Environmental policy in Morocco:

Institutional problems and the role of non-governmental organisations

by Eva Weidnitzer
German Development Institute, Berlin

Paper reproduced from The Middle Eastern Environment published by St Malo Press		256 pp. 9.5" × 6.75" (240 mm × 170 mm) 28 tables, 8 maps and 4 figures ISBN 1 898565 03 1 paperback £20 CLICK on cover to BUY book on line

Introduction

In Morocco the acceleration of economic and demographic development (together with rapid urbanisation, growing industrialisation, and the emergence of export-intensive agriculture) has, in the past two decades especially, stepped up the pressures on the environment and natural resources, triggering a process of increasing degradation. The most important features of this degradation process are a growing shortage of water resources accompanied by deterioration of water quality, widespread soil erosion (with an estimated annual loss of 20–25,000 ha of arable land), increasing deforestation (by some 50,000 ha of forest per year), desertification, air pollution, and growing risks posed by the need to protect biological diversity. Part of the damage that has occurred is regarded by experts as irreversible.
This situation is all the more alarming as Morocco is certainly one of the Arab states relatively privileged in terms of geography and natural conditions. Morocco owes its special geographical position to the Atlas Mountains, which block the course of, and retain, humid air currents originating in the Atlantic Ocean while at the same time they shelter the Atlantic plain from the arid southern winds from the Sahara. Mountain rainfall resulting from dynamic pressure and orographic ascent and forests, which presently cover roughly 5.2 million ha of its territory, ensure the country’s water resources. Thus, for instance, Morocco has rivers that bear water throughout the year, and these provide the conditions necessary for relatively secure irrigated farming. These comparatively favourable natural conditions are supplemented by an economic production structure rooted in history (dominated even today by agriculture and small industries), and these factors have likewise contributed to placing Morocco in a position relatively advantageous in terms of the environmental effects they entail.
The acuteness of the environmental problems facing the country, and the fact that they are growing in spite of the favorable situation just sketched, have, under the influence of the intensified international discussion, also led Morocco to formulate official environmental and resource protection policies, which have attracted growing attention. Morocco's environmental policy has on the whole, however, not been able to keep pace with the emerging challenges. The aim of this paper is to present some of the important reasons for this failure which are related to problems in the field of institutional developments and the marginal role which NGOs play for participation of the general public.
In Morocco national environmental policy has been under development for just two decades. The beginnings go back to the first international environmental conference held in Stockholm in 1972, which provided a distinct contribution toward sensitising public awareness of problems associated with environmental protection. Morocco’s environmental policy in this way received important impulses from abroad. The manner in which environmental policy was initiated in Morocco thus differs fundamentally from the way it has developed in industrialised countries. In the industrialised countries public pressure on those in positions of political power led to awareness of environmental problems and the development of environmental policy into an important policy sphere. Iin Morocco–as in most other developing countries–the first approaches towards the development of an environmental policy came chiefly "from the top".

In Morocco environmental policy is the responsibility of a great number of actors in the governmental-institutional sector. Since February 1995, the central state-level institution has been an environment ministry headed by Minister Dr Nureddine Benomar Alami. Following a period which had seen the environmental sector restructured several times and assigned to various institutions, environmental policy was thus for the first time elevated to ministerial rank.
In 1972 a special department was created in the Ministère de l'Habitat and put in charge of environmental affairs. Beginning in 1985, environmental protection was placed under the responsibility of the Direction Générale de l'Urbanisme, de l'Aménagement du Territoire et de l'Environnement in the Ministry of the Interior, and in 1992 the Sous-Secrétariat d'Etat auprès du Ministre de l'Intérieur chargé de la Protection de l'Environnement was set up to deal with environmental affairs. Beside the environment ministry, there are today, de facto, special environment departments in all ministries active in environmentally relevant areas: for example, in the Ministère des Travaux Publics, de la Formation Professionnelle et de la Formation des Cadres, the Ministère de l'Agriculture et de la Réforme Agraire, the Ministère de l'Energie et des Mines, the Ministère de l'Industrie, or the Ministère de la Santé Publique. The decentralised organisation of environmental protection in different specialised ministerial departments has in practice significantly boosted the perception of environmental concerns and the translation of such concerns into concrete projects. Thus, for example, important projects in the fields of protection against erosion and desertification, reforestation, and the struggle against the widespread eutrophication of artificial lakes are implemented by the competent ministries.
But problems arise from the partly inadequate definition of competences among the various ministries and a lack of sufficient co-ordination, which leads to dupliction of effort or to important tasks receiving too little attention. This is particularly evident in the water resources sector, where, at the national level, the tasks are shared by five ministries (Ministère des Travaux Publics, Ministère de l'Agriculture, Ministère de l'Intérieur, Ministère de la Santé Publique, Ministère de l'Environnement) in addition to the national authority responsible for drinking water, the Office National de l'Eau Potable (ONEP).

Despite this great number of actors, there are serious deficiencies in the protection and conservation of water resources. These deficits are chiefly concentrated in the field of waste-water disposal and must be seen in connection with the problem of institutional competences. As yet there is no central institution in charge of the disposal of waste water that might, for example, be compared with Tunisia's Office National de l'Assainissement (ONAS). Waste-water disposal is the responsibility of the municipalities. In practice, however, the municipalities are frequently overburdened by this task. Owing to a lack of sufficient expert competence and qualitative and quantitative shortcomings in the availability of the equipment required, waste-water disposal tasks are often delegated to other institutions. Thus, for instance, waste-water disposal in Morocco's large cities is provided by régie firms (appointed by the city authorities), whereas the smaller and medium-sized towns are served, with highly pronounced differences in quality, by municipal utilities or the ONEP (again, on behalf of the municipalities).
Although a waste-water seminar (Séminaire National sur l'Assainissement Liquide) conducted in 1993 and attended by all actors as well as by foreign donors did succeed in heightening awareness for problems in the field of waste water, it proved unable to provide the clarity intended on the question of how best to regulate and assign competence for the waste-water sector. The persistently alarming situation in the field of waste-water disposal, which contributes heavily toward the increasing scarcity and deterioration of water resources, is directly linked to problems of institutional competences. The case is similar in the field of waste removal. In other words, important environmentally relevant sectors have thus far not been adequately integrated with environmental policy.
At the same time, any sector-related approach is faced with problems of a different nature. Sectoral approaches often give preference to incremental solutions and tend to disregard cross-sectoral considerations. These risks specific to sectoral approaches therefore call for high levels of co-ordination and fine-tuning among different government authorities, and the present situation must be regarded as highly inadequate. Yet the conditio sine qua non for any effectiveness and clout on the part of environmental protection authorities (seen as a cross-sectoral task) is precisely inter-sectoral co-operation and co-ordination among the different institutions involved.
Neither the Sous-Secrétariat d'Etat nor the Conseil National de l'Environnement–CNE, both of which are, by definition of their scopes of activity, predestined to take on tasks entailing national co-ordination, has proved able to eliminate or even to reduce significantly the existing shortcomings. Set up in 1980 and encompassing the most important national actors in the environmental sector, the Council is envisioned as a central national consultative body. Its task is to provide a forum in which the different actors might contribute toward defining and realising the strategic lines of environmental policy. Current efforts aimed at revitalising the Council in this function are an indication of the pressing need.
Above and beyond the central level, national environmental policy has thus far shown too little effectiveness at the local and regional levels. The regional environment councils assigned to the CNE and set up for each of the kingdom's seven economic zones are intended as vehicles to identify regionally specific environmental problems, to initiate environmental protection activities, and to control the implementation of orientations and recommendations advanced by the Council. But since the regional councils have yet to make themselves felt, environmental policy is to a large extent restricted to the level of central government. That policies formulated at the central level have failed to achieve positive effects at the local and regional level is certainly one of the major shortcomings of the environmental policy efforts currently underway in Morocco. Any effective activity in the field of environmental protection is in urgent need of concrete measures which are regionally and locally defined and implemented. But environmental policy in Morocco has until today largely focused on the implementation of a limited number of large projects in ecologically fragile zones and especially endangered areas, its aim being to counteract further degradation (e.g., soil erosion, desertification, and deforestation). Such large projects on a national scale, often financed and promoted by multilateral and bilateral donors, constitute significant activities geared to the protection of environment and resources. They are, however, no substitute for detailed day-to-day work conducted on a broad basis on the local or regional level.
The necessary implementation and continuation of environmental policy at the local level is, however, hobbled by a number of problems. Thus far, for instance, no success has been achieved in deploying representatives of the environment ministry (comparable to the délégués of the competent ministries at the province level). This means that the ministry is not represented at the governorate level, i.e., there is no direct contact partner in matters of provincial policy. The situation at the municipal level is even more difficult. The municipalities are important actors in Morocco's national environmental policy. For example, the municipal code (Charte Communale) assigns to the towns the tasks of solid and liquid waste disposal, municipal public transportation, and area planning, which means that the towns are responsible for important environmentally relevant tasks. In organisational terms, the municipalities, as elements of the regional and local corporations (collectivités locales) of the Direction Générale des Collectivités Locales, come under the ministry of the interior. There is, however, no direct institutional link to the environment ministry (e.g., via a commissioner for environmental protection in the municipal administrations).
Studies conducted in 1993 by participants in a training course organised by the German Development Institute (GDI) in Morocco showed that the municipalities are at present barely able to come adequately to grips with the tasks which have been transferred to them because of financial and technical reasons as well as a lack of personnel in terms of numbers and qualification.
The steps towards decentralisation and strengthening of municipal self-government initiated in 1976 in connection with municipal reform have thus far remained half-hearted. This is true in two respects. On the one hand, a number of tasks were transferred to the sphere of municipal self-government, yet decisive powers have remained with the central level, so that the scopes of action open to the municipalities continue to be strongly restricted. Approval from the central level is required even for simple administrative decisions. On the other hand, the financial capacities of the municipalities were not strengthened at the same rate as their functions grew. Even today the municipalities are largely dependent on financial transfers from central government and it is here that their share of the value-added tax is significant. Since 1989 the municipalities have been entitled to 30 per cent of national VAT revenues, but this provision has yet to be implemented. Nor is there a distribution key that ensures to the individual municipality a given share of these revenues.
Despite the considerable difficulties still facing municipal environmental policy, the GDI group did note that in the towns investigated (Essaouira, Khénifra, and Ouarzarzate) environmental concerns–especially disposal problems in the fields of waste water and solid wastes–do represent part of the programme of the municipal councils. However, no influence of the central environmental administration on the formulation and definition of tasks of municipal policy in the environmental sector was noted in any of the towns. Present activities aimed at coming to grips with environmental exigencies have until now been the result mainly of individual problem consciousness and individual initiative of several municipal officials.
The organisational division between national and local allocation of environmental tasks (environment ministry and ministry of the interior) requires close co-operation between DGCL and the environment ministry–a task that received inadequate attention even when environmental protection was the responsibility of different departments of the ministry of the interior.

In institutional terms, I therefore regard three problems as particularly pressing:
1 Central government performs the task of defining and implementing national environmental policy and deals with sectoral environmental concerns in separate organisational and institutional frameworks. The activity of the environment departments of the competent ministries furthers the implementation of sectoral environmental projects, although the co-ordination between these departments and the environment ministry is inadequate. In addition, environmental policy has thus far taken too little cognisance of important environmentally relevant sectors (e.g., waste water, refuse).

2 Aside from the sectoral institutional separation of environmental tasks (i.e. horizontal), there is a clear-cut division in the (vertical) organisational anchoring of environmental policy between the central environmental administration and the areas of lower-level regional and local competence. This separation of competence between the ministry of the interior (DGCL) and the environment ministry entails a lack of linkage between the central level and the regional and local levels. Municipal officials, who, in the context of other tasks, are also in charge of environmental matters, report to the DGCL, although they have no connections whatsoever to the environment ministry.

3 The central national institution responsible for environmental policy thus far lacks the operational level required for a direct implementation of policy directives. Both sectoral and regional/local environmental policy lack adequate lines of communication to the central environmental institution, which is therefore unable to exercise its directive and guidance function adequately. The ministry has no authority to issue directives to the environment departments of the competent ministries or to regional/municipal administrations and its power of enforcement is therefore extremely limited.

Although the creation of an autonomous ministry for environmental affairs did contribute to a revitalisation of the policy sphere, a development that must be welcomed, the remaining question touches upon the effectiveness of the process of restructuring. As long as the shortcomings cited continue to exist, environmental policy in Morocco will remain patchy and limited in scope. The problems in the institutional sphere are all the more serious as they are accompanied neither by any conscious inclusion of the broad public nor, and chiefly, by any initial steps toward NGO activities in the field of environmental policy.

Sensitisation of the public to problems of environmental and resource protection and the commitment of citizens based on it have far to go in Morocco. This situation reflects a social and economic situation in which, for large segments of the population, the existential struggle for survival is the primary concern. A population 30 per cent of which lives below the poverty line will, in its struggle for survival, tend not to be overly concerned with questions of environmental and resource protection. Nevertheless, there are Islamic and traditional influences which to a certain extent promote a behaviour of environmental preservation on the part of the population. So, God has created the world in a situation of ecological balances and has appealed to the poeple to maintain this harmonius order. This religious context is especially evident in the handling of water which is a good given by God to the people and they are obliged to use it economically. The official environmental policy has until now, however, no reference to these traditional and religious factors which could be also a starting point to develop popular awareness of environmental problems.
At the same time, the low level of civic commitment reflects influences of the country's political-administrative system. Participation of the population in political decision-making is neither a historical tradition nor one of the present strengths of the Moroccan political system. Although, formally, the country has political pluralism and a multiparty system, King Hassan II has retained the dominant political position in the political system; "in political, religious, military, and economic terms," he is "the most powerful and influential person" in the country. Down to the present, patterns of loyalty and tribal and family relations have played a large part in the type and the specific nature of Morocco's democracy. The king has largely restricted the initial steps toward political participation to the country's élite classes.

Such limits of action to popular participation strongly influence the formation, character, and scope of action of NGOs in Morocco. Although restrictive traits have continued to leave their mark on the political system, the decentralisation policy initiated in the middle of the 1970s has also successively broadened the scope of action open to civic initiatives and local, organised activities. In their wake more and more civic associations have formed, and these initiatives have also begun to become active in the field of environmental protection.
1972 saw the foundation of the first NGO in the field of environmentalism, the Association pour la Protection de l'Environnement et de la Nature (ANAPEN), although the organisation discontinued its activities in 1975. Since then new movements and organisations have sprung up. The social anchoring of these groups and their number of active members do, however, continue to be small–as do their capacities to mobilise broad segments of the population for their goals. They, for the most part, recruit their membership from a narrow circle of scientists or public officials and, as often as not, have an élitist character. To a great extent they depend for their existence on individuals and their personal commitment. Scientific studies, expert seminars, along with educational and publicity work are presently the most important activities conducted by Moroccan NGOs active in the field of environmental protection. They have thus far largely refrained from tackling practical measures geared to environmental protection.
At present some 15 environmentally oriented NGOs are known in the country. But at the national level these groups are not very effective politically. Nor is NGO participation in national environmental policy fostered by the existing state institutions. Although, for example, the Conseil National de l'Environnement sees one of its tasks in advancing the cause of popular civic participation in environmental protection, the NGOs are as yet not represented in this body.
One of the important and active organisations in the field of environmental protection is the Société Marocaine pour le Droit de l'Environnement (SOMADE). It was founded in 1986 and has set itself the task of working out the legislative framework and an effective juridical regularisation of environmental protection. The organisation's members are recruited chiefly among university professionals, lawyers, journalists, engineers, and medical people. SOMADE prepares sectoral and other studies for publication and public presentation in colloquia and conferences.
Aside from these organisations primarily or exclusively dedicated to environmental protection, there are a number of associations whose programmes and activities include, among other concerns, the field of environmental protection. These are regional associations that have emerged in larger numbers since the middle of the 1980s and today exist in practically all of Morocco's major cities. They include, for example, Ribat El Fath in Rabat, Fès-Saiss in Fès, Bouregreg in Salé, Al Mouhit in Asilah, or Grand Atlas in Marrakech. Officially, their goal consists in the economic and social development of specific regions, particularly in the urban sphere. Their activities include, for instance, the organisation of colloquia, seminars, exhibitions, and meetings with representatives of the administration on issues of urban or regional development. Most of these associations are led by personalities from circles close to the king or a minister. They serve the two-fold function of vertical and horizontal integration of local urban élites: on the one hand they offer the urban notables a vehicle for access to the centres of power and on the other hand they anchor and unify the interests of these élites and are also a means of securing the state's influence on the new urban middle class.
One feature of the current scenery of Moroccan non-governmental, social organisations is that a number of them are carried by persons who are personally very close to state power or are themselves, sometimes, in part high-ranking staff members of government administration. In a narrower sense these organisations should doubtless not be regarded as NGOs, although they are officially classified as such.

Conclusion

In Morocco the scope and extent of environmental protection measures is thus decisively shaped by central government initiative (which is also often combined with external pressure exercised by donors). Environmental policy in Morocco is therefore based on support provided by a small number of lobbyists and a narrow segment of actors.
The overcoming of institutional weaknesses, in particular through improved co-operation and co-ordination of the different actors under the leadership of the environment ministry, the strengthening of regional and municipal environmental initiatives and their integration with national environmental policy, and the inclusion of the general public in environmental protection all constitute important conditions for the further development of national environmental policy and for increasing its potential clout. Continuation of the policy of decentralisation and a deepening and expansion of the (as yet cautious) steps toward democratisation in Morocco are thus closely linked and deserve support for environmental reasons as well.