Morocco's Great Economic Potential

Adapted from the project website

Context

Morocco’s relatively arid climate means there are ever fewer natural water resources. Extreme droughts in recent years are threatening food production and causing soil salinisation. This negatively impacts crop yields, irrigation effects and energy generation. Morocco has laid out its ambitions to tackle these water challenges in its National Water Plan (2020-2050), and to achieve it, could benefit from Dutch water and agri expertise.

Mission

The mission’s objective was to bring together representatives from both public and private organisations in Morocco and the Netherlands to discuss common challenges and explore possible collaboration and partnerships towards a more sustainable and effective water resource management system. Additionally, the mission was designed to identify specific areas where both governments could potentially collaborate in the future in terms of knowledge-to-knowledge exchanges. The Netherlands Water Partnership (NWP) was the content partner for the technical sessions which included topics such as Integrated Water Resource Management, Monitoring and Forecasting, Desalination, Water Reuse, Saline Farming, Digitalisation in Agriculture, Farming Best Practices, and Horticulture.

• Morocco demonstrates great economic potential, provided it can successfully address its water scarcity and energy concerns in the near future.
• There is a need for strong local partners to find a way through the many stakeholders and authorities.
• There is undeniable potential in areas such as smart (but not necessarily the highest tech) agriculture, saline farming, desalination, and various types of water and wastewater treatment and reuse.