Décharges 2

Cleanup-Month: Environmental protection relegated to citizens

« It’s a sign of the Ministry’s shortcoming. The minister travels around with her staff and meets with governors, but doesn’t include the communes. The result? A handful of individuals cleaning up plastic » quips the president of the National Federation of Tunisian Communes (FNCT). « The initiative aims to instill a culture of environmentalism. A clean environment is a daily effort and lifelong commitment » retorts a ministry official.

Mountains, Sea and Toxic Waste: Tabarkans Protest Local Dump

The town of Tabarka, nestled between green mountains and the sea, close to the Algerian border, boasts a natural beauty that has made it a major tourist attraction for decades. In 2017, nearly a quarter of a million tourists visited Tabarka and its nearby mountain villages according to one report. Despite the beauty, the town’s main trash dump had been near one of the main roads entering the town for years until 2015, when it was finally moved. But the new dump location is near a hospital, close to a training school for the hospitality sector, and may be leaking into local water resources. When locals living near the dump protested earlier this year by blocking a national highway, calling on officials to move it elsewhere, several were briefly detainedby police.