Morocco is succumbing to a years-long drought. After having dried up the walls in the countryside, it threatens the cities. The agricultural sector is particularly vulnerable.
“I’ve been waiting for my turn for two hours,” sighs Aïcha, in her sixties. With her donkey, she comes to fill her cans with water every day at one of the three wells in Aïn Bellal, a village neighboring hers. The pipe she holds in her hand was placed there by a mohacine, a benefactor, who offers water from his own well.
In the village, Mohamed takes care of his cousin’s very small olive tree plantation. “Our 86m well has been dry for four years, so we had a second 139m well dug for 40,000 dirhams (3,850 euros) and we laid a pipe and built a small fountain just outside the property so that people can help themselves freely, explains this father. The village has 400 to 500 inhabitants, so between 100 and 120 people come to get their supplies from our fountain every day.” For two years, the National Office de l’eau is trying to install new standpipes, but none are working yet.
Repeated droughts
“We are currently living in a very difficult context with several successive years of drought and a water supply deficit of more than 60% compared to the average, explains Aïssam Rherari, head of the water management and extreme phenomenon division at the ministry. of Equipment and Water. The current situation is even more serious than the well-known drought of the 80s and 90s. The cities of the three most affected basins are threatened with cuts. This risk is a first for cities, but the countryside has been suffering the consequences of the drought since 2017 already because many villages no longer have water in public wells.”
According to the new Minister of Equipment and Water, Nizar Baraka, 25% of public fountains have ceased to operate in rural areas. The situation is so catastrophic that ” this year, downstream from the Al Massira dam, on the right bank of the Oum Er Biaa, the State has asked farmers who pump water from the river to irrigate their crops to give up cereals to keep only the olive trees, but it is necessary to see that thus it is the cattle which risk dying of hunger , says Hassan Makhlouk, driver of tank truck for the commune of Aïn Bellal. This is increasingly rare. People sell their animals for lack of water.”
In the three most affected regions, emergency measures have thus multiplied. “First, we are replacing the water in the dams by mobilizing groundwater. We are also diverting the water from certain dams, such as that of Moulay Ali Cherif, on the Moulouya, which were dedicated to agriculture, towards the drinking water supply for the cities of Berkane and Nador”, explains Aïssam Rherari.
These measures and the drought could be devastating for the Kingdom, where agriculture still accounts for 31% of jobs and 12% of GDP.
The rebound effect of irrigation
How did we get here? Who is responsible? In Morocco, no one seems to ask the question. For a long time, the policy of building large dams launched by Hassan II in the 1960s was a benchmark. Because it made it possible to increase the irrigated perimeter and to secure the water supply of the cities, it seems to have given the illusion to the decision-makers that the water problem was settled definitively. Climate change only appeared late in the analysis scheme. At the same time, the management of water fragmented between a multitude of public actors has not made it possible to adapt to the changes at work.
Above all, priority was given, from 2008, to the development of export agriculture; however, this consumes 83% of the water in Morocco. The state has therefore massively subsidized drip irrigation while presenting it as a solution to reduce water demand. Subsidized in all directions, it actually led to an increase in cultivated areas. Each year, in Morocco, the aquifers record an additional deficit of 1 billion m³ out of the 9 consumed in total by agriculture.
Faced with the predicted disaster, priority is now given to desalination. These desalination stations, cities and farmers will still wait for them for several years under the threat of the worst.
