From rural to urban areas: new trends and challenges for the commons in Morocco

ABSTRACT

The concept of commons is part of the long history of the Moroccan peasantry. Traditionally, many natural resources, such as water for irrigation, collective lands and common pastures or the forests were governed by community principles derived from customary rules, like in the ‘agdal’ system for example. However, these collective systems have been greatly weakened over the years. Firstly, these organisations, inherited from the traditional hierarchical system of local politics, had produced sometimes unjust and inefficient systems of resource distribution to the advantage of the most powerful. Secondly, rural communities were gradually stripped of their prerogatives to the benefit of the State, which was already ensuring through local power a levy on these same resources. Then, with liberalisation, it is the private sector that has benefited from transformations in public policies supporting the market logic and productivist-oriented modes of organisation. In this context of declining traditional natural commons, new forms of commons such as Protected Geographical Indications or Participatory Guarantee Systems are appearing through collective action, knowledge and know-how as a resource, especially in the field of food quality. Nevertheless, in a country such as Morocco, where public policies place little value on issues of ownership, involvement, and more generally on local collective initiatives, we question the role of the Moroccan government in supporting these new initiatives. While recognition of the commons is not an end in itself, it is essential to rethink the role of the State, particularly to guarantee the rights of ownership and use of resources shared by certain communities and to avoid the excesses that led to the crisis of the traditional commons.

KEYWORDS:

• Commons
• public policies
• food quality
• rural-urban relationships
• Morocco

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 https://rgphentableaux.hcp.ma/.

2 Protection of forest areas, establishment of cooperatives, promotion of protected geographical indications, payments for ecosystem services, etc.

3 The advance of agricultural production at the expense of agdals and best grazing lands at higher altitudes, the development of fruit trees and cash crops in irrigated areas, the transformation of pastoral practices based increasingly on speculations, etc.

4 Decree n° 2-99-626.

5 Law n° 22-07.

6 A melk, registered or unregistered, equals privately owned land.

7 Cattle, as a property of absentees who are often not entitled to be part of the collective, allows to give value to the land property through the food resource.

8 One of the main objectives of the GMP is to aggregate dozens of small- and medium-scale farmers around a “leading” farmer in a process of general modernisation of the production and marketing systems.

9 Among which: belonging to a clan of inferior social status, descendants of former slaves or families of dissidents who were dismissed for political reasons by colonial authorities when collective lands were delineated.

10 The village of Tizi n'Oucheg and the president of its association have been the subject of several articles in the Moroccan and international press. Headlines live up to the message: “Tizi n’Oucheg, un village qui se débrouille tout seul” (Tel Quel, n° 775, juillet-août 2017); “Tizi n’Oucheg, un village marocain rendu autonome par ses habitants” (https://www.wedemain.fr/Tizi-n-Oucheg-un-village-marocain-rendu-autonome-par-ses-habitants_a1241.html). Tizi n’Oucheg also served as a backdrop to a documentary, co-produced by the IRD and entitled “Berbère des cimes” (https://www.audiovisuel.ird.fr/index.php?id_doc=9843).

11 For instance, the quantitative objectives of the saffron programme contract: the cultivated area must increase from 610 to 1350 ha, production from 3 to 9 tons, packaging from 3 to 6 tons and export from 1 to 6 tons per year (https://andzoa.ma/fr/contrats-programmes/filiere-du-safran/contrat-programme/ accessed July 18, 2016).

12 In the case of saffron, between 2010 and 2014, the number of cooperatives increased 7-fold and in 2015, out of the 50 existing cooperatives, 35 operated under the designation of origin (Mutarambirwa 2015).

13 This project forms part of the cooperation between Morocco and the United Nations Development Program. It was initiated in June 2014, for a period of five years, within a framework involving many Moroccan development agencies as well as international, national and regional institutional partners.