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Rabat – A new World Bank report has stressed the importance of coming up with fresh solutions to tackle water stress challenges in the Middle East and North Africa Region (MENA) – including Morocco.
The report tackles the “Economics of Water Scarcity” in the MENA region, including case studies of groundwater use in Morocco.
Farmers don’t respect public policies
It pointed out farmers’ responsibility in the issue of water crisis in Morocco, acknowledging that they “regularly disregard” public regulations on water management.
“Because they do not believe the state should restrict their use of water, and they believe none of their neighbors in the community are following the rules,” the report stressed.
The same case exists in Jordan, where local authorities are “being driven out” of towns when they try to close illegal wells.
“Even if governments can enforce compliance by using the coercive power of the state, widespread lack of legitimacy is a threat to stability and can inhibit government policy makers from taking necessary but difficult … decisions over the management of water,” the report added.
Morocco’s government has faced criticism amid reports that the country has continued overproducing and exporting water-intensive crops despite an alarming water crisis.
In an apparent response to the wave of criticism, Morocco’s government spokesperson Mustapha Baitas said on Thursday that Morocco’s water reserves for irrigation have dropped by 80% from 6 billion cubic to only 1 billion in 2022.
As Morocco faced last year its worst drought in the past three decades, the country’s government pledged several measures to tackle the situation, including the construction of dams.
Unsustainable measures to tackle water scarcity
However, the World Bank has described as unsustainable many of the measures the Moroccan government has taken or been considering to tackle water scarcity across the country.
“MENA has tackled water scarcity by exploiting multiple ways to increase water supply (building more dams, tapping into groundwater, and increasing desalination) without adequately addressing critical efficiency and governance issues. This is fiscally and environmentally unsustainable,” the report stressed.
It emphasized that government policies should focus more on reducing water losses and efficiency measures to contribute to addressing water challenges.
The report also acknowledged that governments in the MENA region have over the past year faced intense pressure from citizens, with surveys stressing that people in the region believe that a key role of the government is to keep prices down.
“There is widespread concern about governments ‘raising prices’ and states in MENA facing protests following tariff increases,” the report said, noting that this factor “explains why governments are reluctant to raise tariffs because of the risk of widespread protests and political instability.”
While the report listed governments’ pledges to keep prices down, demands calling for protests to denounce price increases have continued to surge in Morocco in recent years.
There has been a notable increase in the prices of goods, including vegetables and fruits, weighing down the purchasing power of low and average income citizens.
As for water scarcity in the MENA region, the World Bank report stressed that the water available per capita in the region will fall below the absolute water scarcity threshold of 500 cubic meters per person per year by 2030.
“Water scarcity will become even more acute as the population grows,” the report warned, stressing that the MENA region’s population grew from just over 100 million people to over 450 million between 1960 and 2018. “It is estimated to reach more than 720 million by 2050,” the World Bank added.
