HAMMAMET, Tunisia: In the Tunisian coastal city of Hammamet, bulldozers are painstakingly shoveling sand from a nearby desert onto a popular beach to prevent it from disappearing due to erosion.
“This beach is the picture postcard of Hammamet,” said environmentalist Chihab Ben Fardaj, looking nostalgically at Yasmeen City's iconic beach.
“It's been on our minds since our childhood, as workers worked to restore Tunisia's central waterfront to its former sandy glory,” he added.
Like many other coastal areas in North Africa, severe erosion has seen many of Hammamet's sandy beaches disappear in recent years, taking its toll on the holiday hotspot about 65 kilometers (40 miles) east of the Tunisian capital.
Coastlines around the world are in a constant natural flux, and the seas claim and deposit sediment.
But human activities, including coastal property development and offshore sand mining, significantly accelerate beach erosion.
Among other effects, construction and coastal defenses in an area can impede the movement of sediment along the shoreline and deprive existing beaches of new material.
Studies have also shown that the effects of climate change, including rising temperatures and sea levels, are exacerbating this phenomenon.
In the Mediterranean, where Britain's National Oceanographic Center says sea levels have risen at a faster rate in the past 20 years than in the entire 20th century, coastlines are changing rapidly.
According to the United Nations, the seas are also warming 20 percent faster than the rest of the world.
Tunisia's coastline has been a major asset for the Mediterranean country with a struggling economy, hosting around 10 million tourists this year.
Tourism accounts for up to 14 percent of the country's gross domestic product and creates tens of thousands of jobs in a country where unemployment is 16 percent and 40 percent among youth.
According to the official statistics of last year, Tunisia has lost more than 90 km of its beaches due to erosion.
According to Tunisian reports, of the country's 570 km of sandy beaches suitable for swimming, 190 km are in imminent danger of disappearing.
Most of the beaches that are most affected by erosion are located near cities.
Tunisian environmental groups, as well as the state agency for coastal protection and development (APAL), blame the rapid erosion mostly on human activities and construction on the coast, which they say has been exacerbated by climate change.
“Construction projects are not designed to respect coastal dynamics,” an APAL official told AFP.
To save Hammamet Beach, one of the worst affected areas in Tunisia according to the World Bank, authorities last month began transporting about 750 trucks full of sand from the inland desert province of Kairouan, about 110 kilometers away.
APAL, which operates under the Ministry of Environment, was in a race against time to refill the beach before the peak tourist season.
But while beach restoration, known as beach nourishment, may be a quick fix, Ben Fardage said, “It's not a sustainable solution.”
Secretary General of Environmental Education Association added: This sand may not last long.
“It could be swallowed up in a matter of days in the event of a storm, as it was in the summer of 2023,” he said.
This process can also be expensive.
Coastal authorities estimated the cost of restoring sand to three beaches in Hammamet, Monastir and Sfax at 3.9 million Tunisian dinars ($1.25 million).
But for locals, restoring their pristine beach is worth the money.
Yasmin Beach is “a showcase for Hammett,” said Narjes Bhavaskar, who runs the city's Menara Hotel and heads the regional hotel federation.
“We have to take back our beach that has been swallowed by the sea,” he said.
“For us, the priority is not to touch the beauty of the city,” he said.
Bhavaskar said he has seen awareness among officials increase, but refilling beaches with sand is still a gamble.
“We don't know how the sea will react,” he added.
