Executive summary
Over seven consecutive years (2019–2025), Tunisian institutions communicated about extreme heat in a reactive, fragmented and uncoordinated way. No spring preventive campaign has been documented across the whole period: all communication starts during the episode, never before. This structural deficit is accompanied by a persistent exclusion: isolated older people and outdoor workers remain beyond the reach of the usual institutional channels.
The available data quantify this deficit. Only one Tunisian in three says they have received official communication about climate risks (ANME, 2023). The Ministry of Health has 1.58 million followers on Facebook, but only 2,331 on Instagram, revealing a digital monoculture that structurally excludes older people who are not online. In 2025, STEG managed a historic consumption peak without any preventive framework: the operational resilience of the grid was real, but it came late and in a reactive mode.
Four levers can be activated immediately by municipalities, without additional budget or legislative amendment:
1. Naming each heat episode in coordination with the INM, on the Seville model, is a zero-cost measure.
2. Activating local radio stations broadcasting in Tunisian Arabic from the yellow vigilance level reaches populations excluded from digital media.
3. Reframing messages around concrete benefits — the electricity bill, quality of sleep, thermal comfort — strengthens the adoption of protective behaviour.
4. Publishing a message dedicated to outdoor workers at every orange or red episode provides a minimum protection that is so far absent from official discourse.
At national level, four structural decisions are needed:
- A. Update the single work shift by decree, integrating real thermal thresholds and the private sector.
- B. Create an interministerial canicule coordination cell (INM, Health, STEG, Environment).
- C. Make preventive communication compulsory before 15 May in every municipality.
- D. Guarantee legal protection for outdoor workers, on the model of Spain's 2023 decree.
Foreword
This analytical note documents seven years of Tunisian institutional communication on extreme heat (2019–2025). It highlights a structurally flawed system — not for lack of resources, but for lack of coordination, anticipation and a refocus on the most vulnerable populations. This finding is all the more urgent because the five hottest years recorded in Tunisia since 1950 all come after 2021.
The systematic analysis of 133 references — official publications, radio archives, press releases and social-media communications — cross-checks the practices of the seven institutional actors against international standards and the most recent empirical work. It shows communication that, despite real progress since 2022, remains fundamentally reactive, fragmented and socially selective.
Its ambition is twofold: to document these failings rigorously, and to offer municipalities as well as national decision-makers concrete levers for action that can be mobilised from summer 2026, without waiting for systemic reform. Most of the recommendations require no additional budget; above all they imply a change of paradigm: moving from curative crisis management to preventive and inclusive governance of thermal risk.
These achievements form the basis on which the recommendations of this note rest. The aim is not to start from scratch, but to coordinate, anticipate and amplify what already exists.
1. Introduction
Setting long-term, ambitious climate strategies is certainly an achievement for the country. However, what gives them meaning, and forces the move from theory to practice, is their implementation on the ground and the articulation of planned measures, with a view to strengthening resilience and reducing vulnerability. This is one of the fundamentals of public governance. Without effective implementation, climate policies risk remaining largely declaratory. This finding applies to several priority climate hazards in Tunisia, which are confined to the status of major risks without being followed by a response commensurate with the challenge and with the cascading effects that follow, since climate risks are non-homogeneous, non-uniform, and do not occur in isolation from other risks.
It is from this perspective that this analysis of institutional communication on extreme heat is carried out. Heat episodes are among the major risks the country must prepare for, while avoiding the pitfalls and shortcomings of climate governance. It is a major risk that grows from one year to the next, with its increasing frequency, intensity and duration. Addressing it points to the importance of making adaptation to climate risks a national priority that must shape development policies.
This analysis focuses on the communication aspect of extreme heat, as a major lens for examining the action taken by institutional actors to face this risk.
Communication about extreme heat is not an accessory to the canicule plan; it is its first operational link. An alert that arrives too late, a message understood only by the connected few, a discourse that places responsibility on individuals: each of these failings can delay public action and, potentially, cost lives.
A systematic analysis of Tunisian institutional statements since 2019 reveals a structural paradox. Tunisia has never been so exposed to extreme heat — the five years with the highest thermal anomalies since INM measurements all come after 2021 [1] — yet its institutional communication on the subject remains, despite real progress, fundamentally reactive, fragmented and socially selective.
2. Mapping the seven institutional actors
Seven institutions take part in communication on extreme heat in Tunisia. Their analysis reveals a common failing: the alert arrives during the episode, rarely before, and never in a coordinated way.
The mapping, drawn from a review of Tunisian media archives cross-checked with the public content of institutional Facebook pages for 2019–2025, reveals the following findings for each institution:
National Institute of Meteorology (INM). A daily vigilance map has been published since 2022 with alerts by governorate. However, it lacks anticipation five to seven days ahead, and is not coordinated with the Ministry of Health.
Ministry of Health. Despite its 1.58 million followers on Facebook, no documented message was issued before 15 June over the 2019–2025 period. Examination of the messages shows that they have been identical for seven years, with no innovation in official discourse to better alert citizens.
Tunisian Company of Electricity and Gas (STEG). During several extreme heat episodes that generated electricity consumption peaks, STEG was forced to deny certain information related to load-shedding. In 2024, for example, an official denial of load-shedding in June was followed by actual cuts in July.
Ministry of Agriculture. Sector communication is provided by the Ministry of Agriculture through relevant technical circulars on protecting crops and livestock, issued regularly since 2022. A major shortcoming is that these communications are not addressed to farmers and do not treat them as a group highly exposed to heat as outdoor workers. This intervention is considered incomplete because it is not carried out in coordination with the Ministry of Health.
Ministry of Environment. Despite its status as the ministry in charge of developing climate policies, particularly on adaptation, resilience and risk and disaster management, no documented crisis communication on extreme heat exists for 2019–2025. It is both surprising and regrettable that the institution steering the NDC 3.0 and long-term climate policies remains so little visible in operational communication on extreme heat episodes.
Civil Protection. The intervention of Civil Protection remains mainly confined to forest fires and summer drownings. There is no message dedicated to the health risks of heat as such, and no link with cooling spaces. The thermal risk is therefore absent.
Tunisian municipalities. The communication of municipalities on extreme heat is considered the weakest link in the chain, despite their proximity to citizens and to the populations heavily exposed to this major climate risk. In practice, municipal communication is marked by passive republication of INM alerts, without any message of their own, without a vulnerability register, and without a proper communication plan.
This qualitative mapping lends itself to a synthetic reading. The figure below shows, across five shared dimensions — anticipation, interinstitutional coordination, targeting of vulnerable populations, multichannel communication, and recognition of workers' rights — the level of performance observed for each of the seven actors. None of them covers all the dimensions at once, which confirms the absence of a single institutional centre of gravity for communication on extreme heat.
Figure 1 — Performance of the seven actors across five dimensions of extreme heat management.
3. Chronology of the 2019–2025 episodes and structural trends
3.1 Chronology of episodes
Reading episode by episode makes it possible to measure the real evolution of the communication system — and its persistent gaps. The weather alert and the health response evolved on two parallel timelines, with no operational bridge linking them.
2019 — No documented extreme episode. The INM issued an alert for the period from 8 to 11 July, along with peaks of 47 °C, representing deviations of +6 to +10 °C from July norms. Earlier, in 2018, the vigilance map had been announced but not yet systematised.
2020 — Summer slightly above normal (the pandemic year). According to the INM, summer 2020 (June–July–August) recorded an average temperature of 27.80 °C against a reference of 27.23 °C, a deviation of +0.57 °C, a moderate anomaly compared with the summers of 2021 or 2023. August nonetheless saw three successive heat waves, with a new local record of 43 °C in Kasserine on 20 August 2020. The Covid-19 pandemic absorbed much of the institutional communication capacity that year, which contributed to the relative invisibility of this episode in the public space.
2021 — Partial turning point, an INM innovation. The major canicule of 30 June remains in the records, notably with 49 °C recorded in Tozeur, worsened by canicule nights above 33 °C. For the first time, the INM published a video dedicated to the canicule alert. Unfortunately, the Ministry of Health only reacted several weeks after the thermal peak, which shows the absence of coordination between the two institutions.
2023 — Active infodemic. The INM had to deny rumours of a 60 °C canicule, fuelled by the institutional vacuum. Meanwhile STEG had to manage the peak of 4,825 MW recorded on 20 July at 5:27 p.m., outside usual hours. As for the Ministry of Health, its communication remained unchanged compared with 2021. Among the public and the press, the absence of a national canicule plan began to be felt.
2024 — Communication under strain: between transparency and public trust. The hottest year ever recorded worldwide was marked by a notable institutional advance: the appointment of the first Health spokesperson (Ms Henda Chebbi), which helped improve health communication and brought real progress. At STEG, a communication tension appeared: official statements in June 2024 downplaying the risk of load-shedding were followed by actual cuts in July, documented by radio archives [2] — illustrating the limits of communication that is primarily curative on a subject with a strong public impact.
2025 — Historic consumption peak: grid resilience put to the test. The 47 °C peak in Kairouan (21 July) was accompanied by viral rumours and false forecasts, which the INM had to deny. STEG confirmed an “unprecedented” consumption peak and acknowledged mobilising all its resources to keep the grid supplied [4]. This operational resilience, real and commendable, also highlights the importance of a structured preventive framework that would allow these episodes to be addressed in an anticipatory rather than curative way [3].
The analysis of heat episodes reveals not only individual failures but the absence of an institutional centre of gravity. Seven actors intervene, and no formalised coordination mechanism was identified in the sources analysed. Each institution works in its own sectoral lane — weather, health, energy, agriculture, climate, rescue, territory — without a formalised interface with the others. The result is a system that produces information without producing a response capable of triggering robust public action at the scale of the climate challenge. The figure below illustrates how the chain is fractured at three critical points: a structural delay between the issuing of the alert and its public communication; the absence of standardised protocols for health transmission; and the operational inability of municipalities to turn the alert into concrete action. Added to these breaks is the near-total absence of the Ministry of Environment, which was expected to lead interministerial governance of climate risks.
Figure 2 — From the production of the weather alert to vulnerable populations: three breaks.
3.2 Five structural trends
The cross-cutting analysis of the seven documented years reveals five structural trends. For each one, the diagnosis is followed by an operational recommendation that can be acted on without waiting for national reform.
Seven years without a preventive strategy and systematic reactivity. Almost all communication starts during or after the episode. Extreme heat is treated as an unforeseen event, although it is now structural in the Tunisian climate regime. No documented preventive spring campaign exists for 2019–2025.
A message frozen on individual gestures for seven years. Communication treats heat as a personal hygiene risk, not as a systemic risk. It individualises responsibility — drink water, stay in the shade — thereby exempting institutions from their own failings.
The most vulnerable populations out of reach of institutional channels. Isolated older people, residents of informal neighbourhoods and informal workers are structurally absent from the chosen dissemination channels (Facebook, official notices). Priority goes to populations already connected.
Single-channel communication in the age of multiple screens. Facebook is the only digital channel systematically used. No other channel appears to be mobilised in a coordinated way. This excludes people who will never see the Facebook post.
The Ministry of Environment: a coordinating role to activate. Across seven years of documented canicule episodes, the Ministry of Environment does not appear in thermal crisis communications. Yet it holds a legal mandate for interministerial coordination on climate change, and institutional proximity to the National Adaptation Strategy.
3.3 Curative versus preventive
The distinction between curative and preventive communication structures all the documented failings for 2019–2025. Curative communication — dominant in the Tunisian case — reacts during or after the episode: it delivers messages such as “drink water, avoid the sun” to populations already exposed. Its usefulness is real but structurally limited. Preventive communication follows the opposite logic: spring campaigns, training of municipal staff, and so on. It aims to change behaviour before exposure, when the protective effect is greatest. Its cost is marginal — a circular, a few weeks of radio programming, a message to employers before 15 May — yet its impact is documented: international benchmarks (the Seville plan, the French Canicule Plan, WHO protocols) show a reduction in mortality of 15 to 40% depending on the context. Moving from curative to preventive is therefore not an incremental improvement of existing communication: it is the structural transformation that Tunisia has not yet carried out.
4. The single work shift: a historic response that has become insufficient
Tunisia is not without inherited instruments for responding to summer heat. The single work shift — a continuous working day concentrated in the morning — was originally designed precisely as a health-protection measure against high temperatures. Introduced by the beylical decree of 15 June 1921 under the French protectorate, then reaffirmed by a decision of Habib Bourguiba on 12 April 1956 at the beginning of independence, it is applied each year from 1 July to 31 August in the civil service, local authorities and public administrative establishments, with standard hours of 8:00 to 14:30 from Monday to Thursday and 8:00 to 13:30 on Friday.
This measure, conceived a century ago for a climate that was not the one we know today, now has four structural limitations that make it insufficient in the face of the intensity of contemporary thermal extremes:
- A scope of application that excludes the most exposed. The single shift is imposed on the civil service but remains optional for the private sector. Yet the workers most exposed to heat — construction sites, agriculture, transport, the informal economy, street vending — belong precisely to the private or informal sectors.
- A rigid calendar, disconnected from the climate reality. The period 1 July to 31 August rests on a fixed calendar logic, whereas extreme heat episodes now spill well beyond this window. Heat waves in June and September have multiplied since 2020. A measure that starts on 1 July protects no one during an early heat wave in June.
- Hours that do not avoid the most dangerous times. Finishing at 14:30, or at 13:30 on Friday, leaves exposed workers on their return journey during the hours when the perceived heat index peaks — typically between 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. The episode of 20 July 2023, when STEG recorded a demand peak at 5:27 p.m., illustrates this shift of critical hours.
- A work-organisation measure, not a labour-law measure. This is the most fundamental limit. The single shift adjusts working hours but creates no enforceable individual right for the employee: no right of withdrawal in case of a red alert, no ban on outdoor work above a temperature threshold, and no obligation on the employer to provide shade, water and adapted breaks.
5. International lessons
Tunisia does not need to invent its approach to communicating about extreme heat. International experience, enriched by recent empirical data, offers a set of transferable recommendations that institutional actors can begin to implement immediately.
5.1 Naming the heat: the Seville effect
In 2022 the city of Seville (Spain) launched an innovative experiment in partnership with the Pro Climate Initiative and the Universidad de Sevilla [7]: giving names to heat waves, on a model similar to that of cyclones. The approach rested on a simple intuition: make extreme heat tangible, nameable and socially shareable, rather than communicating about abstract thermal thresholds.
The system, called proMETEO Sevilla, classifies heat waves into three categories according to their intensity and duration, and assigns each a first name. The first named wave, Zoe (July 2022) [8], inaugurated a new approach to health communication about thermal risk.
The peer review published in April 2024 in Scientific Reports [9] measures three effects on residents exposed to the system — on behavioural intentions and declared engagement, not on a direct reduction in mortality, a distinction that must be kept in mind:
- People who remember the name of the wave adopt significantly more protective behaviours (hydration, visiting cool spaces, reducing exposure).
- They show higher civic engagement with public decisions on thermal risk.
- Naming strengthens trust in institutional action.
5.2 Three major failings of thermal communication
A British synthesis [10] identifies three systemic fractures in thermal communication, all of which are verified in the Tunisian context.
First failing: the absence of social research. Institutional messages rely on generic technical-epidemiological instructions (“drink 2 litres of water”) that ignore the real determinants of behaviour: housing conditions, material access to shade and cool air, cultural heritage, social-network behaviour, and optimism bias about personal risk. The same message cannot reach an air-conditioned urban professional and an agricultural worker with no access to shade.
Second failing: an obsession with the curative at the expense of the preventive. Public communications overwhelmingly favour emergency individual gestures (drink, ventilate, shower) over structural actions with lasting benefits (installing shutters, planting a tree, insulating a roof, creating a shaded area). The latter have a greater health impact and benefit several people at once, but are less “newsworthy”.
Third failing: the gap between perception and exposure. The most vulnerable populations systematically have the lowest awareness of the risk they face (perception gap, British Red Cross, 2021 [11]). Isolated seniors, informal outdoor workers who downplay their exposure after “thirty years in the trade”, and residents of precarious housing for whom 40 °C indoors has become “normal”. Generic messages broadcast on Facebook reach neither the right people, nor at the right time, nor in the right words.
5.3 Deconstructing the flaws of the national system: the ANME case
The 2023 ANME study [12], carried out on 1,200 Tunisian households and focused on energy efficiency, provides a diagnosis transferable to thermal communication: the two issues share the same channels and the same audiences.
Only 32.2% of Tunisians saw, read or heard an energy awareness campaign in the past 12 months. The main channels — television (64.6%), social networks (32.8%), radio (32.7%) — are precisely those used for heat alerts. Added to this is institutional confusion: 56.8% attribute the campaigns to STEG, 30.4% to ANME, 8.5% to the ministry. The consequence for municipalities: multichannel diversification (local radio, SMS, mosques, rural public criers) is not a refinement; it is the minimum condition for reaching the two-thirds who are missing.
The levers households report for rationalising their consumption are the rising cost of energy (70.4%) and control of spending (36.4%). Climate or health motivation is absent — not because Tunisians are reluctant about the climate, but because official communication speaks the wrong language.
6. Communal recommendations and national proposals
The national diagnosis is severe. But it must not paralyse local action. A large part of the solutions already falls within municipal competences and can be implemented without legislative reform or significant additional budget.
6.1 What municipalities can do from summer 2026
Name the heat episodes. Adopt, in coordination with the INM, a simple nomenclature allowing each extreme heat episode to be identified. The episode's name must be systematically broadcast on municipal channels as soon as an orange vigilance is triggered. Expected effect: strengthen the memorability of the risk and facilitate the spread of alert messages.
Mobilise local radio from the yellow alert. Broadcast at least one message in Tunisian Arabic on local radio stations for every yellow, orange or red episode. Expected effect: reach older people, rural populations and households with little connectivity.
Talk about concrete benefits. Reframe prevention messages around immediately perceptible advantages: lower energy bills, better sleep, thermal comfort at work and at home. Expected effect: increase adherence to protective behaviours.
Explicitly target exposed workers. Publish a specific message at every orange or red episode for those working outdoors. Expected effect: fill a major gap in current institutional communication.
6.2 National reforms to be pursued collectively
Some developments go beyond municipal competences and require a decision by the State. Municipalities can nevertheless play an advocacy role for their adoption.
Modernise the single work shift. Update the regulatory framework to integrate the real thermal thresholds observed by the INM and to extend protection measures to the private sector and to contract staff.
Create a national canicule coordination cell. Establish a permanent mechanism bringing together the INM, the Ministry of Health, STEG and the Ministry of Environment under a single protocol activated from the orange level.
Make preventive communication compulsory. Introduce, before 15 May each year, a minimum communication campaign on heat-related risks in all Tunisian municipalities.
Strengthen the legal protection of exposed workers. Introduce a specific protection right during extreme heat episodes, inspired by the provisions adopted in Spain in 2023, particularly for outdoor activities.
Conclusion
What the cross-analysis of Tunisian institutional communication and documented international experience reveals is a single logic: systematic reactivity dominates over anticipation. Whether it concerns extreme heat alerts, electricity load-shedding or water cuts, institutions manage the crisis after it has occurred.
Municipalities cannot wait for national reform to arrive. They have, from today, the levers needed to protect their most vulnerable residents. This note asks, in addition to the Guide published at the same time, that they do what is feasible with the means available: publish, relay, display, name, count.
International benchmarks show that reducing heat-related mortality is possible, documented and replicable. It rests on structured local organisation, anticipated and tested before the crisis arrives. The capacity to protect residents during extreme heat episodes is not a matter of scarce resources or complex procedures. It is, above all, a matter of organisation and anticipation.
In this respect, it is essential that Tunisian institutions — national and local alike — equip themselves with a coordinated, preventive and anticipatory communication policy. Without this communication architecture, human tragedies are not accidents: they are the predictable result of a lack of preparation. This requirement is all the more urgent because Tunisia has entered a new climate regime, characterised by the intensification and increased frequency of heat waves, which calls for a deep revision of our climate policies and our alert systems. Communicating better is not an extra dose of administrative transparency: it is a condition for survival for the most exposed populations.
References
References are numbered in order of appearance; titles are kept in their original language.
[1] Institut National de la Météorologie (INM). (2026). Bulletin climatique annuel 2025. Direction de la Climatologie, Tunis.
[2] Mosaïque FM. (2024, juin–juillet). Archives sur les démentis STEG concernant les délestages.
[3] Webdo. (2025, juillet). La Tunisie frôle le blackout électrique.
[4] Tunisie Numérique. (2025). Un pic de consommation sans précédent : la STEG a manœuvré pour éviter un effondrement total.
[5] République tunisienne. Code du Travail, article 152 — Obligations de l'employeur en matière de santé et sécurité au travail.
[6] Real Decreto-ley 4/2023, de 11 de mayo, medidas urgentes para la protección de los trabajadores en episodios de calor extremo. Boletín Oficial del Estado (Espagne).
[7] Pro Climate Initiative & Universidad de Sevilla. (2022). proMETEO Sevilla : système de classification et de nomination des vagues de chaleur.
[8] One Billion Resilient. (2024). Understanding the impact of heat wave Zoe. Récit et résultats de l'initiative pilote sévillane.
[9] Nature Scientific Reports. (2024, avril). Étude par pairs sur le Heat Health Early Warning System de Séville et l'impact du nommage des vagues de chaleur.
[10] WIREs Climate Change. (2023). Synthèse de recherche sur les facteurs influençant les actions protectrices et préventives en cas de vague de chaleur.
[11] British Red Cross. (2021). Public awareness and perceptions of climate risks. Rapport identifiant les perception gaps entre vulnérabilité réelle et conscience du danger.
[12] ANME. (2023). Étude sur le comportement des consommateurs d'énergie en Tunisie — Particuliers/Ménages. Agence Nationale pour la Maîtrise de l'Énergie, Ministère de l'Industrie et de l'Énergie, Tunis. N = 1 200 répondants.
[13] Van Loenhout, J. A. F., le Polain de Waroux, O., Goyet, S., & Guha-Sapir, D. (2021). Knowledge, attitudes, and practices regarding heat health risks among urban populations in Tunisia. BMC Public Health, 21, 834.
[14] ONU Femmes. (2026). Gender-differentiated and age-specific risks of heat stress in a warming world. Concept de hidden heat burden.
[15] OIT. (2024). Garantir la sécurité et la santé au travail dans un climat en mutation. Bureau International du Travail, Genève.
[16] African Manager. (2025). Déclaration directeur recouvrement STEG, préparatifs été 2025.
[17] CAST — Centre for Climate Change and Social Transformations. (2025). Ethnicity and UK climate perceptions. Travaux sur la nécessité de diversifier l'engagement et la recherche climatique.