Tunisia is the first Arab State to create a Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development. It works closely with the Ministry of Transport to create a safe and clean environment. It has incorporated environmental laws into its national development strategy.

Examples of this strategy:

• Treated water that leaves Tunisian sewage plants is recycled in ways that benefits the environment irrigating Tunisia’s many golf courses, roadside ornamental plantings, urban parks, cotton fields and non-food crops.
• Tunisia faces the problem of desert sands from the south constantly encroaching into the arable farming land to the north. Anti-desertification initiatives involve planting windbreaks, stabilising sand dunes, and draining land that have become saline through overuse or misuse to make it arable again.
• In the Sahara the suppliers are equipped with recycling equipment and what little waste that is created is brought out of the desert to leave a natural wilderness umblemished.

As part of its education programme the Ministry of Environment has developed a cartoon mascot, Labib, a long-eared desert fox who, for Tunisian children, has become as synonymous with cleaning beaches, planting trees, depositing rubbish in containers and conserving water and electricity.