Water, floods and the farm calendar: a drier decade reshapes the north

A region that feeds the capital is rewriting what it grows, and when, as the climate shifts under it

In March the World Bank backed a scaling up of urban flood protection in Tunisia, a reminder that water now arrives in the wrong amounts at the wrong times. Long dry spells break into violent rain the land and the drains cannot absorb. For farmers in the north and the Cap Bon, the old calendar no longer holds.

Growers are shifting planting dates, turning to hardier crops and watching reservoirs they once took for granted. The dams that supply greater Tunis have run low in recent years, forcing rationing and hard choices between cities and fields.

This is a slow emergency, easy to ignore between headlines and impossible to reverse quickly. It also sits upstream of everything else, food prices, rural incomes, the drift toward the coast. Covering it as a continuing story, rather than a seasonal surprise, is part of taking Tunisia seriously