热博体育

The essentials

Zhour Bouzidi is a sociologist and agricultural engineer. She is a teacher researcher at Moulay Ismaïl University in Meknes and heads the eGroundwater project's work in Morocco. 热博体育 is one of the members of this project on participatory groundwater management, funded by the European Union and coordinated by the Research Institute of Water and Environmental Engineering (IIAMA) at the Polytechnic University of Valencia, Spain.

What are the current water resource issues for farming in Morocco?

Zhour Bouzidi: Apart from the late rains in March, Morocco is currently experiencing one of the worst droughts in its history. We have had six consecutive years of drought, with rising temperatures and decreasing rainfall. This climate situation is exacerbating the already strong pressure on water resources, with constant growth in demand, due to agricultural intensification, increasing urbanization and population growth.

Over the past two decades, national agricultural policies – the Plan Maroc Vert and Génération Verte – have encouraged the development of export crops, which generate high added value but are also very water-intensive. This means fruit and vegetable crops, such as citrus fruits, tomatoes, red berries, etc. These policy choices have shaped the agricultural landscape in Morocco, but their impacts on our water resources are now making themselves felt, with low levels in almost all our reservoirs and substantial over-exploitation of groundwater.

In the 1960s, the Moroccan government invested massively in increasing water supplies, notably by a policy of building huge dams. This is ongoing, with the construction of new dams, the use of non-conventional water supplies, seawater desalination projects and waste water recycling. Nevertheless, certain national plans include a number of steps to manage demand, for instance by reducing losses within supply networks, localized irrigation, etc. 

Generally speaking, the imbalance between supply and demand is continuing to grow. This chronic water stress situation raises questions for all of us: scientists, politicians, citizens and civil society. We need to establish a clear diagnosis of the water situation in Morocco, and define the commitments required on the part of every stakeholder to ensure sustainable management of this vital resource. Agriculture will obviously be central to these questions, as will an assessment of public policies and their cost – not just economic, but environmental and social.

Lastly, we need to ask ourselves several questions. Can we continue to bank on export-oriented, high added-value crops that consume vast volumes of water, given the current emergency? We need to bear one thing in mind: our water management choices say a lot about our societies and the activities we see as a priority, but also about the people who have difficulty accessing water, since those people are often invisible, marginalized or excluded from public debate.

The projects due to be presented at SIAM include eGroundwater, which is studying sustainable participatory management of groundwater in Morocco, Spain, Portugal and Algeria. What are its aims and the main lessons learned?

Z.B.: This water crisis is not restricted to Morocco. Many countries face a similar situation, particularly in the Mediterranean. In the eGroundwater project, we have based ourselves on a shared observation: one of the main constraints on sustainable water management is access to information about the resource. This particularly applies to groundwater, since water levels are not visible like those of reservoirs. In all four countries covered by the project, we have tested innovative information systems aimed at ensuring that all users can access data on aquifer levels, their evolution and their functioning. 

In Morocco, we have worked in three rural communities in Sefrou province, in the region that includes Fez and Meknes. In less than 20 years, the study zone has switched from rainfed crops to intensive agriculture intensive, and is now known for its Rosaceae, notably apples and plums. The pressure on groundwater reserves has therefore grown very rapidly, with a drop of 22 metres in the level of the water table between 2014 and 2022. 

As part of eGroundwater, we have worked with farmers to introduce a participatory process to monitor the level of the water table, using a locally-made piezometric probe. This has given people access to what is usually a very costly device, by cutting the cost by 90% compared to conventional probes.

A group of farmers are in charge of monitoring, which consist in making regular measurements and sharing them with other users. This serves to facilitate irrigation programming and crop planning, and helps prevent drought. Participatory hydrogeology workshops have also been organized with the aim of building a dialogue between scientists and farmers. Hydrogeology is the science of groundwater, and these workshops enable real exchanges of the scientific knowledge held by researchers and the practical knowledge, based on experience, of farmers.

You will be presenting the work done at a conference at SIAM, and notably suggesting a new "groundwater contract". What do you mean by that?

Z.B.:  In Morocco, groundwater contracts are intended to improve water resource management. However, they have given mixed results to date, primarily due to a lack of user involvement. The approaches tested by the eGroundwater research project are innovative in terms both of how data is gathered and of the new participatory approaches involved. This work has resulted in the drafting of a proposed innovative, pioneering participatory groundwater management contract. 

From 2020 to 2024, the project supported farmers in the study zone, drinking water managers, local communities and institutional players. Those groups worked together to set out the conditions and methods for rolling out sustainable participatory water resource management. The approach adopted by eGroundwater gave rise to the proposed groundwater contract, with an action plan centring on five measures, including improved water demand management and the co-production of knowledge by the different players.

Until now, in most current groundwater contract projects, farmer involvement had been limited and often restricted to co-production of knowledge. In the alternative model we are suggesting, the operational framework rests on active participation on the part not just of farmers but of each and every stakeholder. At SIAM, we will be discussing this new vision for supporting participatory water management contracts, in the hope that it will be possible to scale up the results obtained in Sefrou.

The conference, at 14:00 on Thursday 24 April in the France pavilion, is co-organized by Moulay Ismaïl University, the Agence du Bassin Hydraulique du Sébou (Sebou Basin Agency), and 热博体育. Farmers and representative from partner institutions, ministries and donor agencies will be attending, to discuss progress and prospects.

Salon international de l'agriculture au Maroc

Retrouvez le Cirad et le Costea à la 17e édition du Salon international de l’agriculture au Maroc autour du thème « Agriculture et monde rural : l’eau au cœur du développement durable ».