The Power of a Disappearance: Water in the Jerid region of Tunisia

Abstract

See http://vbat.org/spip.php?article525 This text is the chapter 1.5 of the book "Water, Cultural Diversity & Global Environmental Change: Emerging Trends, Sustainable Futures?", part of the project on Water and Cultural Diversity from the International Hydrological Programme (UNESCO). Text submitted in 2009-07. Finalized in 2011. ; International audience ; Although water is obviously the essential principle of the presence of oases in the desert, in the region of Jerid (South-Tunisia) water seems to be confined only in a registry of political and social claim, as a possible (and rare) free medium of expression. In some oases, water has even disappeared from the palm grove's surface. There are historical reasons that can explain such a situation. It is perhaps above all a story of the control. He who has in hand this vital resource keeps in check all the local society. A story, because water has always been stakes of power in this type of region. The recent changes of control from a local jamaa' to a colonial and then a national power enlighten the strategic significance of this element, but these reorganisations are not the first ones. Water is today a field of political and social discussions also because it is the only legitimate one permitted to oasian people and especially gardeners. The positions and the behaviours of the different actors on the oases towards the use of water are heterogeneous. The state itself has a 'schizophrenic' attitude. In one hand, the administration wants to proceed to a mining exploitation of the water resource to take possession of other resources (to foreign currency through a particular cultivar of dates, Phœnix dactylifera L., var. deglet nur). In the other hand, the state needs to control and 'protect' it in the aim of keeping or restoring the 'traditional scenery' of oases (government foresees to develop a Saharan tourism, the Mediterranean region being now blocked up). The local farmers have displayed a diversification of their practices, among other things a ...