Tunisia’s Development Plan (2026–2030):The Challenges of Climate Governance in Light of the Outcomes of COP 30
Introduction
Climate change is one of the most pressing challenges facing North African countries, not only because of rising temperatures and the increasing frequency of extreme weather events, but also because its impacts intersect with a range of existing economic, social and environmental imbalances. Water scarcity, desertification, water stress, energy vulnerability, food security, mounting pressure on coastal areas and widening territorial disparities are all challenges that are increasingly compounded by the effects of climate change. Together, they call for a reassessment of development models and public decision-making mechanisms.
This issue is of particular importance to Tunisia, which is part of a Mediterranean region highly vulnerable to climate change and simultaneously faces limited financial and institutional resources, as well as the high cost of the energy and environmental transition. Climate change can therefore no longer be treated as a purely environmental issue, separate from economic and social policies. It has become a cross-cutting concern that intersects with most economic and spatial development policies and requires governance and coordination at both national and international levels.
In this context, the Conferences of the Parties (COPs) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which are held annually, provide an important opportunity for member states to strengthen coordination among themselves, establish global climate governance and develop sustainable solutions that address the diverging interests of the Parties. This is particularly important for countries of the Global South, which face growing needs for adaptation and energy transition while having limited capacity to mobilise the necessary funding and technology and strengthen institutional capacities in response to emerging challenges.
The latest of these conferences, COP 30, was held in Belém, Brazil, in November 2025. As with previous editions, its outcomes prompted divergent reactions, ranging from approval to dissatisfaction. The conference and the publication of its final report coincided with Tunisia’s preparation of its 2026–2030 Development Plan. This coincidence raises the question of the extent to which the Plan incorporates the principles of climate governance enshrined in the outcomes of COP 30, and whether it anticipates the institutional, financial and regulatory challenges that could constrain their implementation.
This question is particularly relevant given that Tunisia submitted its third Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC)[1] in May 2026. The analysis will draw on a cross- analysis of the Development Plan, the outcomes of the summit and Tunisia’s NDC, alongside other strategic documents, including the Ministry of Industry’s strategy[2], studies by the Tunisian Institute for Strategic Studies[3] and studies by the Ministry of the Environment[4]. More broadly, it will also consider the references cited in Circular No. 10 of 2025, issued by the Head of Government on 22 April 2025, concerning the preparation of the 2026–2030 Development Plan.
However, the question of institutional, financial and regulatory challenges cannot be relegated to a secondary consideration. The Plan sets out broad ambitions, but its ability to translate them into implementable policies is closely tied to the state’s capacity to mobilise resources, reform public institutions, and shape the nature of the partnerships established with the private sector. This calls for a more in-depth analysis of the challenges surrounding financing and institutional restructuring, to which we will return in the final section of this article.
Climate Governance in the COP 30 Final Report
Many experts considered the final report of COP 30 disappointing. It was criticised in particular for the absence of clear and explicit commitments to phase out fossil fuels. The report contained vague language on the transition in the energy sector, but included neither binding timelines nor explicit wording calling for the «phase-out» of oil, gas and coal. This was largely due to the lack of consensus among member states, particularly in the face of opposition from fossil fuel-producing countries. Ultimately, the outcome was limited to the announcement of two voluntary roadmaps outside the formal United Nations framework.
Others, however, considered this session a turning point in the history of the COPs, arguing that it marked a qualitative shift in the nature of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), moving them from mere climate pledges towards policies and legislation that could be effectively implemented. In their view, this also marked a transition from setting targets to establishing implementation and accountability mechanisms, particularly through the adoption of the «Global Implementation Accelerator» initiative (GIA)[5].
Recognising the need to provide the financial resources required to fulfil climate commitments, particularly those made by developing countries, the final report reaffirmed the need to operationalise the climate finance goal by mobilising USD 1.3 trillion annually by 2035 to support developing countries, under the climate finance framework and the New Collective Quantified Goal on Climate Finance (NCQG). It also called for the operationalisation of the Loss and Damage Fund, primarily to compensate developing countries and island states for the unavoidable damage caused by natural disasters resulting from global warming.
The climate governance framework set out in this report underwent substantial changes, based primarily on the following principles:
• Multilevel governance: This approach relies on two mechanisms. The first involves integrating local governments: for the first time, mechanisms were established to ensure that the plans of governorates, cities and local councils are directly incorporated into the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) of 120 countries by 2030. The second mechanism concerns the localisation of climate finance, through the operationalisation of country platforms designed to channel funding directly to local administrations and municipalities, thereby reducing international bureaucratic barriers.
• Truth Governance: This principle focuses primarily on combating climate disinformation. The report introduced an unprecedented formal provision on «information integrity», establishing an international commitment to counter fake news and media disinformation aimed at casting doubt on the scientific evidence of climate change or distorting facts in the interests of polluting industries.
• Reforming the governance of funding mechanisms: The report called on the Green Climate Fund (GCF), the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and the Loss and Damage Fund to streamline procedures for accessing funding and to review their existing financial governance rules, thereby enabling the expansion of mechanisms for direct access to resources. This approach aims to enable local communities and civil society organisations to access the necessary funding more quickly and easily, without having to go through complex and lengthy centralised administrative processes.
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• Carbon market governance and integrity: This principle focuses primarily on preventing greenwashing. COP 30 saw extensive discussions on Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, which led to the establishment of the Open Coalition on Compliance Carbon Markets (OCCCM). The initiative aims to establish strict and transparent standards for issuing carbon credits and determine their legal status, in order to prevent their misuse for «greenwashing».
Nationally Determined Contribution 3.0 (2026–2035): An Initial Translation of the COP 30 Outcomes on Climate Governance
Tunisia’s Nationally Determined Contribution 3.0 (NDC 3.0) marks the third phase of the country’s commitment to implementing its climate policies under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement. It builds on the first NDC, submitted in 2015, and the updated NDC of 2021, while raising the level of ambition for the 2026–2035 period.
The document is guided by a vision of accelerating Tunisia’s transition towards a low-carbon economy that is resilient to climate change, while linking climate action to sustainable development and to the long-term objective of achieving carbon neutrality by 2050.
Climate governance is central to this document. Climate change is no longer approached merely as an environmental policy issue, but rather as a framework for reorganising public policies, investment, financing, territorial and institutional planning.
The importance attached to climate governance is particularly evident in the document’s explicit recognition of the need to strengthen it and its designation as one of the prerequisites for accelerating the implementation of the stated objectives. The document does not merely set targets for emissions reductions and adaptation; it also calls for the establishment of appropriate organisational structures and institutional and regulatory mechanisms, supported by monitoring and evaluation systems. It further provides for the establishment of transparency mechanisms and mechanisms to mobilise public and private finance, as well as for strengthening human and institutional capacities at both national and regional levels. From this perspective, climate governance becomes the link between political commitment and effective implementation, in a manner consistent with the four principles of climate governance set out in the COP 30 final report.
Tunisia’s 2026–2030 Development Plan: A Second Translation and the Formal Enshrinement of COP 30 Outcomes on Climate Governance
Since 1962, Tunisia has pursued its first official post-independence planning exercise[6], and the practice of adopting development plans has continued to this day. The 15th Development Plan, covering the 2026–2030 period, was approved by Law No. 16 of 2026,[7] dated 20 July 2026.
The broad policy orientations of these plans have varied according to the priorities and challenges of each period. However, the three most recent plans have adopted approaches that take the environmental dimension into account. The 2016–2020 Five-Year Development Plan placed particular emphasis on the green economy, while the 2023–2025 Development Plan gave special priority to energy and food security. The 2026–2030 Development Plan follows a similar approach, focusing in particular on rebuilding the development model, with priorities relating to the energy transition, the green economy, water security, investment and governance.
The preparation of this Plan coincided with Tunisia’s submission of its third Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC 3.0) to the Secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in September 2025, followed by the publication of its final version in May 2026. It also coincided with the adoption of the «Belém Political Package» at the conclusion of the COP 30 negotiations in November 2025, and with the publication, on 19 March 2026, of the Executive Report summarising the outcomes of COP 30, issued by the Conference Presidency. The Plan identifies several priorities with an environmental dimension among its strategic priorities, recognising that environmental considerations are of «paramount importance in light of the growing impact of climate phenomena and their effects on the environment». It therefore calls for «efforts to translate voluntary national and international commitments, as well as strategies and programmes for controlling carbon emissions and achieving the energy and ecological transition, into concrete action».
The Tunisian Assembly of the Representatives of the People approved the 2026–2030 Development Plan seven months behind schedule. It had initially been scheduled for approval in December 2025, with implementation due to begin in January 2026. This delay may be attributable to the new methodology adopted for its preparation and approval, which introduced a participatory, decentralised governance approach referred to in the Plan as «bottom-up governance». This approach was based on proposals submitted by elected councils at the regional, local and district levels, in accordance with the country’s new administrative division, which divides Tunisia’s territory into five districts. It should be noted, however, that the methodology used to prepare the Plan did not adopt a multi-stakeholder governance approach,[8] as civil society organisations were excluded from the preparation and proposal process.
This delay in approval is no mere procedural detail. Seven months of waiting mean a delay in translating the Plan’s objectives into budget laws and in launching investment projects related to adaptation and the energy transition. In a country facing tight fiscal constraints, every month lost translates into a further delay in mobilising resources and an additional erosion of its capacity to address climate risks.
The 15th Development Plan for 2026–2030 consists of three main parts: Part One, devoted to general policy orientations; Part Two, focusing on territorial development; and Part Three, addressing development policies. Although the term climate governance does not appear explicitly in any of the Plan’s three parts, references to climate challenges and the need to take them into account recur throughout the document. As with Tunisia’s Nationally Determined Contribution 3.0 (NDC 3.0), the Development Plan gives climate governance considerable importance. This is reflected in the comprehensive approach it adopts, whereby climate challenges are incorporated into most public policies, and climate change is treated as a framework for reorganising public policies, investment, financing, and territorial and institutional planning.
In the section devoted to general policy orientations, environmental challenges are identified as a structural factor shaping development trajectories, given, on the one hand, their direct and indirect effects on economic, social and territorial balances and, on the other, their implications for key sectors, particularly agriculture, fisheries and tourism. The Plan also considers that environmental pressures are mounting steadily on natural resources, particularly water resources, agricultural land, forest ecosystems and coastal areas, in a context marked by accelerating changes and ongoing demographic and economic transformations.
In the introduction to Part One, the Plan acknowledges that, despite the State’s numerous interventions across various environmental fields aimed at preserving a healthy environment and adapting to climatic factors in all areas and regions, the results achieved remain below expectations. It identifies several major challenges, including mobilising, protecting and managing water resources effectively; conserving agricultural land; preserving biodiversity; preventing soil erosion and desertification; expanding forested and pastoral areas and ensuring their sound management; improving the environmental performance of businesses and institutions to reduce pollution and promote waste recycling; and harnessing scientific research to develop innovative solutions to address environmental imbalances and establish systems for adapting to climate phenomena and changes.
The Plan also sets out a series of priority reforms and investment programmes, all based on five major development orientations. Each is directly or indirectly linked to climate challenges and, consequently, to the establishment of a new climate governance framework. These orientations are as follows:
– Consolidating equitable and inclusive social development, particularly by reducing the poverty rate to below 15% and improving the Human Development Index to reach the level of countries with very high human development.
– Achieving balanced territorial development by establishing territorial entities capable of managing their own development, supporting social justice and human capital, and demonstrating resilience in the face of environmental and climate challenges.
– Modernising the economic fabric and enhancing its competitiveness by rehabilitating and upgrading productive sectors and promoting promising sectors, including waste management activities, efforts to recycle and recover value from waste, and activities related to climate challenges and the energy transition.
– Achieving water, food and energy security and preserving a healthy environment. The Plan’s stated objective is to accelerate the pace of the energy and ecological transition by increasing the share of renewable energy in the energy mix to 35% by 2030 and improving energy efficiency by reducing national primary energy consumption by 30%. This will go hand in hand with efforts to reduce carbon emissions, curb pollution and preserve a healthy environment through the implementation of the National Biodiversity Strategy.
– Modernising the institutional framework and improving the efficiency of public services by developing the legislative and regulatory framework and restructuring public institutions and state-owned enterprises. This is expected to strengthen governance in general and climate governance in particular. The National Strategy for Ecological Transition had previously identified certain shortcomings in governance and in economic and territorial planning. This led it to make the establishment of systemic, multi-sectoral and territorial institutional governance, together with the provision of appropriate and accessible financing mechanisms, the focus of its first strategic pillar.
Implementation: Financing Challenges and Institutional Restructuring
Like its predecessors, Tunisia’s 2026–2030 Development Plan appears both realistic and ambitious. However, it remains a policy-guidance document, much like the outcomes of COP 30. Both are flexible instruments that impose no penalties for non-compliance and create no independent legal obligations. Implementation of the Plan’s provisions therefore remains contingent on their incorporation into annual Finance Laws and, above all, on the availability of the necessary budgetary allocations.
This is where the main challenge lies. Achieving the objectives of Tunisia’s Nationally Determined Contribution 3.0 (NDC 3.0) requires total financing of approximately USD 55 billion (equivalent to around TND 161 billion) over the 2026–2035 period.[9] According to the document itself, domestic resources cover only around 26% of these needs, while the remaining 74% is conditional on international support and private investment. In a country facing a heavy debt-service burden that absorbs a substantial share of its fiscal space, the question is not simply «How much funding is needed?» but also «Who finances what?» and «On what terms?».
Heavy reliance on external financing, whether through concessional loans, private investment or public-private partnerships, reproduces the very logic criticised by political-economy analyses of green capitalism: the State bears the risks or guarantees returns to investors, while private actors capture a substantial share of the profits. In the absence of a clear legal framework defining when financing is genuinely «additional» (that is, when it would not have materialised without public support) and when it complies with the principle of territorial equity, these mechanisms risk becoming little more than instruments for attracting capital, without guaranteeing any genuine climate or social impact.
The Plan also points to an intention to “modernise the institutional framework” and “restructure public institutions and state-owned enterprises”. It explicitly refers to waste management activities, public-private partnerships for waste recovery and valorisation, the green and blue economies, and reliance on specialised external climate finance funds. While these terms may appear positive at first glance, they raise some fundamental questions:
– What does the “restructuring” of institutions such as the Tunisian Company of Electricity and Gas (STEG), the National Water Exploitation and Distribution Company (SONEDE), and the National Sanitation Office (ONAS) actually entail? Is the aim to improve governance and efficiency, or does it open the door to forms of partial privatisation?
– Who benefits from public-private partnerships in the field of waste recovery and valorisation? Are the rights of informal workers, who rely on collecting and sorting waste as a source of livelihood, taken into account?
– How are local tensions surrounding waste disposal sites addressed? The Agareb crisis in 2021,[10]which erupted following the reopening of the “El Gonna” landfill despite local residents’ opposition, is a reminder that centralised waste planning, even when presented under the banner of the “circular economy”, can come into conflict with local social and environmental realities and trigger protests if genuine participation mechanisms are not put in place.
The multilevel climate governance championed in the outcomes of COP 30 and in the Development Plan remains incomplete if it is limited to the inclusion of elected councils without involving civil society and the populations directly affected by these policies. Moreover, reliance on external financing without reconsidering the structure of public debt and strengthening the State’s financial capacity leaves the Plan vulnerable to market fluctuations and to the conditions imposed by donors and investors.
Conclusion
The cross-analysis of the outcomes of COP 30, Tunisia’s Nationally Determined Contribution 3.0 (NDC 3.0), and the 2026–2030 Development Plan shows that, at the level of policy discourse and planning, Tunisia has incorporated the principles of multilevel climate governance and established links between climate action and public policies. However, this integration remains largely confined to policy-guidance documents.
The real challenges lie in implementation: in the ability to finance 74% of the country’s needs through external sources without deepening its debt; in the nature of the restructuring of public institutions; in how the benefits of public-private partnerships are distributed; and in the State’s ability to turn bottom-up governance into meaningful participation that goes beyond elected councils. Unless these challenges are addressed, the Plan may remain an ambitious document, while the gap between commitments and reality continues to widen.
In this sense, it is not enough for the Plan to embrace the language of climate governance in its formulation and policy documents. That discourse must be translated into fair financing mechanisms, institutional reform that serves the public interest, and participatory processes that do not exclude those who bear the costs of the transition in their own bodies, neighbourhoods and everyday lives.
[1] Tunisia’s first NDC (September 2015): Submitted as an initial commitment, it set a target of reducing carbon intensity by 41 per cent by 2030, compared with 2010 levels. The updated second NDC (September 2021): The plan was revised and its climate ambition increased, raising the carbon-intensity reduction target to 45 per cent by 2030.
[2] Energy Sector Strategy 2035.
[3] The study Tunisia: Water 2050; the study The Water System in Tunisia: Prospects for 2030; and the Strategy for the Energy and Ecological Transition in Tunisia.
[4] National Strategy for Ecological Transition 2023.
[5] Global Implementation Accelerator (GIA).
[6] First Development Plan, 1962–1964.
[7] Law No. 16 of 2026, dated 20 July 2026, approving the 2026–2030 Development Plan. The law was adopted by 64 votes in favour, with 15 abstentions and 24 votes against. A total of 103 of the 161 members of parliament voted.
[8] Multi-stakeholder governance.
[9] According to Tunisia’s Nationally Determined Contribution 3.0 (NDC 3.0), total financing needs amount to approximately USD 55 billion for the 2026–2035 period, 74% of which is conditional on international support and private investment.
[10] In 2011, the city of Agareb, in the Sfax Governorate, witnessed widespread protests against the reopening of the “El Gonna” landfill. These protests led to clashes with security forces and brought renewed attention to the fragility of the waste management system and the disconnect between centralised planning and local realities.
