A helping hand for development is stretched out in Northern Morocco

The MEDA Project for Integrated Rural Development and Natural Resource Management (MEDA-IRD/NRM), completed in December 2008, covered a wide region in Northern Morocco. Characterized by a complex structure and organization, this project, financed by the European Union, is one of Morocco’s leading projects in rural development, and the State’s top priority since the mid-1990s.

Nadia Ben Sellam - Rabat, Al Hayat.

The project strove to improve the management of natural resources in a sustainable manner, improve the living conditions of villagers, and contrast the exodus of people from the rural areas to the urban areas of the country. The project was able to achieve most of the objectives that were underlined in the subprojects. Rather, its success was beyond expectation in some of their constituents, although the objectives of one of its three subprojects were not attained.

Assessing the people's needs
To convince a poor farmer that his land will be washed away by floods if he doesn’t erect barriers outside the limits of his fields, while he knows that dryness prevails and believes that nothing can prevent fate, would be like convincing a parched person that he will die if he drinks impure water. The direct logic of the survival instinct says, “I quench the thirst, and after me the deluge!” It was a very similar situation to this when the MEDA Project for Integrated Rural Development and Natural Resources Management (MEDA-IRD/NRM) reached remote villages in the North of Morocco in 2002, after the financing agreement was signed between the European Union and the Moroccan Government in December 1998.

At that time, it was evident for those living in poor and isolated villages to focus on electricity, water, roads, a dispensary, and a school. Thus, what the project offered to villagers had no direct or tangible effects according to them. “Roads and wells are uncomplicated and quite expensive, and we didn’t want to focus only on rural infrastructure. Our bet was to protect natural resources and improve their long-term management for better agricultural production,” says Adil Bennour, the National Project Manager, speaking about the protection of the land from floods, erosion, deposits, the protection of river banks, the improvement of pasture lands and farming systems.

Defending this bet required great efforts and an on-site presence, for inciting the villagers to rearrange their expectations. He added, “We didn’t ask them to modify their agriculture, but offered them to diversify their farming systems from poorly managed cereal crops to highly profitable fruit-tree production adapted to the conditions of the region”. Hence, an average 100 trees were planted in each hectare of land owned by farmers who applied to the project methodology, and bore their first fruits after three years, according to the type of trees planted.

The project’s six-year implementation period finally pushed the villagers to accept it and get involved, especially during harvest time. This took place on various levels: fruit trees and some income-generating activities for women in the villages (38 operations that benefited 1117 women), and the establishment of 38 organizations working on the project’s objectives, among which nine are dedicated to women, as opposed to seven previously. Moreover, job opportunities, skills, and the necessary financial resources were available, as the budget reached 34.6 million Euros divided as follows: 66% were offered by the European Union as a 22.8 million Euros grant, Morocco contributed with around 9 million Euros, i.e. 26%, and the beneficiaries with around 3 million Euros, i.e. 8%.

The MEDA-IRD/NRM project adopted a three-dimensional approach: land-based, participatory, and integrated. Apparently, the last dimension was the most important one as it took into account the villagers’ needs. It constituted 25% of the project’s objectives and focused on infrastructure and installations (77 km of roads, 69 units of wells and water reservoirs, more than 18,000 m of irrigation canals…). Also, villagers were directed to other local and international governmental and organizational parties that can intervene to meet their other needs.

Beyond Expectations
The MEDA project team worked over more than 8 years hand in hand with the population of seven Northern provinces (Al Hoceima, Chefchaouen, Nador, Oujda, Taounate, Taza, and Tetouan), through three subprojects: the first aimed to protect and manage forest ecosystems in rural areas; the second, with a greater budget, surface area, and number of beneficiaries, worked towards preparing land-use and agriculture development plans in 8 highly eroded small river basins (62 villages benefited from the project’s activities through this subproject); and the third focused on preparing two major agricultural sustainable development plans, for the Provinces of Nador and Oujda.

The objectives of the first subproject were not fully achieved, due to the difficulties encountered by the regional Government responsible bodies in managing the forestry areas in a participative manner. On the other side, the results of the two latter subprojects exceeded expectations. The project manager speaks with enthusiasm linked to the humanitarian relations the team had with the villagers: “The best non-material achievement of the project is certainly this dynamics left by the project implementation on people and the willingness of the villagers to pursue the project activities with their own means.”

The fruit-tree production prompted the farmers to increase their demands, as they were finally reassured that this will increase their income without requiring too much maintenance expenses (around 1000 Euros yearly per family). Hence, the second subproject allocated half of its budget for completing the preparation for soil preservation, and distributed more than one million and a quarter seedlings to farmers, most of which were almond and olive trees, which best correspond to the area’s natural environment. This constituted a 90% success rate. The trees were planted on more than 11 thousand hectares in the provinces of Al Hoceima, Taounate, Taza, Oujda and Nador, where an olive oil mill was established. This, in turn, exceeded a 117% success rate. As for water management and irrigation needs, the two subprojects managed to deal with this issue through the rehabilitation of many small-scale irrigation schemes adapted to local conditions and managed by locally-based water users' associations.

Despite the fact that the third subproject includes the preparation of two agricultural development plans for the provinces of Oujda and Nador, the field intervention was restricted to the first one, while it is expected that the Nador agriculture department will implement the plan prepared for this province with its own means. This project was almost able to achieve 100% of its objectives in many of its constituents (95% success in removing stones from 800 hectares; 83% success in preparing the pastures and forest pastures on 970 hectares; planting more than 1.5 million fruit trees; rehabilitating some 75 Km of feeder roads, 18 Km of small irrigation canals, 68 between wells and water sources, etc.).

Limited success in some areas
The MEDA-IRD/NRM project has undoubtedly achieved its general objectives, but this success will not hide the obstacles and difficulties that prevented it from reaching maximum speed and results. Although it achieved a model experiment in preserving forest land (16 thousand hectares between Taza and Chefchaouen were formally ascribed in the State-owned land registers), the first subproject did not complete the objective of building four production units of forestry products (mainly aromatic and medicinal herbs, honey and mushrooms), though a lot of effort was made by the team for preparing these activities. According to the project’s technical assistant Charles Bajard, this is due to “the administration’s structure and the administrative separation between agriculture and forests, and hence the activities that were achieved on the field do not correspond to the rural development activities that are implemented through this project.”

Moreover, the project was reframed four years before its completion, as many of the initially identified activities did not correspond to what the team discovered on the ground – including the scope of the project and the number of beneficiaries who were overestimated (44 thousand inhabitants instead of 200 thousand). Charles Bajard, who has worked in agricultural development for 30 years, considers that the project outcome “was substantial under the prevailing conditions but could’ve been better”. In order to achieve better results and get closer to the rural people's needs, “rural development projects in Morocco must move away from the strict administrative and control framework which is imposed by the Government authorities as this hinders the response capacity of the projects, while at the same time trying to associate more closely the private sector, in order to increasing agricultural production and promoting sound management practices at the farms' level.”

Refer to the project fact sheet: Integrated rural development of the northern provinces (Morocco)