Hussam Hussein

• PhD
• Researcher at University of Oxford

This paper critically examines the expanding body of literature on ChatGPT, a transformative AI tool with widespread global adoption. By categorising research into six key themes—sustainability, health, education, work, social media, and energy—it explores ChatGPT’s versatility, benefits, and challenges. The findings highlight its potential to enha...

Jordan is a regional leader in electric vehicle (EV) adoption, with EVs accounting for 45% of vehicle sales in 2023 (1). By August 2024, more than 120,000 EVs were registered on Jordanian roads (2), a remarkable increase from just 900 in 2016 (3). Reduced import tariffs, rising fuel prices, and the growing availability of affordable Chinesemanufact...

The assessment of research performance is widely seen as a vital tool in upholding the highest standards of quality, with selection and competition believed to drive progress. Academic institutions need to take critical decisions on hiring and promotion, while facing external pressure by also being subject to research assessment1, 2, 3–4. Here we p...

The ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas has significantly strained Gaza’s healthcare system (Levi et al. Citation2024; Rimawi and Madani Citation2023). To address public health challenges effectively, including those faced by people with disabilities, a multidisciplinary approach is essential, leveraging expertise from psychology, nursing, me...

Petra, an archaeological site in Jordan, is home to multiple Bedouin tribes, includ- ing the Bdoul and the Ammarin, who have lived there for centuries (1). Since Petra’s designation as a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage site in 1985 (2), Jordan has neglected the rights of these local communiti...

In their Essay, Roberto Lalli and Jaume Navarro highlight evolving attitudes towards science diplomacy over the past century (R. Lalli and J. Navarro Nature 633, 515–517; 2024). This is an opportune moment to consider the future: earlier this year, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the Royal Society in the United Ki...

In March, Morocco released plans to dedicate 1 million hectares to green hydrogen projects (1). Although Morocco, along with other countries in the Middle East and Northern Africa, is right to invest in renewable energy, focusing on hydrogen will benefit Europe at the expense of the local environment and communities. Instead of perpetuating the reg...

As part of its Economic Modernization Vision to future-proof its economy, Jordan is drafting and finalizing a ‘green hydrogen’ strategy. One core aim is to produce this hydrogen, which is manufactured by the electrolysis of water using only renewable electricity sources, for export to, especially, the European Union. But flaws in this strategy mean...

As an experienced advocate of water diplomacy, I urge de-escalation of the water crisis in Gaza. In response to the Hamas attacks on southern Israel of 7 October, blockades by Israel have curtailed access to water for the Gaza Strip’s two million — predominantly civilian — inhabitants.

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is the most water-scarce region in the world. Recent research suggests that agroecology could be a basis for sustainable agriculture. We assess the spread of agroecology in the region and explore the prospect of self-organization among farming communities as an indicator for self-determination of the farming...

Water diplomacy is a recent term that has been used to analyse hydropoltiical dynamics and issues that may arise when discussing transboundary water governance. In fact, the shared nature of transboundary water resources may lead to tension over their allocation and use which can in turn aggravate or harm interstate relations and cooperation. This...

While academics have argued that most interactions between states over shared water resources demonstrate a tendency for cooperation rather than conflict, they have also identified treaties and agreements as the best examples of continued cooperation. However, treaties and agreements may also be a cause for conflict, especially when they are deemed...

The European Green Deal (EGD) marked the commitment of the European Union (EU) to a carbon-free, socially inclusive economic system. Even if conceived as an essentially domestic growth strategy, the EGD is inspiring EU diplomacy, as economic cooperation will be needed to realize the EGD’s ambitious vision. This profile aims to investigate and refle...

Although the Russia–Ukraine war has had only a limited impact on the agricultural production in the two belligerent states, it has triggered a number of interlocking ripple effects, which have exacerbated pre-existing strains in the supply chain. The war is best seen not as an isolated shock, whose effects can be traced along a single linear axis,...

For resource-poor countries in the MENA, the expansion of renewables represents a unique chance to overcome established geopolitical dependencies, develop employment opportunities, and pursue a long-term strategy of domestic energy security. While, in 2018, Jordan was declared one of the top three emerging markets globally for clean energy investme...

In the last decades several Conditional Cash Transfers (CCTs) have been implemented to interrupt the intergenerational transmission of poverty. More recently, they have also been used as a policy response to provide support to households hit by the COVID crisis. CCTs are being deployed as a development tool to reduce local communities’ vulnerabilit...

Water scarcity in Palestine is a top national priority issue. Extensive research has analysed the causes of water scarcity in Palestine, focusing on negotiations, the occupation, climate change, environmental conditions, the role of international donors and funders, and mismanagement. Nevertheless, how these representations are reflected in Palesti...

Motivation Critical development studies have overlooked water‐related nexuses and frameworks proposed by development agencies that recognize that water and sanitation are linked to other development challenges and identify the synergies and trade‐offs between sectors. In particular, critical development studies have ignored these nexus approaches u...

In social-ecological systems, natural resource management can be characterized by trade-offs across sectors and sustainability targets. The water-energy-food (WEF) nexus concept makes explicit various trade-offs in order to maximize synergies of interventions. However, there are few successful examples of its operationalization in research settings...

Most people on this planet are under the age of 35. They have been raising their voices in discussions on climate change in recent years, while this is well documented, their roles in water cooperation are not. Drawing on examples from desk research, an online survey, and action research alongside young water leaders, this article seeks to map out...

Between 2007 and 2018, water-based protests in Egypt received extensive visibility in media headlines. These protests were first sparked by events in a village in the Nile Delta in 2007; since this demonstration, water-based protests, known as Thawrat al-'Atash or the Thirst Revolution, have become widespread. Nevertheless, the vast majority of aca...

The COVID-19 pandemic offers an opportunity to examine the impacts of system-wide crises on key supply sectors such as water, energy and food. These sectors are becoming increasingly interlinked in environmental policy-making and with regard to achieving supply security. There is a pressing need for a systematization of impacts and responses beyond...

After more than three years of implementing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development , the 2019 World Water Week in Stockholm chose to focus on inclusiveness with the theme "Water for society-Including all". This is also the theme of this Special Issue, which brings together the scientific highlights presented during the week. As connector acros...

The acceleration of economic development and rising standards of living have made energy security a top priority for policy makers worldwide. The issue of securing energy is particularly challenging for Jordan, which suffers from scarcity of natural resources, combined with the regional instability and conflicts. Based on desk research and on exper...

In response to rising urban water demand, some regions have reallocated water from irrigation to more valuable uses. Groundwater over-exploitation, however, continues to degrade aquifer quality, and states rarely succeed at stopping overuse. This study asks whether growing urban requirements enable the reallocation of groundwater from irrigation to...

The number of massive hydraulic infrastructures such as large-scale dams, huge hydropower plants, and broad irrigation networks has increased to an unprecedented level during the twentieth century. While the trend has recently slowed, building giant water infrastructures is still an utmost priority in many parts of the world across state elites. In...

How will the COVID-19 pandemic impact food security and virtual water "trade"? This is not an easy question as we must consider the multifaceted and complex nature of the aspects and variables at play. Aspects to consider are both the global food supply system and access to food. The global food system is based on food production, food processing,...

Research has tackled the physical expansion of urban growth and concomitant rural-urban transformation of land use in many parts of the world, but this phenomenon remained largely overlooked in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. To fill this knowledge gap, this study investigated land use changes from the 1970s to 2018 in the cities of...

This article investigates Qatar's sustainability crisis of the high levels of water, electricity and food use. The high levels of consumption have been enabled by Qatar's significant hydrocarbons wealth, a generous rentier state's redistributive water governance, and structural dependence on imported food and food production subsidies. The water cr...

The Orontes River Basin is among the least researched transboundary water basins in the Middle East. The few studies on the Orontes have two main theoretical and empirical shortcomings. First, there is a lack of critical hydropolitics studies on this river. Second, those studies focus on either the Turkish–Syrian or Lebanese–Syria relations rather...

Since the Syrian crisis and the so-called "Arab Spring", new discourses have been created, sparking the discursive water governance debates around water scarcity and hydropolitics. In Lebanon and Jordan-where most water resources are transboundary, and where most Syrian refugees have flown in-new discourses of climate change and especially of Syria...

This article examines water awareness campaign messaging of the Water Efficiency and Public Information for Action (WEPIA) campaign. Using Jordanian government documents and structured interviews, it argues that the Ministry of Water and Irrigation (MWI) promotes water awareness campaigns to shape water users' habits and perspectives on water. The...

The water agreement between Jordan and Israel, created as part of their peace treaty in 1994, set out detailed allocations terms to which both countries have respectively abided since its inception. But after two and a half decades, the water agreement terms no longer appear as equitable considering the social, economic, and environmental changes t...

Transboundary water governance in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is a complex issue as it is not just a technical problem, but a political one. It must therefore be contextualized in the broader geopolitical context, considering national security, regional geopolitics, inter-sectorial interests and power asymmetries. This is particu...

This viewpoint analyzes the Jordanian water strategy to investigate how water scarcity is framed, and what solutions are suggested. It also analyzes how the framings and discourses have changed in the two versions of the strategy, why, and their implications. The Jordanian national water strategy has been overlooked by the literature of hydropoliti...

This article analyses the production of scale in the La Plata River Basin and Guarani Aquifer System within regional hydropolitics in South America. We argue that different political and ecological scales acquire prominence according to the national political goals at stake, reproducing multi-scalar politics within and beyond South America. To supp...

Water resource development has always been considered as a strategic tool by the Turkish ruling elites to reach food and energy security, as well as to enhance domestic peace and stability since the foundation of the Republic of Turkey. Therefore, the concept of "hydraulic mission" fits this strategic understanding, and it has become a prevailing p...

The governorate of Irbid has the highest population density in Jordan and most of its water demand is supplied by groundwater. Both natural population growth and waves of migrations increased the number of its inhabitants during the last 40 years. This population growth has increased: the amount of land covered by urban and agricultural development...

The Mediterranean Youth for Water network (MedYWat) is supported by the Center for Mediterannean Integration (Marseille, France) and emcompasses over 80 young Mediterranean water researchers, entrepreneurs and activists working on water challenges in the region. This network was launched during the first World Water Day youth workshop on treated wa...

This article contributes to critical sustainability studies through an interrogation of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and their action towards improving access to water and sanitation. This is done through an analysis of 'SDG 6: Ensure access to water and sanitation for all', specifically focusing on Target 6.5: 'By 2030, implement integrate...

This article investigates the construction of the discourse of water scarcity in Jordan. It identifies the actors constructing the discourse and the elements comprising the discourse. The study is important and makes an original contribution because while the issue of water scarcity in Jordan has been widely researched, it has been done mainly with...

This article shed light on the shadow state, investigating who belongs to it, their interests, and their relation to the water sector. This is important because Jordan is known to be among the most water scarce countries in the world and some water professionals see in the shadow state an obstacle to implementing successful water policies , resulti...

This article assesses drought status in the Yarmouk Basin (YB), in northern Jordan, using the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI), the Standardized Water-Level Index (SWI), and the Percent Departure from Normal rainfall (PDNimd) during the years 1993–2014. The results showed that the YB suffers from frequent and irregular periods of drought as v...

This article explores the governance of the Guarani Aquifer System (GAS) through the lens of critical hydropolitics and specifically through the framework of hydro-hegemony. This study is important as the GAS, which is one of the first examples of transboundary groundwater cooperation, has been studied through hydrological, geological and legal dis...

Extensive literature has shown the impact of water scarcity discourses on national policies, however the impact of water scarcity discourses on transboundary water governance has been overlooked. This article contributes to filling this gap by investigating the impact of the water scarcity discourse in the case of Jordan, specifically on three case...

This paper explores the evolving patterns of hydropolitical relations in the dynamic contexts of Yarmouk and Blue Nile Rivers in comparison. The analysis aims at shedding light over the complex implications that recent political and social changes have aroused for the water disputes between Jordan and Syria on the one hand, and Ethiopia and Egypt o...

This article investigates the representation of water scarcity in Jordanian textbooks to understand its role on improving education on environmental sustainability. People's understanding of an issue guides their actions toward finding and implementing appropriate solutions to what they perceive as a problem. Discourses are key in constructing peop...

This article investigates Jordanian and Syrian hydropolitical discourses around the bilateral relations along the Yarmouk River, with a focus on the decreased flow of the Yarmouk River reaching the Wahda Dam. The article examines the bilateral agreements, the hydropolitical discourses they generate, and the competing solutions they open. By situati...

This article explores how the idea of a canal connecting the Dead Sea with either the Red Sea or the Mediterranean Sea has evolved. It analyzes the proposals, the official interests, and the undeclared reasons. It provides a critical understanding of the discourses behind the complex hydro-political dynamics in a changing and contested topography w...

In recent years, studies relating to political and international relations in the Arab region have been centred on security, stability and democracy.1 The so-called Arab Spring has monopolized the attention of scholars, to the detriment of issues related to the environment. The Arab region is often described as an arid or semi-arid region with low...

This book investigates the new complexities of the hydropolitical dynamics and water–land–energy nexus in the Nile River basin. This book is particularly relevant because it is focused on a region that is geopolitically extremely important and that has seen significant inward foreign investment. No other study currently provides the combination of...

This thesis investigates the construction of the discourse of water scarcity in Jordan. First, it identifies the actors constructing the discourse, their interests, and the elements comprising the discourse. Second, it examines the effects of the deployment of the discourse of water scarcity on policy-options, analysing the solutions opened and clo...

Transboundary surface water is of strategic importance in the Arab world as it accounts for over two thirds of the renewable water in the region. Despite most shared waters have their source outside the Arab countries, no basin-wide agreements exist over the use, allocation and management of the main transboundary rivers in the region: the Nile, th...