Bonn International Centre for Conflict Studies

The Moroccan agriculture is in transformation and is experiencing intensification and commercialisation, which, in addition to social and economic impacts, has significant impacts on soil and water resources in key growing areas such as the Fès-Meknès region (FMR). Climate change is triggering additional stress on water and land resources.

A consortium of four Germany research institutes and five commercial enterprises, led by Research Institute for Water and Waste Management at RWTH Aachen (FiW), has come together with Moroccan partners under the coordination of the Universitè Moulay Ismael to carry out innovative research on practical solutions for local land, water and resource management, the re-use of scarce resources, the preservation of ecosystem services, the restoration of heavily degraded soils and an optimisation of cultivation practices in the FMR. The aim is to identify potential uses for peasants and agricultural companies and to advise political decision-makers, private companies and other users on their feasibility in the sense of sustainable rural development.

BICC's subproject aims to capture and evaluate the socio-economic sustainability and potential risks of transformation processes in rural Morocco that are induced by innovative agricultural practices and new technologies. Our specific work goals are:

Analysis of the socio-economic transformations in the FMR, taking into account changing livelihoods and market structures, rural-urban migration, and new strategies and technologies for water and land management;

GIS and satellite-based documentation and quantification of land use change in the FMR;

Analysis of the acceptance of technical, political and organisational innovations in land use, irrigation and resource management by local users;

Assessment of local capacities to integrate land use, irrigation and resource management innovations into existing cultivation practices and related conflict risks and sustainability potentials.

BICC aims to work closely together with scientists from the Université Moulay Ismail, in particular from the Institute of Sociology, as well as from the École nationale d'agriculture de Meknès to carry out the project.