Since the early 1990s Tunisia has had a relatively sophisticated environmental administration and legislation. Amongst others, environmental impact assessment, an important tool for pollution prevention, was introduced as a binding instrument. Nevertheless, steady economic growth has led to increasing levels of industrial pollution affecting Tunisia’s population and posing a major challenge to the civil administration. It has become imperative that the country’s environmental monitoring and steering instruments keep up with its economic development.

Environmental monitoring and control are to be improved to reduce industrial pollution in particular.

If a pollution prevention policy and a strategy to reduce industrial pollution are to produce sustainable results, major players in politics, the private sector and civil society must be involved right from the start. To this end, the project holds discussion forums relating to a number of topics:

•	Harmonisation of environmental legislation or possibly the drafting of an environmental code
•	Introduction of strategic environmental assessment
•	Drafting of guidelines for contributing to sustainable development. The guidelines target different sectors and are based on a set of indicators.

Environmental legislation is being made internally consistent and updated to meet current requirements.
National and regional environmental indicators have been defined and are being tested.
A start has been made in defining sectoral indicators of sustainability. The concomitant effort of institutions to address these indicators is an important step toward the positioning of the Ministry of Environment (MEDD).
Discussion has begun on strategic environmental assessments.