Tunisia

By expanding on pre-existing national strategies in Tunisia, the TNA recommends increasing conservation agriculture practices. The Technology Action Plan details a project to implement this suggestion. The goal is to  ínrease the area under conservation agriculture from its current 12,000 ha to 33,000 ha by 2025 and 180,000 ha by 2030, ultimately reaching 350,000 ha by 2050. This ambition will leverage the potential of conservation agriculture to ensure the sustainability of the grain system and improve current and future food security.

Tunisia is the smallest country in North Africa, where it is located between Algeria and Libya and borders the Mediterranean Sea. The coastline extends for 1,300 km, and nearly 70% of the population live in the coastal areas. Two thirds of Tunisia is arid, and in the south it shades into the Sahara Desert. Two of its key sectors are tourism and agriculture, where livestock and olives are prevalent. Agriculture contributes approximately 10% to GDP and employs 17% of the working population. The consequences of climate change faced by Tunisia are increasing droughts, which threaten a large swathe of agriculture production, and the rise in sea levels, rendering 116,130 ha of land vulnerable to submersion.

Tunisia completed its TNA in 2017. The establishment of a new Information and Decision Support System is among the prioritized technologies identified by the TNA. This technology recognizes the importance of Tunisia’s coastal areas and is a valuable tool in coastal management. Through the TNA, an objective was selected to install a complete network of measures covering the whole of Tunisian territory by 2022. This will significantly strengthen the current Information and Decision Support System and help safeguard coastal areas, where 90% of Tunisia’s economic activity is located.

In order to curb the emissions stemming from Tunisia’s industrial sector, the TNA highlights the potential for co-processing technology in energy-intensive industries such as cement production. The technology action plan aims to introduce and disseminate co-processing for the replacement of fossil fuels by alternative fuels in all of Tunisia’s nine cement plants. To achieve this, the development of a framework favourable to co-processing is suggested, and a pilot project has been outlined to serve as a model. It is estimated that co-processing will enable a replacement rate of approximately 30% in Tunisia’s cement plants.

Tunisia’s TNA contributes to the following Sustainable Development Goals: