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Tunisia looks for water solutions - 11th August 2023

By 2030, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) will be very short of water. The World Bank predicts people will have less than the necessary amount.

Tunisia's in its fourth year of very little rain. It's building special 'plants', where salt is removed from seawater. Sometimes the plants recycle dirty water instead.

Farmer Lotfi Atyaoui couldn't farm without the plant.

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."

Tunisia's first plants were developed in the 1970s. They cleaned up salty water in the ground. The first plant to remove salt from seawater was built in 2018. Today, the country's 16 plants provide 6 percent of drinking water. The rest is taken from a group of 37 lakes. The problem is that these lakes are only one third full.

New plants are certainly needed. But at the same time, these industries use unclean energy, like oil or gas. SONEDE – the water company which is building one new plant – says it understands the issue.

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."

Such plants are one major solution here. And the same thing's happening across the MENA region, as the water situation gets worse.