Short Bio
Maha Halalsheh holds a PhD in environmental engineering from Wageningen University and Research Center and is currently assigned as associate researcher at the University of Jordan. Her main domain is wastewater treatment with 20 years’ experience in coordinating different projects and conducting studies. In addition, she provides consultations to different international and local organizations. She represents the university in many governmental committees and is an active member at Jordan Engineers Association and chaired water and environment committee for 6 years. She also worked as wastewater treatment expert at the GIZ between 2015-2017 and conducted two main studies on decentralized sanitation management.
She is also managing the office of the National Implementation Committee for the Integrated Wastewater Management and participated in the development of the national action plan for decentralized wastewater management policy of the Ministry of Water and Irrigation published on 2016. She has 30 scientific publications. She conducts training at regional level and was recently involved with Arab Countries Water Utilities Association in training professionals in Jordan, Egypt and Lebanon on sanitation safety planning and governance. Additionally, she coordinated IWRM master’s program that was oriented to train professionals from all over the world on integrated water resources management. The program was organized jointly between the University of Jordan and Cologne University of Applied Sciences.
Motivation/Commitment to the GSC
Utilizing fresh water to flush excreta is not the zenith of scientific achievements. This historical practice was re-initiated more than 150 years ago when very little was known about water physics and chemistry and when applied microbiology was not discovered. This paradigm became dominant with time resulting in increased financial burden which globally restricted propagation of service provision. Wastewater shipping is not necessarily what would be done today if countries had chance to start again. Current advances in wastewater sciences coupled with some factors like limited resources and energy costs would encourage adoption of alternative management schemes that considers circularity. Obviously, this alternative requires high level of community involvement, technical feasibility, economic feasibility and legal and institutional arrangements. The main motivation to join the GSC would be to strengthen the transition from the conventional paradigm to sustainable circular management alternatives.
