Water in Morocco, Retrospective at the Political, Regulatory and Institutional Levels

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.