citet Tunisie

Situation Since the early 1990s Tunisia has had a relatively sophisticated environmental administration and legislation. Amongst others, environmental impact assessment, an important tool for pollution prevention, was introduced as a binding instrument. Nevertheless, steady economic growth has led to increasing levels of industrial pollution affecting Tunisia’s population and posing a major challenge to the civil administration. It has become imperative that the country’s environmental monitoring and steering instruments keep up with its economic development. Objective Environmental monitoring and control are to be improved to reduce industrial pollution in particular. Approach If a pollution prevention policy and a strategy to reduce industrial pollution are to produce sustainable results, major players in politics, the private sector and civil society must be involved right from the start. To this end, the project holds discussion forums relating to a number of topics: • Harmonisation of environmental legislation or possibly the drafting of an environmental code • Introduction of strategic environmental assessment • Drafting of guidelines for contributing to sustainable development. The guidelines target different sectors and are based on a set of indicators. Results Environmental legislation is being made internally consistent and updated to meet current requirements. National and regional environmental indicators have been defined and are being tested. A start has been made in defining sectoral indicators of sustainability. The concomitant effort of institutions to address these indicators is an important step toward the positioning of the Ministry of Environment (MEDD). Discussion has begun on strategic environmental assessments. ituation Tunisian environmental policy has so far been characterised by the steady evolution of the institutional framework and by the drafting of a national agenda on sustainable development. Shortcomings persist, however, with regard to implementing the challenging programmes. Furthermore, interinstitutional cooperation and coordination in the environmental domain remains inefficient between national and regional environmental administrations, governmental organisations, governorates, municipalities, non-governmental organisations and the private sector. Objective Cooperation between regional and local stakeholders, and between regional environmental administrations and their subordinate offices are to be improved. The guiding principle of sustainable development is to be more fully integrated into the regions’ development process. Approach • Regional environmental planning: Supporting stakeholders in integrating environmental factors into regional development planning through a systematic, participatory planning approach. • Environmental reporting: Support is provided in drafting and editing regional environmental status reports. • Environmental monitoring: Supporting the monitoring of environmental change by developing regional environmental indicators. Results For the first time, environmental problems were discussed in a decentralised and multisectoral way in Tunisia’s 24 governorates. More than 1,000 key persons from government, industry and civil society participated in the planning process that took place in March and April 2004. Examples that were as close as possible to actual practice were used to familiarise participants with the principle of sustainable development. A particularly lasting impression was made by the relaxed and open working atmosphere and the active involvement of those present in the planning of concrete joint strategies. Moreover, the position of the regional environment directors was considerably strengthened. The environmental strategies drafted in the 24 governorates provide an excellent foundation to further link environmental protection with regional development planning. Since the most important decisionmakers in the governorates have internalised the principle of sustainable development, it will be part of future regional development planning. Finally, on the basis of the environmental strategies, environmental action plans were drafted for each governorate in 2005 and will be integrated into Tunisia’s Eleventh Development Plan (2006-2011). Home Language Search Contact Situation Compliance with the growing body of environmental legislation combined with competitive pressure on Tunisian industry arising from globalisation have in recent years led to an increased demand for environmental technology and know-how. This demand has not been met due to inadequate advisory and training services and the lack of specialised institutions. Objective The Tunis International Centre for Environmental Technologies (CITET), founded in 1996, is charged with promoting technology transfer and building Tunisian capacities in the environmental sector. The GTZ supports CITET in becoming a recognised, demand-oriented and largely self-financed environmental competency centre offering training, consulting and other services. Approach • Training: Initial support for CITET was limited to training activities in the environmental sector. • Consulting and other services: In a second phase, the quality and scope of CITET’s services as a whole – especially for the private sector – were enhanced. Concurrently, the centre’s organisation and client orientation were developed. • International networking: The ongoing third phase supports the networking of business, R&D institutions and technology-centres and promotes technology cooperation between European enterprises and Tunisian partners. Results CITET has become increasingly active, better known on the national and international levels, more client-oriented, competent and sought after. Its growing turnover and self-financing capacity, client diversification and rising number of requests for services and cooperation are evidence of this positive trend. The GTZ’s support has contributed substantially to CITET’s performance, which includes: • Certification of CITET’s environmental and quality management systems (ISO 9001, 14001, 17025) • More than 8,000 seminar participants in 6 years • Over 5,600 conference, business meeting and exhibition participants in 3 years • More than 20,000 monthly visitors to the environment portal www.citet.nat.tn • An average of 15,000 analyses annually in CITET’s laboratories • Environmental management systems introduced, technical consultations provided and international partners identified for technology cooperation and transfer benefiting over 200 Tunisian enterprises • Annual savings of € 1.2 million and substantial reductions in environmental pollution in a control sample of 15 enterprises Home Language

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