The latest report of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) was recently published! It focuses on the disadvantages of global pollution and global warming that we are experiencing head-on. Click here to read the 2023 report.
The most vulnerable ecosystems are highlighted, including that of the Mediterranean Sea and the nations that surround it: Tunisia is no exception! Indeed, in recent years, the damage caused by global warming in Tunisia has been multiple:
- Fires due to ever-rising temperatures: during the summer of 2022, the news about fires has been revived several times. More than 5900 hectares of forests were destroyed in different governorates, the most affected being those of Nabeul, Tunis & Bizerte.
- Repeated droughts due to lack of water: Tunisia’s water potential is in the red, explaining the shortages of mineral water and the poor agricultural results this year and last year. Dams are reaching a minimum filling rate of 30.4% at the end of January 2023 and natural sources, including groundwater, are being exhausted by ever-increasing demand.
- The Mediterranean Sea is suffering as it warms up. Swimming in the summer of 2022 was hot, very hot in some sea areas: the water temperature was three to five degrees above the normal for the season. With human activity still increasing, the IPCC states that climate change in the Mediterranean will be one of the most radical in the world! It should be noted that the entire ecosystem and marine biodiversity is at risk, as an increase of even one degree in water temperature is capable of killing millions of marine biological organisms, including corals, influencing the lifestyle of fish (and probably killing them) and altering the migration path of living beings in the same area.
Moreover, the World Bank underlines the fact that climate change and the depletion of natural resources pose a major risk to Tunisia’s development projects: a temperature increase of 1.9 degrees to 5.3 degrees is expected by 2080 if actions are not taken to slow this increase.
The nations most at risk in this global context are those peripheral to the major polluters. They may not have a large share of the world’s carbon emissions, but they are the ones who will suffer the most from global warming…
Mediterranean countries have a role to play in the energy transition: investing considerably in renewable energies instead of fossil fuels is the first step to limit and save the planet.
Credit: IPCC — Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, World Bank, Kapitalis, la Presse, Euronews, Bon Pote