Sbikha: Outside a small mosque in central Tunisia, women queue for one of their village’s last water sources, a pipe meant to irrigate crops but now a lifeline in an arid region.
Like its neighbor Algeria and large areas of the Mediterranean region, Tunisia is suffering from “drought warning conditions”, according to the European Drought Observatory.
But while drought and rising temperatures affect the region as a whole, in rural areas where poverty rates tend to be higher, the effects are felt twofold.
Tunisia’s national water network supplies almost all of the country’s urban areas, but only about half of the rural population.
Since then, the families said they rely on water from wells originally dug by local farmers to irrigate their land.
None of these wells have been approved by the state because they are often contaminated with pollutants and unfit for human consumption due to improper construction and testing.
Flashing a scar that ran across his stomach, Ali Kammoun, 57, said he had undergone two operations for water-borne diseases.
“Half of us have kidney problems,” said his neighbor Leila Ben Arfa. “The water is polluted, but we have to drink it.”
The 52-year-old woman said she and other women were “carrying jerry cans on their backs”.
Tunisia, in its sixth year of drought, ranks 33rd in the world with the greatest water burden according to the World Resources Institute.
The World Bank says that by 2030, the Middle East and North Africa will drop below the “absolute water scarcity” threshold of 500 cubic meters per person per year.
This amount is already below 450 cubic meters per inhabitant in Tunisia.
More than 650,000 Tunisians, mostly in rural areas, do not have running water at home, with nearly half of them living far from a public water source, according to a 2023 United Nations report.
Bottled water costs around half a Tunisian dinar (16 cents) per liter and remains a luxury for families whose governor is the poorest in Tunisia.
“We have to find a solution,” said Djaouher Kammoun, a 26-year-old farmer who shares water from a well with other villagers.
“Most families go for water when we are working and sometimes we cannot do both,” he said, calling the system unsustainable.
According to the National Agricultural Observatory (ONAGRI), about 60 percent of wells across the country are dug privately and illegally.
But while the practice may provide a temporary – albeit unhealthy – solution for some, it exacerbates water scarcity.
A 2022 ONAGRI study found that Tunisia’s deep aquifers were being used at 150 percent of their recharge rate and groundwater at 119 percent.
A Tunisian village’s fight for running water
