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For the reason that begin of the yr, the variety of individuals fleeing North Africa by boat to the European Union has elevated considerably. Though a few of them are individuals on the transfer from sub-Saharan Africa, utilizing nations like Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya as transit factors, many are locals who can now not make a residing in their very own nation.
The EU has scrambled to dam extra individuals from crossing the Mediterranean by intensifying its surveillance and militarisation of its southern sea borders. However it has additionally reached out to regional governments to get their assist in stemming migration.
Within the case of Tunisia, the EU and Tunisian President Kaïs Saied signed a deal referred to as the “Complete Partnership Package deal”. In return for stopping the movement of individuals making an attempt to cross the Mediterranean into Europe, Tunis is to get 255 million euros ($269m) for gear, coaching and monetary assist. It may additionally obtain an additional 900 million euros ($953m) ought to it attain a cope with the Worldwide Financial Fund for structural financial reforms, together with controversial cuts to its meals subsidy programme.
When it comes to the commerce element of the deal, the memorandum of understanding outlines, inter alia, plans for investments in agriculture, inexperienced power and digital transition. Whereas it stays to be seen how this memorandum will additional take form, it may be learn as a continuation of the EU’s commerce insurance policies in the direction of its southern neighbour which have been criticised for systematically disadvantaging Tunisian small and medium enterprises.
In opposition to this backdrop, it seems unlikely that the migration deal will enhance the scenario for Tunisians, particularly these from the agricultural areas who’re making an attempt to to migrate from the nation en masse. In actual fact, the EU’s previous and current commerce insurance policies in the direction of Tunisia are a lot accountable for the distress of small-scale farmers and agricultural employees.
Whereas EU firms have flooded the Tunisian market with EU-made merchandise, Tunisian farmers have struggled to compete with their EU counterparts, not least as a result of methods wherein the EU continues to guard its home agricultural sector.
Generally EU protectionism takes the type of frustratingly easy issues akin to the truth that intervals throughout which Tunisian merchandise are granted privileged entry to the EU market below a customs quota association don’t synch up with their manufacturing cycle in Tunisia. For instance, within the case of watermelons, the primary rising season is between June and September, but the EU solely grants duty-free imports between November and Could.
The unequal financial alternate in agricultural commerce relations between Tunisia and the EU can also be obvious within the commerce in olive oil, one in every of Tunisia’s prime exports.
Olives are grown on prime irrigated agricultural land as a large-scale monoculture. Some 80 p.c of the olive oil produced from them is exported, principally in crude type, principally to Spain and Italy the place it’s refined and offered to European customers. Within the course of, Tunisia loses out on important added worth.
In the meantime, rising meals costs within the nation have meant that the consumption of olive oil is more and more out of attain for strange Tunisians. Meals stays the most important expense for Tunisian households, extra pricey than housing, electrical energy or water, representing on common 30 p.c of annual family expenditure, and rising to almost 40 p.c for the bottom earnings teams.
Extra conventional olive rising, in distinction to monoculture industrial olive groves, includes older bushes which can be spaced out and require much less water; it’s thus higher suited to extra arid climates. Such agricultural practices utilized by small farmers for manufacturing for the home market are seen as unviable as a result of lack of assist they obtain from the federal government.
As farmer Abdul Karim defined to me throughout a commerce and agriculture insurance policies workshop organised by the Tunisian Platform for Alternate options and the Transnational Institute in July in Tunis: “Conventional olive bushes can dwell for 150 years. Assist for olive rising is 2 dinars per olive tree whereas our value of manufacturing is about 15-20 dinars per tree. We want assist for water and for tractors. However within the absence of this assist, my olive bushes will dry out and die.”
Other than olives, Tunisia is pressed to develop different agricultural merchandise for export to the EU, together with citrus vegatables and fruits. A few of them are additionally significantly water-intensive crops, which make little sense to develop in a rustic affected by excessive water stress, droughts and wildfires.
Already within the fourth yr of a protracted drought and with temperatures reaching 50 levels Celsius (122 levels Fahrenheit) in July, the scenario of Tunisian farmers will solely worsen. Local weather threat forecasts for Tunisia undertaking that annual most temperatures are prone to improve by between 1.9C to three.8C by 2050, whereas precipitation ranges might fall by as a lot as 22 p.c.
In response, the Tunisian authorities has instituted a sequence of measures to attempt to curb water use, together with a restrict on agricultural irrigation and a ban on groundwater pumping under 50 metres.
Whereas these measures might sound cheap, they’ve left Tunisian farmers struggling. Diminished rainfall means farmers should resort to tapping groundwater sources to irrigate their crops and bushes, and to supply ingesting water for his or her animals. But declining groundwater ranges imply that water can’t be discovered till 80 metres deep, Abdul Karim advised me. Farmers haven’t any different selection however to dig deeper or face financial break.
Farmers we spoke to complained that whereas they face the chance of being criminalised for utilizing water to outlive, the federal government turns a blind eye to rich buyers who’re shopping for up land for olive manufacturing and digging deepwater wells in an unregulated trend. These wells might be as much as 200-300 metres deep, in line with Yasser, a Tunisian pure useful resource administration engineer who additionally participated within the aforementioned workshop.
All which means that small-scale farmers, who’re within the majority in Tunisia, are caught between the crushing forces of an unfair exterior commerce coverage, and an inside authorities coverage tailor-made to the wants of some huge market gamers. They can’t make a residing out of farming any extra, and lots of haven’t any different choice than to to migrate.
The EU settlement with Tunisia to spice up commerce relations and stem the movement of individuals making an attempt to make it to European shores is a blatant refusal to cope with a few of the underlying causes of migration. Commerce insurance policies favouring European markets won’t enhance the socioeconomic scenario for Tunisians in rural areas.
Within the context of a number of and intersecting crises, agricultural and commerce coverage in Tunisia and the broader North Africa area should be reimagined. If the EU actually desires to handle what it calls a “migration disaster”, it must rethink its extractive commerce insurance policies with the remainder of the world, and never enter agreements that solely result in extra precarity.
The views expressed on this article are the writer’s personal and don’t essentially mirror Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
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