The Ministry of Agriculture, Hydraulic Resources and Fisheries (MARHP), through the Directorate General for Water Resources (DGRE), has led a process to develop an Action Plan (PAGIRE) to strengthen its Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) from June 2022 to March 2023. This process was facilitated by the Global Water Partnership for the Mediterranean (GWP-Med), through the SDG 6 IWRM Support Programme. A Task Force was set up to steer the development of the Action Plan, guide the consultation process and examine and comment on the outline of the Action Plan before it was presented to the stakeholders for discussion and validation. The consultation process brought together 85 representatives of the various ministerial departments and structures involved in water resource management within the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Environment, Ministry of Equipment and Territorial Planning, at both central and regional level, the National Institute of Meteorology, the National Centre for Cartography and Remote Sensing, professional and civil society organisations, representatives from academia and independent experts. The result is an IWRM Action Plan (PAGIRE) consisting of 13 actions to strengthen IWRM implementation, providing a framework for advancing coherence and synergy in government action on water resources management. The following action is part of the PAGIRE.
This action focuses on defining the appropriate scale and approach for water management in Tunisia. It will include a national dialogue to define the appropriate management level (centralised vs decentralised) and to discuss a basin management approach, taking into account relevant legal frameworks and feedback from the application of water productivity and accounting. As a result, institutional revisions will be defined. For the successful implementation of this action, some of the other actions in the Action Plan should ideally be implemented beforehand. These include actions A4 (Analysis of the social dynamics surrounding water), A5 (Having regular structured dialogue with users and citizens) and A6 (Capacity strengthening of stakeholders in IWRM). Furthermore, it is important to note that the successfulness of such a dialogue will depend on the existence of a (political) window of opportunity.
