Planning restoration in Tunisia

As part of the Mediterranean component of the project “The Paris Agreement in Action: Upscaling Forest and Landscape Restoration to Achieve National Determined Contributions” funded by the International Climate Initiative (IKI) of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action (BMWK), the General Directorate in charge of Forests (DGF) of Tunisia requested a targeted support from the Forest and Landscape Restoration Mechanism (FLRM) of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) to receive technical assistance to prepare a restoration project in a degraded aleppo pine forest in the Governorate of Kasserine (central-western Tunisia) in the context of the future Integrated Programme on Ecosystem Restoration under the eighth cycle of the Global Environment Facility (GEF-8).

The Kasserine Forest is the southernmost aleppo pine population in Tunisia and represents a source of revenue for 70 000 people practising grazing management and the collection of pine seeds, cones and medicinal plants. According to the second national forest and pastoral inventory, aleppo pine ecosystems cover an area of 133 000 hectares (ha), showing a potential capacity to store 95 000 tonnes of CO2 annually. In recent years, the Kasserine region has experienced prolonged periods of drought and water scarcity, accompanied by fire events that destroyed 25 226 ha of forests between 2015 and 2021, with 13 417 ha affected in 2021 alone.

The effects of climate change associated with recurrent fire disturbance and a lack of proactive forest management have affected the adaptive capacity and resilience of these ecosystems, contributing to the gradual degradation of the Kasserine aleppo pine forest and increasing the proliferation of pests, such as bark beetles. As of March 2022, it was estimated that 25 000 ha of aleppo pine forests in Kasserine have been affected by this pest, with degrees of dieback varying from 20 percent to 80 percent from northern to southern exposures. To control bark beetle attacks, no specific chemicals or insecticides are available, and the only course of action is to implement active forest management. This includes monitoring the forest condition for the first symptoms of beetle attack (drying-out of parts of the crown and appearance of holes in the stem bark), placing traps to catch adult females and alerting the forest service so that they can intervene promptly with silvicultural practices.

The FLRM team, the FAO experts based in Tunisia and the DGF will work closely together to prepare two project proposals: the first one will leverage funds to act promptly to support a) the population in coping with the revenue losses caused by the forest dieback, and b) the DGF in planning and implementing strategic phytosanitary tree cuts to avoid further spreading of the pest. The second project proposal will focus more on the long term and aims to develop a restoration plan using a participatory and integrated approach, to support local stakeholders in managing similar extreme events in the future. The two projects will support Tunisia to prepare a plan to cope with the impacts of climate change, and develop administrative tools to adapt to extreme events and address the urgent need to restore degraded lands. The integrated approach promoted will highlight the importance of landscape-level action that treats forest ecosystems as a part of a more complex system, thus taking into consideration interactions with agricultural practices, grazing and the development of non-wood forest product value chains. Local communities will play a key role in maintaining and managing their natural resources and improving their conservation.

Giovanni Di Matteo and Valentina Garavaglia