Rivalries and cooperative arrangements for access to groundwater in the Berrechid plain in Morocco

Abstract

In Morocco, private groundwater use enabled the rapid development of intensive irrigated agriculture. In the Berrechid plain, this resource is limited and overexploited. The river basin agency has attempted for the last ten years to set up a formal contract with various stakeholders to regulate agricultural use. The aim of the study is to analyze how the categorization of farmers, distinguished by their access to water and land, and the interactions between these categories are useful to think the governance of groundwater. The dynamics of irrigated agriculture were first traced and surveys enabled to establish a typology of farmers. Finally, the rivalries and the cooperative arrangements between different types of farmers were characterized. The results show that increased groundwater use has triggered rivalries for access to groundwater and the exclusion of some farmers in a context of falling water tables. To overcome these access problems, farmers set up cooperative arrangements around the factors of production required for irrigated agriculture (water, land, capital, know-how, labor). However, these arrangements accentuate, paradoxically, groundwater overexploitation and rivalries and lead to the continuation and change of the forms of cooperative arrangements. A detailed understanding of the nature of the relationships between the different types of farmers can address the issue of social equity in the concession contract with irrigation associations, which for the moment seems to ignore these relationships.