TITLE:
Water in Morocco, Retrospective at the Political, Regulatory and Institutional Levels
AUTHORS:
Machrafi Othman, Sguigaa Ayoub, Sabir Mohamed, Mohamed Qarro, Naimi Mustapha, Chikhaoui Mohamed, Attou Ayoub
KEYWORDS:
Water Management in Morocco, IWRM, HBA, Basin Agency, Policy, Retrospective Analysis
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Modern Hydrology,
Vol.12 No.2,
March
4,
2022
ABSTRACT: Water, a primary source of life, in Morocco, is
recognized as a major problem due to its scarcity on the one hand, the
multiplication and interdependence of uses, the overlap of responsibilities
between public and private actors, and the superposition of regulatory texts on
the other hand. It is in this sense that a retrospective analysis of water
management in Morocco has been made to highlight the reconfigurations and
successive legislative and institutional reforms that the water sector has
undergone, the constraints and shortcomings that this sector has experienced
and the solutions undertaken to remedy them. Its developmental orientation,
managed since independence by the Ministry of Public Works, was strongly
correlated with water even after the reforms of 2002 and 2007. The
institutional reform led to the creation of the Hydraulic Basin Agencies (HBAs)
as a response to the severe drought problems that characterized the early
1980s. The modern twist could respond to the operational difficulties of
Integrated Water Resources Management IWRM by focusing the missions of these
agencies as regality of the State, while the political orientation towards
large-scale irrigated agriculture also led to their focus on meeting the supply
side. This generally explains the creation of institutions that are weak
enough, in terms of bureaucratic power, not to interfere with the general
direction of the country and not to threaten the prerogatives of other powerful
administrations such as agriculture and the interior. For this reason, efforts
could also have been made to institute coordination mechanisms between the
different sectors to put the sectoral plans and master plans in order to
strengthen the coordination and regulation role of the Hydraulic Basin Agencies
(HBAs). The country is also subject to exogenous harmonization of water
policies because of donors who make their loans and project financing
conditional on the establishment of a water resources management organization.