Impact of food consumption on water footprint and food security in Tunisia

Abstract

Over the next few years, Tunisia will face a growing scarcity of water. The concept of a food consumption water footprint has been recently applied to expand knowledge about water management and to respond to problems of food insecurity. In this study, following the Water Footprint Network (WFN) method, we assessed and analysed the food consumption water footprint of Tunisian households by geographical location and by group of food products. We used results from national food surveys to collect the quantities of food consumed and the WFN database containing water footprints of food products specific to Tunisia. We found that the average water footprint for the main consumed food groups has increased by 31% during recent decades, from 1208 m 3 /capita/year in 1985 to 1586 m 3 /capita/year in 2010. Despite the decline in cereal consumption in Tunisia, the food water footprint has continued to rise as a result of increased consumption of animal source products. This increase is associated with regional variations in food choices that imply large differences in water footprints. Urban diets present higher water footprints than rural diets proportionally to higher standards of living. This study provides a new perspective on the water footprint of food consumption in Tunisia by using dietary data at the household level and demonstrated significant variability in water footprints due to different food consumption modes, and socio-economic and geographic characteristics. Future food consumption trends will likely create more pressure on water resources, especially in Tunis city and coastal areas of Tunisia. Special measures related to price policies, sensitization of consumers, and changes in production systems may have to be taken by policy makers to reduce the water footprint in order to improve food security strategies and water management in Tunisia.

Enhancing quality-driven food consumption policies in Tunisia

“…These subsided products responding to high population demand are not in conformity neither with qualitative food security nor with Mediterranean diet. These results are consistent with those proven by Ameur et al (2016) and Souissi et al (2019) who explained the effect of price on increased consumption of subsidized foodstuffs and its consequences in terms of qualitative insecurity (Padilla et al, 2005).…”

“…It is interesting to orient the research towards the quality analysis of the foodstuffs groups (nutritional quality). For this purpose, national surveys should be conducted in order to determine the adherence of the population to the Mediterranean diet allowing the measurement of indexes and scores (Ridolfi et al, 2020;Lacirignola et al, 2015;Souissi et al, 2019;FAO, 2016;Visinoni et al, 2017).…”

Water Resources for Sustainable Healthy Diets: State of the Art and Outlook

“…Dietary WF assessments have been conducted at global level [48,49], at national level with global coverage [50,51], continental or regional scale [45,52], individual country level [53][54][55][56][57][58][59][60][61][62][63], river basin level [64], provincial level [61], city level up to inner-city/borough level [34,[65][66][67][68][69][70][71] and for specific socioeconomic groups [65,[72][73][74]. Harris et al [33] also provide a selected overview of relevant studies.…”

“…These are food intake data, often with additional information on socioeconomic factors. They thus provide the possibility to compute dietary WFs according to socioeconomic statistics [34,61]. Such surveys can be very detailed in the type of food item consumed.…”

Looking back on 2019: a selection of Food Security articles

“…This work shows that the adoption of soil and water conservation methods increases the per capita food consumption expenditure and net crop value; it also is significantly associated with a reduction in the probability of farmers being food insecure in the short and long terms, and vulnerable to food insecurity. Another example is the very detailed analysis by Souissi et al (2019) on the water foot print of food security in Tunisia, where the average water footprint for the main consumed food groups has increased by 31% during recent decades, from 1208 m3/capita/year in 1985 to 1586 m3/capita/year in 2010. While the consumption in cereals has declined during this period, the consumption of animal products has increased.…”