Debt-stricken Tunisian farmers ‘ignored’ as government rolls out solar megaproject

On 20 January, a day which is far too dry for the season, Mounir Kadri takes stock at the foot of one of his date palms. “This year is a complete disaster. Last year, I managed to sell my harvest for 12,000 tunisian dinars (£3000). This year, because of the drought and diseases, I could only sell it for 4,000 dinars (£1000)”, he said.
Mounir grows date palms, just like the majority of Tozeur’s inhabitants. This oasis – over 4,000 years old – is the largest in Tunisia. Located at the edge of the Sahara Desert, in the southwest of the country, this city now wants to be ‘top of the class’ for environmental management, and aspires to energy autonomy.
Approximately 97% of Tunisia’s electricity is currently , mainly natural gas. In 2020, nearly 57% of the country’s natural gas needs were met through imports, mainly from Algeria.
For now, only 3% of Tunisia’s electricity is generated from renewables, including hydroelectric, solar, and wind energy. However, the country aims to produce 30% of its electricity from renewable energy by 2030, according to its
To help it achieve its renewables target, Tunisia is installing two public solar plants in Tozeur in March, each with an output of 10 MW. The project was financed by loans from the German Development Bank (KfW). In total, €23 million in loans rallocated to technical assistance and staff training. The solar panels were supplied by two European manufacturers: TerniEnergia from Italy and GenSun from France.
“Nearly 17,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions will be avoided each year compared to before the installation of the solar plant, helping the country to reach its goals in terms of renewable electricity generation”, said Abderrazek Al Ouja, the project manager of the solar farm. The electricity produced by our two plants represents of the region of Tozeur, he told Climate Home News.
The farming community of the oasis takes a sceptical view of this new installation.In the last two years, the farmers have accumulated 17 million dinars (£4,372,026) in debt, for extracting groundwater, and the Tunisian Electricity and Gas Company (STEG) is now threatening to cut off their electricity.
With working conditions increasingly difficult, the Tozeur farming community is highly vulnerable. One of the main challenges it is facing is soaring electricity bills, linked to water drilling, which they have more and more trouble paying.
and access to water is the number one issue for farmers in Tozeur, where water resources are quickly depleting. “We now need electricity to pump our water. And it doesn’t seem like this new central will help us with our electricity problems, as no one has consulted us until now”, said Mohamed Jhimi, farmer and president of an agricultural development group in Tozeur.
“They’ve got some nerve to implement a solar power plant, without it being planned to benefit those who suffer the most here,” Jhimi said.
For Hamza Hamouchene, a just transition expert and researcher at the Transnational Institute (TNI) in the Netherlands, “this kind of project usually exacerbates already existing problems, as it is in the case of the huge complex Noor-Ouarzazate in Morocco, the world’s largest concentrated solar power plant (580 MW).”
“The local communities already suffered from huge water poverty, as the water levels are very low. Since the installation of this mega solar plant, a huge one compared to the Tozeur’s central, some of the water has been diverted to go to this solar farm,” he told Climate Home News.
The entire process is centralised and financed through development banks, he said. “They do the so-called social assessments but in reality, they are just ticking boxes.”
According to project manager Al Ouja, the new electricity production would benefit almost 40,000 homes in Tozeur’s region, although a STEG engineer refuted this claim. “All the electricity produced in Tozeur is injected into the national grid and then redistributed centrally. It does not benefit to the local inhabitants per se,” he told Climate Home News.
Tunisia emits only 0.07% of global greenhouse gas emissions, yet the country is among the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change. “In Tozeur, all we see are mitigation programmes when what we need most is to adapt,” said Salem Ben Slama, a member of the . “Our farmers need help to cope with the threats that endanger the life of the oasis.”
Mounting climate threats
In Tozeur, the reception to this solar plant is far from unanimous. “With the creation of this solar park, the Tunisian state misses the opportunity to address the climate issue as it unfolds here,” said Ben Slama. “We have invested millions of dinars in a mitigation programme, that is the solar farm, but those who suffer the full force of climate change here, the farmers, are ignored,” he told Climate Home News.
This imbalance is reflected in the figures. In its climate plan, Tunisia outlines its plan to spend 74% of its climate budget, $14.3 billion, on mitigation, compared to just $4,3 billion on adaptation. For the energy sector, the country mainly aims to focus on the development of solar energy, multiplying its production capacity by 10 by 2030, compared to 2020.
“What we need is a national programme to protect and value our fragile ecosystems, as well as our indigenous and local knowledge”, said Salem Ben Slama. With their worsening working conditions, more and more farmers are forced to leave their land and knowledge behind.
To help communities adapt to climate impacts, the assembly of Maghrebi citizens for the oasis of Tozeur has “the promotion of technology transfer and the strengthening of knowledge in the field of adaptation.” They also stressed the importance of improving scientific knowledge around how climate impacts affect oases.
Oases are among the most fragile ecosystems on the planet. In Tozeur, the
past two years were the worst ever recorded for farmers, who rely almost entirely on date production. In Tozeur, almost 50% of the population works in date production, according to Karem Dessy, president of the Associationto Safeguard the Medina of Tozeur.
“Most of our current problems are of climate change,” said Karim Kadri, an engineer and researcher in oasis agriculture in Tozeur. Over the past two years, temperatures have reached record
The drought has had multiple consequences on the fragile oasis ecosystem: a devastating disease called “boufaroua” has attacked the palm trees. “These are mites that grow around the fruit and suffocate them,” explained Kadri. The dates turn white and the whole crop goes up in smoke. “Usually, it only takes one or two rains to wash our trees and naturally rid them of these invaders,” he said.
Oasis is synonymous with water. In addition to the rainwater, the groundwater is also drying up. Previously, a single source, that of Ras El Ain, was used to irrigate the entire oasis of Tozeur. The water was perfectly distributed among farmers, with the help of an irrigation system dating back to the 13th Century.
“But in the 1990s, these water tables began to be depleted when the state expanded the oasis with farms established, as well as with the development of the hotel zone. It was the beginning of irrigated areas and drilling practices to extract water in larger quantities,” said Chaker Bardoula, a farmer and former president of the regional federation of agriculture.
Water battle
Today the naturally available water resources no longer exist. Faced with the disappearance of this “mother-source”, the Tunisian state has implanted boreholes in order to maintain the irrigation of the ancient oasis. But this water is far from sufficient to meet the needs of farmers, who have been forced to install their own drilling pumps.
“It is these pumps that are very expensive for electricity,” said Ben Slama. “It is a huge problem.” Since the 1970s, the cost of electricity has increased four to six times, he said. In addition to the rising cost of electricity, farmers have been receiving pressure from middlemen. “They are taking advantage of the Covid pandemic to force farmers to lower their selling prices. They smash prices and no one is monitoring”, said Chaker Bardoula. This year, farmers who were lucky enough to sell their crops sold them for three times less than in previous years, he said.
All these pressures mean that farmers have been unable to pay their electricity bills for the past two years. “We are suffocating: on the one hand because of climate change, on the other because of our debt to the STEG,” said Jhimi.
Ben Slama said that as long as no system of subsidising electricity to farmers has been found, it is impossible to speak of social responsibility.
“This plant does not address local communities. We have been excluded from this project, no one has come to consult us,” he said.
According to him, it would be enough to allocate a produced by this solar power plant, to the farmers, for climate justice to be given. When questioned on this matter by Climate Home News, neither of the two project managers of the solar farm said they were aware of this matter.
Taha Sendid, Tozeur’s STEG district manager, said the company has been helping the farmers by setting up payments by instalments, to resolve the long-standing debt issue. “However, the electricity produced by the solar central is not specifically, it addresses the entire population of Tozeur. If they have specific issues, they should address [them to] the State,” he said.
For Hamouchene, “one way of making this transition just, would be to cancel these farmers’ debts, and provide them with cheap electricity.” State subsidies could also put a brake on individual drilling initiatives, he said. Many farmers, because of a lack of assistance, dig wells that are much too deep, weakening the water table even more.
To protect what is left of the oasis, Dessy said the government must urgently invest in adaptation solutions such , which is being done elsewhere across the country. “At this pace, we only have a hundred years before the water resources completely vanish, according to local hydrogeologists. We need to act fast,” said Dessy.