On 29 May 2018, the Direction Générale de l’Aménagement et Conservation des Terres Agricoles (DG ACTA) of the Tunisian Ministry of Agriculture, Hydraulic Resources and Fisheries (MARHP) and the Centre de coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement (CIRAD) signed a special partnership agreement for the implementation of the Programme d’Adaptation au Changement Climatique des TErritoires Ruraux de Tunisie (PACTE).

INRAE and CIRAD are acting jointly within the framework of the UMR agreement governing the operation of the G-EAU UMR, of which they are cotutelles. As part of the technical assistance for the PACTE programme (“PACTE-Plateforms Proposal”), CIRAD and INRAE have agreed that INRAE will be involved in coordinating and setting up the concerted planning and monitoring-evaluation activities and the associated training modules, as well as in supporting the implementation of all the activities in two of the PACTE intervention areas.

INRAE is involved in coordinating and steering the project through Sylvie Morardet, who is in charge of Component 3, “Concerted planning and impact monitoring and evaluation”. Sylvie Morardet spent two years in Tunisia as part of this project. The CoOPLAaGE1 team is also involved in the co-design of the concerted planning sequence, the associated training and implementation, the procedural monitoring and evaluation activities, and in the overall evaluation of the PACTE programme.

The PACTE programme, which focuses on five Tunisian governorates (Bizerte, Kairouan, Le Kef, Sidi Bouzid and Siliana), aims to help rural areas adapt to climate change. It is financed by AFD to the tune of €51.5 million and by the French Global Environment Facility (FGEF) to the tune of €2 million.