Mohamed gave up farming because his previously fertile but isolated village in Morocco was being plagued by repeated droughts and he just couldn’t take it anymore.
“Seeing villagers rushing to public wells or to a neighbor’s house for water in the morning makes you cry,” said the man, in his 60s.
“Water scarcity makes us suffer,” he told AFP in the village of Ouled Essi Masseoud, about 140 kilometers from the country’s economic capital, Casablanca.
But not only his village suffers, the entire North African country is affected.
Losing access to running water, the villagers of Ouled Essi Masseoud rely solely on sporadic supplies from public wells and private wells.
“The wells only work one or two days a week, the wells are starting to dry up and the river next to them is drying up more and more,” Mohamed Sbai said as he fetched water from neighbors.
The situation is critical given the village’s location in the agricultural province of Settat, near the Oum Errabia River and Morocco’s second largest dam, Al Massira.
Its reservoir supplies drinking water to several cities, including the three million people who live in Casablanca. But the latest official figures show it is now filling at a rate of just five percent.
Al-Massira Reservoir has been reduced to little more than a pond fringed by miles of cracked earth.
Nationwide, dams are only 27 percent full, triggered by the country’s worst drought in at least four decades.
– water rationing –
With 600 cubic meters of water per capita and year, Morocco is already well below the water scarcity threshold of 1,700 cubic meters per capita and year, according to the World Health Organization.
In the 1960s, water availability was four times higher, at 2,600 cubic meters.
A World Bank report on the Moroccan economy in July said the decline in the availability of renewable water resources has put the country in a situation of “structural water stress”.
The authorities have now introduced water rationing.
The Home Office ordered local authorities to restrict supplies if necessary and bans the use of potable water to irrigate green areas and golf courses.
Illegal withdrawals from wells, springs or watercourses were also prohibited.
In the longer term, the government plans to build 20 seawater desalination plants by 2030, which should cover much of the country’s needs.
“We are more in crisis management than expected risk management,” water resources expert Mohamed Jalil told AFP.
He added that it is “difficult to effectively monitor the actions taken by the authorities”.
Agronomist Mohamed Srairi said Morocco’s Achilles’ heel is its agricultural policies “which favor water-consuming fruit trees and industrial agriculture”.
– key sector –
He said that such agriculture relies on drip irrigation, which while it can save water, paradoxically leads to increased consumption as previously dry areas become cultivable.
The World Bank report found that the area under drip irrigation in Morocco has more than tripled.
It states that “modern irrigation technologies may have changed farming decisions in ways that have increased, rather than decreased, the total amount of water used by the agricultural sector.”
More than 80 percent of Morocco’s water supply goes to agriculture, a key industry that accounts for 14 percent of gross domestic product.
Mohamed, in his 90s, stood on parched ground not far from the Al Massira Dam.
“We don’t plow the land anymore because there’s no water,” he said, but added that he “has to accept adversity anyway because we don’t have a choice.”
Younger generations in the village seem gloomier.
Soufiane, a 14-year-old shepherd boy, told AFP: “We are living in a precarious state because of this drought.
“I think it will get worse in the future.”
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