Tunisia tackles drought - 11th August 2023

The World Bank has forecast that by the end of the decade, the wider Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region will tumble below the absolute water scarcity threshold of 500 cubic metres per capita per year.

Grappling with its fourth consecutive year of drought, Tunisia's prioritising new desalination plants and also facilities dedicated to the purification of waste water, for use in agriculture.

For Lotfi Atyaoui, in fear of losing his crops and livestock to climate change, the plant's been a godsend.

Lotfi Atyaoui: "To tell you the truth, we consider this (wastewater treatment) project to be vital because we suffer a lot from drought and lack of water. If we don't have water, we will lose our agriculture, our trees and our livestock."

The 1970s first saw the country's brackish groundwater being purified in desalination plants, followed by its first seawater desalination plant in 2018. 16 plants yield 6 percent of Tunisia's potable water, with the remainder sourced from its 37 reservoirs, currently merely one third full.

Nowadays, water rationing is commonplace. There are bans on car washing, aspects of household use and even on farm irrigation.

Although there's clearly an urgent need for desalination facilities, the flip side is that most plants are reliant on the very fossil fuels which are stoking the climate crisis.

For Mosbah Helali, the outgoing CEO of the national water supplier SONEDE, which is constructing one of the new plants, they're very conscious of this paradox.

Mosbah Helali: "The drawback is energy consumption, but this is improving. One of the disadvantages is that it uses a lot of energy. We hope that, with technology, this will improve and that, with solar energy, we'll be able to mitigate the impact of energy consumption a bit."

Since water scarcity's impacting the whole MENA zone, nations are racing to update both their water processing systems, and the quality of drinking water for urban and rural dwellers.