Droughts are not abnormal, but the drought afflicting Tunisia seems to have graduated to extreme status:
Tunisia is cutting off water supplies to citizens for seven hours a night. The extreme measure is a response to the country’s worst drought on record.
The water will be cut off daily from 9pm until 4am, with immediate effect, state water distribution company SONEDE said in a statement on Friday.
The country’s agriculture ministry earlier introduced a quota system for drinking water and banned its use in agriculture until 30 September.
Tunisia is battling with a drought that is now in its fourth year. [euronews.green]
Tunisia is a North African nation, sandwiched between Algeria and Libya, with a goodly shoreline onto the Med. The land of Italy and Europe beckons:
Source: Operation World
And this should come as no surprise:
The new decision threatens to fuel social tension in a country whose people suffer from poor public services, high inflation and a weak economy.
Farmers have also been urged to stop irrigating vegetable fields with water from dams and in some cases face limits.
Tunisia already has food supply problems due to high global prices and the government’s own financial difficulties, which have reduced its capacity to buy imported food and subsidise farms at home.
The drought has pushed up fodder prices, contributing to a crisis for Tunisia’s dairy industry as farmers sell off herds they can no longer afford to keep, leaving supermarket shelves empty of milk and butter.
Soon, farmlands will become empty. People are already leaving, and until the new carrying capacity is reached, or the weather changes and brings rain, they will continue to leave.
I hope this isn’t the future for much of the world, but I fear it may be.
