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 improving the hydrogeological knowledge of groundwater and the methods for monitoring and protecting these resources. Activities related to this action will be piloted in the Governorate of Sousse and include the carrying out of studies and works to update information on the hydrogeological balance based on the hydrodynamic characteristics of aquifers (available resources/ recharge capacity/ exploitation). It will also look intoidentifying solutions for improving the monitoring of groundwater abstraction in real time and to install and test these solutions. The testing of these solutions for the monitoring of water withdrawals and the piezometric level of the aquifer system will be conducted for two years, and will be followed by an evaluation of the effectiveness of the tested solutions. This will result in the proposal of an action plan to scale up effective solutions to improve the conservation of groundwater resources on a national scale.
