Tunisia’s Environmental Civil Society and the State
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2019-08-19
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en
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In this thesis, I examine the discrepancy between the lofty ideals of multi-stakeholder partnerships with the complex realities of implementation in the field of waste management in Tunis, Tunisia. UN Sustainable Development Goal #17’s “Partnerships for the Goals” calls for “inclusive partnerships” between governments, the private sector and civil society in order to achieve all three dimensions of sustainable development - economic, social and environmental - by 2030. Research on civil society and state interactions, however, points to a concerning global trend of a “growing trust gap” as governments increasingly take measures to shrink civic spaces (Bode and Brandsen 2014). In light of this, my thesis analyzes the interactions between civil society (CS) and government actors in the field of waste management (and plastic pollution specifically) in Tunis, Tunisia.
In the process, I uncover the range of actors involved, the factors that determine their interactions, and the reasons for different kinds of interactions to develop. I identify and analyze the main financial, political, and legal factors that determine these various CS-state relationships. I show that the process of democratisation in Tunisia after the 2011 revolution has opened up new spaces for a nascent civil society, and that the new national strategy to decentralize state power is shifting the sites of actual and potential CS-state interactions regarding waste management. I argue that the recent political restructuring of Tunisian central government continues to call into question issues of accountability regarding waste management, and places unrealistically high burdens onto municipalities and civil society to manage responsibilities beyond their current capacity.
These findings affirm the theoretical debate regarding the contradictions between optimistic partnership discourse and problematic realities in its implementation. This research as a whole contributes to an increased understanding of how interactions between environmental civil society organizations and state actors work to pursue the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 17, “Partnerships for the Goals.” As such, this study provides insight regarding the factors that shape civil society-state relations as they relate to the specific call for multi-stakeholder partnerships in the pursuit of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals in the context of Tunisia.
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Faculteit der Sociale Wetenschappen