Tunis/Tunisia — Expert in water resources and climate change Raoudha Gafrej called on Thursday to officially announce the state of drought as a natural disaster experienced by Tunisia, stressing the importance of setting up an urgent national plan to manage the current water crisis.
At a press conference organised by the Green Tunisia Network on "Experts and activists sound the alarm on the water crisis in Tunisia", she called for the emergency situation to be announced in order to adopt exceptional measures for an exceptional situation.
She asked the government to launch an urgent appeal to the National Water Council and to open it to national competences and civil society, calling also for the holding of the Regional Security Council, given that water is a matter of national security.
The expert said that the urgent national plan should be public and accessible to all, and should set out the role of each of the actors, including decision-makers and the administration (central, regional and municipal), the private sector and farmers as well as citizens.
In the same context, she recommended mobilising local and foreign funding by resorting to international donors, "given that Tunisia is in a state of natural crisis".
Gafrej stressed the importance of developing a financing strategy, mobilising a budget that covers the cost of the announced strategy, in addition to the upward revision of the price of water and its valuation, noting that the allocated budget should cover the actors damaged by the water-saving policy.
According to the expert, the water issue should no longer be under the supervision of the Ministry of Agriculture but under the supervision of the Prime Ministry or the Presidency of the Republic directly.
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Gafrej called for an emergency law on the exceptional situation of water resources management to help put an urgent end to the anarchic and illegal use of water.
She also stressed the need to stop wasting water in homes, businesses and hotels and to ensure the repair of flushing toilets which take up between 50 and 60% of domestic water use, as well as in irrigated areas where water wastage amounts to 40%.
For its part, the Green Tunisia network recommended that companies and public administrations be required to present water-saving plans until September 2023, ensuring that all breakdowns are repaired (taps, etc.). The same applies to citizens, who must rationalise their water consumption and repair all breakdowns in their domestic network.
Tunisia is experiencing a situation of water stress as this situation has evolved into a state of crisis due to the persistence of drought over the past 10 years.
In 2021, an individual's share of water resources is estimated at 355 m3 per capita.
Water reserves in dams have declined sharply. On 25 April 2023, the filling rate of the large dams reached almost 30%.
The water resources in the underground water tables have recorded a decline, going from 66.1% in 2016 to 58.6% in 2017 and to 41.3% in 2022, which has aggravated the problem of the overexploitation of aquifers and the proliferation of anarchic wells (nearly 22 thousand wells in 2020) according to the Green Tunisia network.
