Gabes, a Tunisian coastal city, grapples with a stark dilemma: environmental preservation or economic stability. The phosphate industry, while providing jobs and revenue, has caused severe ecological damage and health issues. This conflict exemplifies the challenge of balancing development with environmental protection.
From the center of Gabes, a 365-degree view of the city offers a stunning panorama of the world’s only seaside oasis, an urban setting scattered with green-grey palm trees, a blue-grey sea, and, jutting up from the main port, the Tunisian Chemical Group’s sky-high factory topped by thick plumes of smoke. It is a grey December morning on the weekend of Gabes’ short-film festival, “Life is short.” Even in the midst of a three-day cultural event animated by film directors, artists, university students, and cinephiles, the unsettling omnipresence of the factory close by inspires the festival’s title with sharp irony.
For its stopover in Tunisia, the Ibn Battuta Odyssey of Alternatives, a mobilization across the Mediterranean which culminates at the COP22 in Marrakech, set up camp in Gabes, although the boats had docked in Bizerte. Three days of exchanges and debates concerning an environmentally- and socially-destructive economic model and potential alternatives drew attention to the deplorable environmental situation in Gabes, and were marked by heightened tension following the death of a STEG worker who was asphyxiated by the fumes of the industrial zone. Report.
