Improve Water Resource Governance (TN0040)

mprove water resource governance
Beginning of October 2018 – End of August 2020
Lead implementing agency/actor
Ministry of Agriculture, Water Resources and Fisheries
Commitment description
Tunisia has faced major challenges in recent years in water resources, such as increased and excessive consump- tion, limited water quality in some areas, in addition to the world-wide decline of national water reserves. Given the strategic value of this wealth, this commitment aims to implement some projects that will contribute to enhancing water resource governance and encourage all actors involved in this field to implement initiatives to achieve this strategic goal through a participatory and open approach. Therefore, these projects are mainly:
- Publishing data that enable the monitoring of water consumption by sector (drinking water, agricultural field, industrial field, tourism ...) and by geographical distribution across the Tunisian territory.
- Developing an electronic platform to report violations and abuses related to the consumption or water resource management.
- Establishing and implementing a policy according to a participatory approach in order to rationalize distribution and consumption of water.
Moreover, this commitment relates to the sixth objective of the sustainable development goals "clean and healthy water, ensuring the abundance and sustainable water management and health for all".
Problem/Background
Information about the water wealth management and the water quality in Tunisia is highly limited. In addition, existing mechanisms do not allow for interaction between government actors in charge of this field, citizens, and all civil society actors. Also, due to continued depletion of the water reserves in Tunisia, coupled with increasing demand of all sectors, this field should have a priority to strength efforts to enhance water gover- nance transparency and adopt a participatory approach to achieve required reforms to govern this wealth.
Identification of commitment objectives/expected results
- Publishing information applying water resource management transparency, namely those regarding available water reserves, its geographical distribution, water quality indicators, current issues and decisions taken to solve them;
- Providing mechanisms allowing citizens and other civil society actors active in this field to contribute to public policies that will be aimed to govern this sector and establish tools to detect all violations and abuses related to it.
How will the commitment contribute to solve the public problem?
- Information dissemination allows a clear and accurate diagnosis of major challenges and issues facing water wealth management, which would enable all stakeholders involved, governmental or non-governmental actors, to contribute and cooperate in finding solutions and achieving more effective results;
- Publishing information and adopting a participatory approach allows changing the relationship between the administration, citizens, and civil society while ensuring the commitment of each actor to upholding their responsibility and positive role on the governance of this sector.
Relevance with OGP values
- Transparency and openness: this commitment will enable more dissemination of information and improve the quality of the access to information process, in addition to the possibility of the reuse of these data to create added value. - Public participation : this commitment will allow the establishment of new mechanisms to enhance communication between administration, citizens, and civil society, while ensuring the commitment of each actor to upholding their responsibility and positive role in managing this sector.
Source of funding/
Relation with other programs and policies
Steps and execution agenda Beginning of October 2018
End of October 2018
Contact Information
Name of the responsible person from implementing agency
Mr. Anis Mansour
Title and Department
Director at Ministry of Agriculture, Water Resources and Fisheries (Gen- eral Directorate of Organization, informatics, documents management and documentation)
E-mail address
[email protected]

Other Actors involved
State actors involved
Access to Information Authority
CSOs, private sector, multilaterals, working groups
- React Association,
- “Dynamique autour de l’eau” Association, - Tunisian Association of Local Gover- nance,
- Tunisian Association for Development and Training.

5. Improve water resource governance

Language of the commitment as it appears in the action plan:

"Tunisia has faced major challenges in recent years in water resources, such as increased and excessive consumption, limited water quality in some areas, in addition to the world-wide decline of national water reserves. Given the strategic value of this wealth, this commitment aims to implement some projects that will contribute to enhancing water resource governance and encourage all actors involved in this field to implement initiatives to achieve this strategic goal through a participatory and open approach."

Milestones:

- Publishing data that enable the monitoring of water consumption by sector (drinking water, agricultural field, industrial field, tourism ...) and by geographical distribution across the Tunisian territory,

- Developing an electronic platform to report violations and abuses related to the consumption or water resource management,

- Establishing and implementing a policy according to a participatory approach in order to rationalize distribution and consumption of water

Responsible institution: Ministry of Agriculture, Water Resources and Fisheries

Supporting institution(s): Authority of Access to Information, React Association, “Dynamique autour de l’eau” Association,        Tunisian Association of Local Governance, Tunisian Association for Development and Training

Start date: October 2018                               End date: August 2020

Editorial Note: This is a partial version of the commitment text. For the full commitment text from the Tunisia national action plan, see here.

Context and Objectives

This commitment aims to improve Tunisia’s water resource governance. Tunisia is a water-stressed country with per capita renewable water availability well below the regional average. ^[21] Since 2011, dam water levels have been alarming and Tunisia has faced multiple water crises, including riots and strikes blocking major roads, especially in underdeveloped regions. ^[22] Excessive and sometimes illegal groundwater extraction has led to salinization of available water resources, ^[23] which has caused conflict in many communities. Poor water governance and mistrust between parties sharing water resources have been cited as main contributors to the country’s water crisis.

This commitment intends to publish data enabling the monitoring of water consumption by sector, develop an electronic platform to report violations, and use a participatory approach to establish a policy on water distribution and consumption. While the first two milestones are verifiable, the third milestone does not clarify who would participate in the creation of the policy or the process for developing the policy. Given the relevance of this information to the commitment’s objective, this commitment is not specific enough to be verifiable.

The commitment is primarily relevant to the OGP value of access to information, since it offers measures to publicly publish information on water consumption. The participatory approach to policy development also makes this commitment relevant to the OGP value of civic participation.

This commitment could represent a positive step on improving water resource governance. Publication of information regarding water quality and quantity suffers from major gaps and is critical to the problem of groundwater over-exploitation. ^[24] However, it is not clear what this commitment intends to add to the information already available from the Tunisian National Statistics Institute, which publishes water consumption disaggregated by sector in Tunisia. In terms of the electronic platform, the commitment text does not specify whether necessary corrective and redress mechanisms will be established to ensure that all complaints are addressed properly. Using a participatory approach to develop a water policy could ensure that needs of different groups and sectors are addressed, but the commitment does not specify what will constitute the participatory approach. Overall, this commitment lacks adequate accountability mechanisms and offers limited clarity on the policy development process.

Next Step
For related commitments in future action plans, the IRM recommends that:

• The government should provide further details on the type and number of datasets to be provided; mechanisms that will ensure all complaints receive and adequate response; and methodology for policy development, ensuring a participatory approach, more details are also needed in relation to the process for its approval.
• The Ministry of Agriculture could consider holding meetings to hear the NGOs and appoint a focal point that would help put the procedures in place and facilitate the execution of the commitment to the front-line officers.

Additionally, according to Fairouz Slama and Jamel Chahed of University of Tunis El Manar, tools used to analyze and transform available information in order to orient national water policy must be modernized through establishing structured databases and dynamic and interactive geographical information systems. ^[25]

5. Improve water resource governance

Limited:

The Ministry of Agriculture, Water Resources, and Fisheries completed the first milestone by holding a meeting at the Ministry of Agriculture organized by a CSO [35] with relevant civil society actors on 17 April 2019 to discuss the future publication of datasets related to water. [36] According to the organizer Samia Zayani, president of Dynamique Tunisienne autour de l’eau, the meeting was productive but stakeholders’ voices were not sufficiently represented and the process was not fully participatory. [37]

The ministry published multiple datasets in three categories on water on its open data portal (http://www.agridata.tn/). [38] Zayani explained that the published datasets provide information useful for the administration, since different departments have not internally shared certain data in the past. [39] Two datasets are useful for civil society, one on local groups of water distributers [40] and the one on water quality. This dataset was published but is not currently available on the portal. The IRM researcher could not verify the existence of an electronic platform to report violations regarding water management, including via the mobile application, “SOS eau” (“Water is gold”). Nor did the ministry publish monthly reports on drilling incidents or illegal water connections. Samia Zayani [41] explained that the e-platform, which reported to a service center that coordinated the response to violations between civil society and administrations, was launched as a pilot project for the region of Gafsa and functioned for a while, but was discontinued. According to government [42] and civil society, [43] “SOS eau” [44] has a functioning beta version but lacks interconnectivity with the e-platform and the fully functional mobile application is unavailable publicly.

The ministry did not publish monthly reports on drilling incidents or illegal connections but according to Zayani, publishes most of that information in its annual reports. [45] Hence, the implementation of the second milestone is limited. Rim Garnaoui of the Government of Tunisia [46] stated that the government is finalizing a policy to rationalize distribution and consumption of water, but nothing has been published.