Land degradation, driven by various human-induced activities such as agricultural practices, presents a major challenge for countries around the globe, including Tunisia. Land degradation reduces soil fertility, severely impacting agricultural productivity and jeopardizing food security (World Bank 2019). While various laws and policies to halt land degradation have been implemented in Tunisia since the 1990s, these efforts remain largely ineffective. To understand the underlying reasons, we build on literature on social-ecological fit. This literature argues that the failure of policies and degradation of ecosystems can be a result of a misfit between institutions and the characteristic of the social-ecological systems in which they operate. Governance arrangement and institutions thus need to fit the characteristics of the particular problem they address in order to be effective (Young 2008, Epstein et al. 2015).
This paper aims to understand the fit between the institutional arrangements of soil governance in Tunisia, and the social-ecological characteristics of soil problems. Specifically, we analyse whether the actors involved, i.e., state actors and farmers, are capable of addressing the soil management challenges posed by the specific social-ecological context. Or, in other words, how well the characteristics of social-ecological problems and capacities of farmers and state actors fit together. To do so, we build on transaction costs literature to characterize problems of soil management (Thiel and Moser 2019), and analyse the administrative capacities of state actors (Wegrich und Lodge 2014), along with the orientations, incentives, and capacities of farmers. The paper draws upon three local case studies, situated in the governorates of Siliana, Kairouan, and Kef. The analysis is based on data gathered through stakeholder interviews at the national, regional, and local levels, as well as stakeholder workshops and policy documents. The findings suggest that the misalignment between the needs dictated by the social-ecological problem characteristics on the one hand, and the interests and incentives of farmers, as well as the administrative capacities of state actors on the other, contributes to explain failures in soil management.
