Climate change could be synonymous with a dramatic drop in national production of cereals, olive oil and fodder by 2050. This decline should be amplified by 2100, thus impacting food security, says a study on “Impacts of climate change effects on food security” that has just been published by ONAGRI. According to this study, this drop in production is likely to worsen with the sharp drop in water resources affecting reservoirs and groundwater.
A clear drop in cereal production
The two main hazards directly affecting cereal production are the increase in temperatures and the lengthening of drought periods, especially after 2050, which pose major challenges due to the vulnerability of both the rainfed component of production, directly affected by these two hazards and the irrigated component, which could be reduced by the non-availability of sufficient water resources.
All regions of Tunisia are expected to experience a great intensification of climatic events impacting cereal production, such as scald, mild winters and advanced crop cycles, leading directly to significant losses in yields that are already below international averages.
According to the study, this decline in crop yields is accompanied by a contraction in the areas of climatic suitability for cereal growing. These joint reductions in favourable areas and yields would consequently have negative impacts on cereal production in Tunisia.
Fall in olive production
In the same way as for cereals, this study underlined that the areas of climatic suitability for olive growing would contract and move towards the north of Tunisia, due to climate change. This would result in a decrease in the areas suitable for olive cultivation.
Thus, future olive oil productions may fall by 70% compared to the reference period (1981-2010) by 2100 according to the extreme scenario, thus recording production levels of 60 thousand tonnes. However, these results do not take into account the technological development of the sector and the ability of olive growers to use new production methods and technical itineraries that would allow them to further improve their yields.
Downward trend in forage production in rangelands
The direct impact of a significant increase in the occurrence of hazards affecting pastoral activities would obviously be a downward trend in forage yields from rangelands.
With regard to the areas of climatic suitability for pastoral plants, climate change could cause these areas to shrink and move northwards. As a result, by 2100, the areas suitable for pasture plants would decrease dramatically, leading to a deterioration in national fodder production, which would lead directly to a decrease in red meat production from pastoral livestock (sheep and goats).
In general, climate change is having a negative impact on the food security of nations, particularly in arid regions, including Tunisia, the study said.
For this reason, Tunisia has committed itself to the Green Climate Fund (GCF) to finance the implementation of national programmes and strategies to combat climate change. Thus, the Green Climate Fund has allocated 1 million dollars in 2018 for the development of a national plan for sectoral adaptation to climate change. It is worth mentioning that Tunisia is one of the ten most financed countries in Africa in terms of climate financing with 4.6 billion dollars since 2009, according to this study which uses OECD figures.
