economy beyond tourism and fishing.
Material Needs of Artificial Intelligence Eclipsed by Energy Debates
Fortune online
2025-07-21
Saleem Ali, professor of geology and spatial sciences, argues that while energy demands of AI get plenty of attention, critical minerals and metals required for processors and data centers are largely overlooked.
A year has passed since the Biden Administration announced that they were appointing a new "Arctic Ambassador," due to growing security concerns highlighted by NATO in this region. It took a further six months to choose the envoy and in February of this year, distinguished Alaskan geographer and Director of the U.S Arctic Research Commission, Mike Sfraga, was nominated to this post.
Researchers suggest the climate crisis requires international minerals agreement
Phys Org online
2022-12-02
The lead author for the paper was Saleem Ali, the Blue and Gold Distinguished Professor of Energy and the Environment at the University of Delaware and chair of the Department of Geography and Spatial Sciences, who also holds a secondary appointment in the Joseph R. Biden, Jr. School of Public Policy and Administration. Julie Klinger, assistant professor in the Department of Geography and Spatial Sciences, was a co-author on the paper. In 2017, she published a book on the global geography of rare earth prospecting and mining called "Rare Earth Frontiers."
Earthly Order: ‘mercurial professor’ with urgent ideas on climate change
The Guardian online
2022-06-30
Ali believes his own, anecdote-filled book is far more accessible. Earthly Order: How Natural Laws Define Human Life is an ambitious effort to bridge the gap between politics and science, drawing on his experience as a National Geographic field explorer who has worked in more than 150 countries.
Why the Periodic Table of Elements Is More Important Than Ever
Bloomberg online
2019-08-28
Matter still matters. And on the 150th anniversary of the periodic table’s formulation by the Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev, it’s more important than it’s ever been.
Saleem Ali, an environmental researcher at the University of Delaware who serves on the board of the Diamonds and Development Initiative, agrees. He says the mining industry has, on the whole, worked hard to turn itself around since the height of the diamond wars and that governance is “much better today” than it used to be.
Radioactive waste standoff could slash high tech's supply of rare earth elements
Science online
2019-04-01
Saleem Ali, an expert in energy and the environment at University of Delaware in Newark who visited the LAMP in 2014, says the anti-Lynas fervor in Malaysia is "unfortunately a classic case of the not-in-my-backyard syndrome." He says recycling is a commendable option but worries activists are now "stigmatizing the waste." Given the importance of REOs for green technology, "The industry needs to make the case more effectively that [it] benefits not just the local, but also the global community," Ali says.
Transnational agricultural land acquisitions threaten biodiversity in the Global South
Environmental Research Letters
2023
Agricultural large-scale land acquisitions have been linked with enhanced deforestation and land use change. Yet the extent to which transnational agricultural large-scale land acquisitions (TALSLAs) contribute to—or merely correlate with—deforestation, and the expected biodiversity impacts of the intended land use changes across ecosystems, remains unclear. We examine 178 georeferenced TALSLA locations in 40 countries to address this gap. While forest cover within TALSLAs decreased by 17% between 2000 and 2018 and became more fragmented, the spatio-temporal patterns of deforestation varied substantially across regions. While deforestation rates within initially forested TALSLAs were 1.5 (Asia) to 2 times (Africa) higher than immediately surrounding areas, we detected no such difference in Europe and Latin America.
Carbon-adjusted efficiency and technology gaps in gold mining
Resources Policy
2023
Gold mining presents a conundrum for economic development practitioners because of its immense environmental impact and profound importance for livelihoods and government revenues in many developing countries. The metal is highly recyclable due to its lack of reactivity. Most of the gold extracted on earth over the past six thousand years is in accessible forms with investors or jewellery. From a purely ecological perspective, gold mining is thus highly problematic. The metal is relatively rare in its geological concentration, so intense chemical interventions are needed for its extraction. Cyanidation has been the transformative process of extracting gold in large quantities and remains the dominant extraction technology with massive chemical and water needs and immense rock waste generation. Data compiled by Lawson and quoted by Ali et al. (2017) suggests that the metal-to-waste ratio of gold is 0.00033% compared to 0.91% for copper, 2.5% for lead, 19% for aluminium, and up to 40% for iron.
Natural resources modulate the nexus between environmental shocks and human mobility
Nature Communications
2023
In the context of natural resource degradation, migration can act as means of adaptation both for those leaving and those supported by remittances. Migration can also result from an inability to adapt in-situ, with people forced to move, sometimes to situations of worse or of the same exposure to environmental threats. The deleterious impacts of resource degradation have been proposed in some situations to limit the ability to move. In this contribution, we use remote sensed information coupled with population density data for continental Africa to assess quantitatively the prevalence of migration and immobility in the context of one cause of resource degradation: drought. We find that the effect of drought on mobility is amplified with the frequency at which droughts are experienced and that higher income households appear more resilient to climatic shocks and are less likely to resort to mobility as an adaptation response.
Land and deep-sea mining: the challenges of comparing biodiversity impacts
Biodiversity and Conservation
2023
The term ‘biodiversity,’ while casually used in practice, is a complicated subject to measure, interpret, contextualize, and compare. Yet the possible advent of deep-sea mining in the mid-2020’s compels us to compare potential impacts of biodiversity loss across ecologically distant realms, a formidable task. Supplying the world’s green infrastructure is expected to lead to shortages of nickel, cobalt and other metals; meanwhile polymetallic nodules sitting atop the abyssal plains of the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ) of the Pacific Ocean contain billions of tons of nickel, cobalt, copper and manganese, enough to solve the supply issues. Implicit in society’s decision of whether to exploit this resource is a tradeoff of harm to biodiversity in the CCZ’s abyssal seafloor and its overlying water column, versus intensification of harm to rainforests and other terrestrial mining habitats.
Tradition or Modernization? The Dilemma of Chinese Indigenous Communities
International Journal of Heritage Studies
2023
In the indigenous communities in China’s Guizhou Province, people are struggling to balance tradition with modernisation. As fires have long plagued these villages, post-disaster reconstruction has intensified the tradition/modernity tension and left people with a complex dilemma: should traditional wooden houses be restored, or should one, instead, pursue a safer and modern dwelling in concrete houses? Through the lens of housing reconstruction, this paper aims to address this contradiction between the social benefits of heritage preservation and the indigenous rights for development in the context of disaster risk and modernisation in Guizhou Province. Analysing 134 surveys and 29 interviews collected via ethnographic fieldwork, this study’s findings reveal two core themes. First, the presence of a prevailing preference among indigenous Chinese for modernity, which also challenged the conventional wisdom that everyone endorses heritage preservation.
