About Our Project

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Our undergraduate team formed in April 2020 and our project, Fostering Green Entrepreneurialism- An Analytical Comparison of Water Resource Conservation Practices and Behaviors in Amman, Jordan and Austin, Texas, was one of five teams granted full project funding in November 2020 from the President’s Award for Global Learning selection committee. We have also obtained additional funding from UT’s Office of Sustainability through the university’s Green Fund award program and from the university’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies department. We extend our gratitude to these programs for making this project possible. 

Jordan’s groundwater is consumed twice as quickly as it can be replenished, and existing resources meet only about half of the country’s water demands. Further, landlocked between Iraq, Syria, and Palestine, Jordan hosts more than 750,000 registered refugees in a region prone to political instability and strained resource capacity. The Arab region contains 14 off the world’s 20 most water-stressed countries and Jordan ranks fifth in nations facing the greatest water stress. As climate change brings further uncertainty, water stress challenges may act as an accelerant to political unrest both globally and in the Middle East. But solutions to resource strain are emerging. In Jordan, the fastest growing economic sector is science and technology, centered in its capital, Amman. It is traditionally an early and wide adopt of water conservation strategies, a hub for NGOs, and a hotbed for startups. According to Dr. Steven Gorelick, Cyrus F. Tolman Professor in the Department of Earth System Science at Stanford University, Jordan “will be centre stage in showing how a semi-arid region deals with the devastating impacts of a warmer and drier regional climate.” For these reasons, collaborating with the University of Jordan proved for an important and meaningful partnership.

Fostering Green Entrepreneurialism seeks to analyze student perceptions towards sustainability both at the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Jordan in Amman (UJ), compare water and resource conservation techniques at both institutions, and establish a Green Innovation Fund at UJ.

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