Page 47 - U4SSC Factsheet, Bizerte, Tunisia, June 2020

environmental aspects related to waste management through public awareness raising. The result is
that Bizerte's project enabled the extension of door-to-door waste collection to a new neighbourhood,
as well as the elimination of points of uncontrolled waste discharge within the city.

Bizerte's project was divided into three phases. The first phase entailed diagnosis of the then current
state of waste management in Bizerte, followed by the prioritization of possible projects, which then
led to defining the pilot action to be developed in the city. To this end, a technical mission was carried
out in Bizerte. The second phase, i.e. execution, involved: efforts towards improving the provision of the
municipal waste services; technical training of the municipal teams; citizen environmental awareness
efforts; the introduction of essential technological advances into the city's waste management cycle;
an inventory of Black Points; a new programme of waste elimination; and mapping the location of
alternative containers. At the conclusion of the last phase of the project, namely the capitalization
phase, useful cartographic material on the waste collection system was presented to the city, including
information on the collection circuits within the different neighbourhoods of Bizerte, as well as the
information on the uncontrolled discharge points within the city.

A GIS map was produced based on the data collected. As part of the GeDeTun project, a three-day
training session was held, at the end, for municipal staff from different units, in order to improve their
skills and capacity in working with GIS software. Also held was a seminar in which the results of the
project were presented and the resulting knowledge was shared with other members of the MedCities
network, especially those from Tunisia, with a view to promoting efficient waste management practices
and publicizing possible effective interventions that improve the forecast of municipal services.

Working Together and Sharing Knowledge

Such partnerships are essential to Bizerte's success in effectively achieving its smart sustainable city
(SSC) goals. Working across public, private and administrative boundaries can help government leaders
amplify their influence over economic development, and can help them obtain more from their assets
with partners than they would be able to alone. Working together also allows leaders to draw on a
complete range of assets within their city, as well as to leverage the assets, scale and expertise from
the wider sphere of the working relationship, thereby broadening available opportunities and elevating
their level of development.

Aside from the example of network effects resulting from a close working relationship such as with
the MedCities network, this conclusion is also reflected in insights from the 2015 Local Government
Sustainability Practices Survey by the International City/County Management Association (ICMA).
The Survey found that almost 78 per cent of local governments polled indicated that examples of
other municipalities are an important and, indeed, key source of information in the move towards the
development of their own sustainability strategies.

Another instance of Bizerte's successful leveraging of international SSC platform is its 2017 participation
in the MedUrbanTools initiative jointly implemented by UN-Environment, the Mediterranean Action
Plan (MAP) and MedCities. MedUrbanTools is a Sustainable Urban Toolbox that aims to provide the
necessary resources to ensure that Mediterranean cities are planned cities, inclusive, safe, resilient,
and sustainable.

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