88% of water in Morocco is used in agriculture. This water comes from both dams and groundwater aquifers.
Since the 1990s, groundwater resources have been overexploited, but the relative abundance of this resource and the economic growth accompanying its extraction had until now limited usage conflicts. Today, this overexploitation of aquifers is intensifying and reaching 1 billion cubic meters per year.
The depletion of this resource is now a tangible reality for many populations, making this « mining extractivism » of the resource a source of conflict such as in Zagora. Records of aquifer overexploitation, exceeding 25% of their annual recharge level, and the irregularity of rainfall amplified by climate change make groundwater exploitation an increasingly sensitive issue.
In Morocco, more than 40% of the 1.4 million hectares irrigated use drip irrigation, a technology supposedly capable of saving up to 50% of water resources. Yet the country's water resources are being depleted.
So, how to explain such a paradox? How to explain that with such savings, Morocco, this drip irrigation champion, sees its aquifers drying up?
The article will demonstrate that drip irrigation, while not being at the root of the problem, has been promoted in the wake of agricultural and water management policies that have led Morocco to a model of massive groundwater overconsumption. If « the series of 5 recent years of droughts » will likely come to an end, it above all reveals overconsumption that has become structural.
I - Water, a state affair: a history of Moroccan governance
The « Large Dams Policy »
In a semi-arid to arid context, irrigation is vital to Moroccan agriculture. While irrigation concerns only 1.4 million hectares among the 8.5 million hectares cultivated in Morocco, it is responsible for 45% of agricultural GDP and 75% of the country's exports.
Among the 1.4 million hectares irrigated, 615,000 hectares would be irrigated by « private irrigation », namely water extracted from aquifers.
Developing irrigation has thus been since the 1930s, and even more so since the 1960s, the leitmotif of Moroccan authorities. This was particularly manifested by the « large dams policy »: 123 dams were built between 1967 and 2004.
These dams allowed Morocco to reach the objective, already set by colonial France, of one million hectares irrigated by the mid-2000s while limiting the impact of droughts.
But from the 1980s onward, this policy began to reveal its limitations, as the drought cycles of 1980-1984 and the early 1990s undermined agricultural production: the mobilization of groundwater thus became an important economic and social issue.
The liberal mobilization of groundwater
The Moroccan state thus evolved from the 1980s onward from a model of a modernizing state through development to a modernizing state through the liberalization of groundwater exploitation. The mining exploitation of groundwater was thus seen as an opportunity to foster the emergence of a middle agricultural class.
To achieve this objective without depleting water resources, Morocco adopted in 1995 a new system of water governance: « Integrated Water Resources Management » (IWRM).
IWRM corresponds to a harmonized planning of water resource use among the different sectors consuming it: agriculture, industry, tourism, domestic consumption… This model is articulated according to Morocco's hydrographic geography and thus according to its main hydraulic basins.
Thus we find the « Hydraulic Basin Agencies » of the Sebou, the Tensift, the Loukkos, etc.
88% of water in Morocco is used in agriculture. This water comes from both dams and groundwater aquifers.
Since the 1990s, groundwater resources have been overexploited, but the relative abundance of this resource and the economic growth accompanying its extraction had until now limited usage conflicts. Today, this overexploitation of aquifers is intensifying and reaching 1 billion cubic meters per year.
The depletion of this resource is now a tangible reality for many populations, making this « mining extractivism » of the resource a source of conflict such as in Zagora. Records of aquifer overexploitation, exceeding 25% of their annual recharge level, and the irregularity of rainfall amplified by climate change make groundwater exploitation an increasingly sensitive issue.
In Morocco, more than 40% of the 1.4 million hectares irrigated use drip irrigation, a technology supposedly capable of saving up to 50% of water resources. Yet the country's water resources are being depleted.
So, how to explain such a paradox? How to explain that with such savings, Morocco, this drip irrigation champion, sees its aquifers drying up?
The article will demonstrate that drip irrigation, while not being at the root of the problem, has been promoted in the wake of agricultural and water management policies that have led Morocco to a model of massive groundwater overconsumption. If « the series of 5 recent years of droughts » will likely come to an end, it above all reveals overconsumption that has become structural.
I - Water, a state affair: a history of Moroccan governance
The « Large Dams Policy »
In a semi-arid to arid context, irrigation is vital to Moroccan agriculture. While irrigation concerns only 1.4 million hectares among the 8.5 million hectares cultivated in Morocco, it is responsible for 45% of agricultural GDP and 75% of the country's exports.
Among the 1.4 million hectares irrigated, 615,000 hectares would be irrigated by « private irrigation », namely water extracted from aquifers.
Developing irrigation has thus been since the 1930s, and even more so since the 1960s, the leitmotif of Moroccan authorities. This was particularly manifested by the « large dams policy »: 123 dams were built between 1967 and 2004.
These dams allowed Morocco to reach the objective, already set by colonial France, of one million hectares irrigated by the mid-2000s while limiting the impact of droughts.
But from the 1980s onward, this policy began to reveal its limitations, as the drought cycles of 1980-1984 and the early 1990s undermined agricultural production: the mobilization of groundwater thus became an important economic and social issue.
The liberal mobilization of groundwater
The Moroccan state thus evolved from the 1980s onward from a model of a modernizing state through development to a modernizing state through the liberalization of groundwater exploitation. The mining exploitation of groundwater was thus seen as an opportunity to foster the emergence of a middle agricultural class.
To achieve this objective without depleting water resources, Morocco adopted in 1995 a new system of water governance: « Integrated Water Resources Management » (IWRM).
IWRM corresponds to a harmonized planning of water resource use among the different sectors consuming it: agriculture, industry, tourism, domestic consumption… This model is articulated according to Morocco's hydrographic geography and thus according to its main hydraulic basins.
Thus we find the « Hydraulic Basin Agencies » of the Sebou, the Tensift, the Loukkos, etc.