Coastal erosion in Tunisia is threatening incomes, infrastructure and agriculture, and its real cost is likely higher than previously estimated
Gabes — The Tunisian coastal town of Ghannouch is home to about 600 fishermen, but early one Wednesday morning last month there was hardly a rod or boat in sight.
Sassi Alaya, the head of the fisheries guild in the town’s southern port, said that half of the local fishermen and about 80% of businesses — including restaurants and coffee shops — had been affected along the most eroded areas of the coastline. Within the Maghreb, Tunisia has had the highest erosion rates in the last three decades, averaging almost 70cm a year, it found.
“People and buildings have increasingly been crowding coasts, replacing natural protections against erosion like sand dunes and wetlands,” she added.‘Socioeconomic bomb’ Nearly half of Tunisia's 670km of beaches were acutely threatened by coastal erosion as of 2020 — a figure that has more than tripled since 1995 — according to the Tunisian State Agency for Coastal Protection and Planning .
Yet it said the real cost to Tunisia was likely to be higher as the study did not incorporate other factors such as lost tourism revenues.
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