The challenges of ‘participatory’ development in a semi-authoritarian context: the case of an essential oil distillation project in the High Atlas Mountains of Morocco

^†This article is based on the corresponding author's PhD thesis at the University of Kent, UK (Montanari 2012). The thesis offers a critical analysis of the introduction of essential oil distillation in the High Atlas of Morocco with reference to the role of gendered traditional knowledge.

Abstract

Decentralisation implies that responsibilities for development planning and management are transferred from central governance levels to sub-national levels, including local governments. Decentralisation reforms assume that local people's greater involvement in local decision-making will lead to more sustainable social and environmental development. Participatory rural techniques and approaches have been devised to support decentralisation reforms. This article presents the case of a multi-donor-funded ‘participatory’ essential oil distillation project in the High Atlas of Morocco. The project sought to respond to urgent issues around natural resource conservation, desertification, poverty alleviation, and out-migration of Berber communities towards urban areas. The article addresses the role that institutional partners and local authorities played in the implementation of the project. Based on extensive empirical fieldwork, the findings demonstrate that the approaches utilised by the Moroccan government to involve local communities are not adequately addressing local needs and suggest that there is little desire, nor the necessary capacity, to empower the local communities in the way that would be necessary to achieve effective economic development. Indeed, the project raised high expectations among the villagers but delivered few concrete results, benefiting mostly the local elite. This had a disengaging effect on the local communities. Another explanation for the ‘failure’ of the project is the clash between traditional and modern notions of ‘governance’ that it brought with it and that played out inside the communities. The article argues that participatory approaches should embrace the community's customary norms, thus facilitating the establishment of endemic notions of good local ‘governance’ and negotiating local traditional practices at the community level.

Keywords:

• community development
• decentralisation
• Morocco
• natural resources conservation

Notes

^† This article is based on the corresponding author's PhD thesis at the University of Kent, UK (Montanari 2012). The thesis offers a critical analysis of the introduction of essential oil distillation in the High Atlas of Morocco with reference to the role of gendered traditional knowledge.

1. This is the traditional Berber tribal system that regulates and governs the internal administrative, legislative, and executive functions over social and environmental matters at the village level.

2. A circle or ‘cercle’ in French was the smallest administrative unit of the French colonies in Africa. It still exists as an administrative unit used by the Ministry of the Interior and is composed of several ‘communes’.

3. The illegal trade of thyme is based on adding thyme unofficially collected from the Agoundis valley to thyme harvested from the adjacent Ounein valley under adjudication, an authorisation delivered by the Department of Water and Forestry administration, which allows professionals to collect plants within a forestry domain area for a period of three years. The merchandise transits via the Agoundis valley and requires the official stamp from the Department of Water and Forestry officials to leave. The trade profits mainly the middlemen and the Water and Forestry authorities (Montanari 2004).

4. In order to protect the informants, we have removed the names of the commune and villages and replaced them with codes where necessary.

5. See Banque Mondiale (2007), GEF (2010a, 2010b), PNUD (2008), UNDP (2008), and World Bank (2006a, 2006b, 2010).

6. See its website at http://cdrtmarrakech.org/index.php (accessed November 23, 2012).

7. By definition, concrete evidence of vote-buying and corruption is hard to come by, but see Hamimaz (2003) and Magharebia (2009).

8. In a purely statistical sense, Morocco has achieved one of the Millennium Goals: poverty reduction. The rural poverty rate has declined from 25% to 14% since 2000, while the proportion of the population living on less than $1 per day has decreased to less than 1%, from 2% a decade ago (Achy 2010).