Involvement of citizens in the measurements of water salinity using test kits in the Medjerda watershed (Northern Tunisia)

Water resources in Africa are subjected to many pressures related to urban growth, agricultural expansion, and climate change (Bahri et al., 2016). These pressures jeopardise reaching the UN-Sustainable Development Goal 6 (SDG6). Efficient monitoring of water systems is pivotal for designing efficient water management strategies that alleviates aforementioned pressures (Mutambara et al., 2016). Yet, the water monitoring capacity in Africa is often very poor, in particular for Water Quality Monitoring (WQM). Citizen Science (CS) based WQM is nowadays proposed as an innovative approach to strengthen the WQM capacity (Fehri et al., 2020; Njue et al., 2019; Jollymore et al., 2017). The concept of CS is based on the potential social benefits of engaging, collaborating and actively involving citizens in data collection and knowledge generation. Yet, the quality of CS-based WQM is different as compared to reference WQM. CS-based WQM programmes need therefore to be thoroughly validated. The main objective of this study is to assess the quality of a CSbased WQM program for the Medjerda river in Tunisia

Participatory water quality monitoring

Pressures on water resources jeopardise reaching the UN-Sustainable Development Goal 6 (SDG6) for clean water and sanitation and Goal 13 (SDG13) for taking urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts. Water resources management in Tunisia has been repeatedly confronted with the impact of climate change. The water monitoring capacity in Tunisia is often poor as a component of Water Quality Management. Citizen Science (CS) has been evolving last years as an innovative approach of environmental monitoring and capacity building of hydrosystems using smart and low cost-effective technologies as tools for data collection (Fehri et al., 2020a; Fehri et al., 2020b; Chaabane et al., 2021; Fehri, 2021; Slama, 2021). This factsheet is addressed to decision makers to involve Citizens in Water Quality Monitoring

Participatory monitoring of river flows.

Water users in northwestern Tunisia, like the Medjerda watershed, are increasingly withdrawing water from hydro-systems. This is a response to the effects of climate change that are causing strong variability. These water withdrawals result in an increase in the state of stress over time (Fehri et al., 2020). The involvement of citizens, in a participatory manner, is likely to help raise awareness among water users. The use of Mobile application has been validated in the region of Medjez El Bab by the involvement of different citizen groups (Fehri et al., 2020a; Fehri, 2021). The objective of this sheet is to capitalize on these achievements and to be used in the north-west of Tunisia for monitoring droughts or floods