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140 km from Casablanca, near the village of Ouled Essi Masseoud, the water reservoir of the Al Massira dam is nothing more than dry land, August 8, 2022. FADEL SENNA / AFP
“When you see villagers running to the well or to a neighbor to fetch water every morning, it makes you cry,” says Mohamed Sbaï, who has given up farming because his remote village, 140 km from Casablanca, keeps dying was hit by droughts.
Ouled Essi Masseoud, a village of once fertile land, is now severely affected by the water shortage that threatens all of Morocco. With no running water, this hillside town gets its water from public or private wells only. “The wells only work one or two days a week, the wells are starting to dry up and the river next to them is drying up more and more,” Mr Sbaï, a former farmer, told AFP. “The water shortage is giving us problems,” continues the 60-year-old, who is out to fetch water from neighbors.
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The situation is critical given the geographical location of Ouled Essi Masseoud, in the agricultural province of Settat, near the Oum Errabia river and the Al-Massira dam, the second largest in Morocco. The filling rate of this reservoir, which supplies several cities, including the Moroccan economic capital Casablanca with its 3 million inhabitants, with drinking water, is only 5% according to the latest official figures. On the ground, the scale of the disaster is spectacular. Al-Massira Reservoir is nothing more than a pond bordered by a few kilometers of cracked earth dotted with small shells.
“Structural” stress
At the national level, the dams only achieve a filling level of 27%. A worrying situation caused by the worst drought that Morocco has been going through in at least forty years. With 600 m3 of water per capita and year, the North African country is already well below the water scarcity threshold, which the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates at 1,700 m3 per capita and year. For comparison: In the 1960s, water availability was four times higher at 2,600 m3.
This situation puts the Cherifian Kingdom in a “situation of structural water scarcity,” according to a recent World Bank report on the Moroccan economy. In view of the emergency, the authorities reacted by rationing water consumption.
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The Home Office has instructed local authorities to restrict water supplies where necessary and to ban the use of potable water to irrigate parks and golf courses. Withdrawals from wells, springs or watercourses are also prohibited. In the longer term, Morocco is planning to build twenty seawater desalination stations by 2030, which, according to the Ministry of Equipment, should cover a good part of the drinking water requirement.
“We are in crisis management rather than anticipatory risk management,” water resources expert Mohamed Jalil told AFP, who also finds it “difficult to effectively monitor the actions taken by the authorities”.
“Aquavore Arboriculture”
The country’s other Achilles’ heel is its agricultural policy, “which favors water-guzzling fruit trees and marginalizes small-scale producers,” points out agronomist Mohamed Srairi. According to Mr. Srairi, this agriculture relies on drip irrigation, which paradoxically results in increased water use to make arid areas cultivable.
Morocco has “tripled” its irrigated areas using this technology, and this “may have changed farming decisions in a way that has increased rather than decreased the agricultural sector’s overall water use,” according to the World Bank. In fact, more than 80% of Morocco’s water goes to agriculture, a key sector of its economy that accounts for 14% of GDP.
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Not far from the Al-Massira dam, Mohamed, a 90-year-old, is standing in front of a small piece of land. “We don’t plow anymore because there’s no more water,” he breathes, adding that we “still have to accept adversity because we have no choice. The younger generations in the village seem less resilient. “We are living in a precarious situation due to the drought,” said Soufiane, a 14-year-old shepherdess who had not attended school, in a sad tone, looking at the dam. “I have a feeling it will only get worse in the future. »