In Search of ‘Green Tunisia’: Tunisian Environmental Imagination Between Lost Narratives and Contemporary Awareness” is an inquiry into the state of environmental awareness in post-Revolution Tunisia through ecological and cultural lenses.

Primarily, the project provides an interdisciplinary examination of Tunisians’ contemporary ecological awareness and imagination. By studying the character (or nature) of contemporary ecological awareness among Tunisians through selected Tunisian narratives, nature writings, and/or audiovisual materials related to water or waste management, it traces and celebrates the rise of post-Revolution (2011) ecological “awareness” and, consequently, activism, particularly among young people, against the backdrop of the extractive mode of the same socio-economic/socio-political system, reproduced by a colonial past that has long shaped and drawn upon Tunisians’ environmental imaginations.

In this respect, and within the framework of the MECAM Short-Term Fellowship, this project seeks to address environmental problems such as, inter alia, water scarcity and the waste-management crisis as issues involving human and non-human rights that need to be defended. Equally, it reconsiders the validity of our current cultural perceptions and practices by retracing the root causes that fuel their continued reproduction and exacerbation. Ipso facto, the project seeks to document the history and development of these narratives and, by extension, attempts to preserve the memory of their authors, stories, and themes as part of Tunisia’s cultural and ecological heritage.

Finally, as part of MECAM’s “Resources and Sustainability” IRF, I intend to contribute by producing an extended paper/essay carrying the same title as my project, whose academic and professional value will be of particular significance to Tunisia, as well as to the Maghreb and Mediterranean regions.

Keywords: Green Tunisia, Environmental Imagination, Youth, Awareness, Narrative, Activism