ALM UNDP

Summary:

Tunisia suffers from three inter-related problems posing serious challenges to the agricultural, water and environment sectors:

• water scarcity;
• land degradation, both aggravated by climate change risk; and
• pollution of marine water resources in the Mediterranean Sea.

While water scarcity in Tunisia will worsen, according to projections, with population growth and climate change, climate variability already poses a substantial risk to rural livelihoods given the direct effect of weather-related shocks on productive lands. An integrated approach is the recommended way forward for the sustainable management and optimization of Tunisia’s water and land resources. This might include

• improving the value of water used in agriculture through transforming the incentive systems for water conservation (e.g. demand and supply water management, through drip irrigation),
• water capture (dams and storage reservoirs, dam management (ie maintaining spillways etc) made more effective through reduction of erosion and further intensification of forestation,
• protecting groundwater resources,
• using adaptation measures for climate risk in farming systems, and
• introducing innovative means to increase new sources of water (such as the reuse of treated effluent or desalinated water) and
• improving water quality .

The proposed project will evaluate and test several of these alternatives with the end goal of improving water resources availability, reducing pollution loads in the Mediterranean Sea and the Gulf of Tunis in particular, and increasing the sustainability of agricultural practices and livelihoods in the context of climate change. Field investments will be piloted in a number of target areas to assess the viability of the proposed integrated