In this framework, GWP-Med organized a training for the partner officials from the Regional Department of Agriculture in Bizerte, on 4-6 August 2015, to train them on participatory communication approaches and investigation diagnosis tools. This workshop followed previous training workshops with partner officials from the Ministry of Agriculture and key basin stakeholders that resulted in highlighting important challenges to take into consideration: the engagement of local stakeholders in the water and soil conservation planning in a context characterized by the pressure on natural resources and the lack of income resources that increases this pressure, as well as the importance of the Douimis basin as a future drinking water reservoir at national level. Moreover, the land tenure issue preventing the farmers’ engagement in long term and sustainable development actions, as well as its accentuation due to the selling of inherited lands by the youth migrating to nearby cities to look for jobs, is an important issue. That is why the local society’s participation in the region’s territorial planning was critical, and GWP-Med included its partners in this, briefing them on the methodological requirements of the participatory diagnosis.
During the training’s first part, good practices for a successful questionnaire survey, along an investigator's guide were shared with participants. The participants were familiarized with the structure and the content of innovative socioeconomic questionnaires, which integrate climate change perceptions beyond the socio-economic diagnostic, and discussed their efficiency as a diagnostic tool in support of local governance.
The training’s second part was joined – apart from the Regional Department’s officials - by further local authorities’ and stakeholders’ representatives, which has allowed a collaborative coordination of the field mission, as a follow-up to the workshop, aimed at the socioeconomic characterization of the study area and the related vulnerability analysis. Facilitators – stakeholders having participated at the training - mobilized the general public, while the officials contributed to the facilitation of the process, meeting with farmers and conducting interviews based on the questionnaire discussed during the training.