Negotiating Groundwater Scarcity and Land Insecurity: Rural Livelihood Strategies in Northern Tunisia

Abstract

Tunisia’s current food dependency highlights deep structural challenges facing the agricultural sector, which struggles to meet domestic demand and ensure an exportable surplus. This crisis is especially acute in irrigated agriculture, despite its central role in regional development. A key policy challenge lies in integrating irrigated agriculture, which is dynamic yet shaped by informal and unequal access to land and water, into a sustainable development framework. This study focuses on irrigated perimeters in northern Tunisia and examines how farmers adapt to increasing precarity and negotiate resource scarcity and climatic variability. Although the hydro-agricultural strategy has contributed to regional growth, it has failed to ensure long-term sustainability and now faces structural limits. Overexploited and fragile groundwater resources, growing competition among users, and fragmented governance threaten its viability. Addressing these challenges requires stronger regulation, transitioning to new governance models, promoting alternative agronomic systems, and restructuring agrarian structures to enhance food security, improve environmental services, and build system resilience.