Climate variability has always been a constraint on the development of the agricultural sector in Morocco. Climate change scenarios show that the kingdom's climate is tending more and more towards more aridity because of the decrease in precipitation and the increase in temperature, in addition to the more frequent occurrence of events.

These changes will certainly have negative effects, in particular, on the availability of water resources and biodiversity and the agricultural landscape. In fact, over the past 70 years, twenty campaigns have experienced climatic drought.

To mitigate the effects of climate change, the agricultural strategy, in perfect consistency with the Moroccan policy to combat climate change and the National Strategy for Sustainable Development, has adopted two key components, namely adaptation to climate change and mitigation of the effects of greenhouse gases.

The adaptation effort focused mainly on controlling irrigation water while the mitigation effort concerned in particular the extension of plantations to increase the potential for carbon sequestration and reduce gas emissions.

Adaptation and mitigation efforts

In addition to the efforts made and in terms of mobilizing climate finance, the Agricultural Development Agency (ADA) obtained direct access to financial resources from the Adaptation Fund in 2012 and the Green Climate Fund in 2016.

Thus, sustainable development projects serving for the adaptation and mitigation of GHGs could be financed, supporting Morocco's commitments within the framework of Nationally Determined Contributions (CDN) of the United Nations Framework Convention on climate changes.

Irrigation water control and management programs

Irrigation has been placed at the centre of structural cross-cutting reforms aimed at dealing with the scarcity of water resources. The Green Morocco Plan has given pride of place to the control and rationalization of irrigation water to improve agricultural production and productivity while ensuring efficient and sustainable use of water resources in a context marked by climate changes.

The water control and management policy under the Green Morocco Plan revolves around three structural irrigation programs.

  1. The National Irrigation Water-Saving Program aims to develop localized irrigation over an area of550,000 ha, to improve water efficiency. Use of irrigation water in agriculture, which will ultimately save and recover nearly 1.4 billion of water. At the end of 2019, nearly 585,000 ha had been equipped with drip irrigation, exceeding the 2020 target of 550,000 ha.

  2. The Irrigation Extension Program aims to create new perimeters and strengthen the irrigation of existing perimeters dominated by dams constructed or planned over an area of 130,000 ha, to remedy the under-valuation of nearly 1.2 billion m 3 of water mobilized by dams intended for irrigation. At the end of 2019, nearly 82,280 ha were equipped or in the process of being equipped under this program.

  3. The Public-Private Partnership Program (PPP): in the field of irrigation aims to improve the technical, economic and financial conditions of the management of the irrigation water service in the perimeters. This program aims to preserve the water table by mobilizing unconventional water through various projects, including irrigation safeguard projects and seawater desalination projects. At the end of 2019, 4 Public-Private Partnership projects in irrigation were contracted, including two seawater desalination projects for the irrigation of Chtouka-Ait Baha (15,000 ha) and Dakhla (5,000 ha).

These irrigation programs launched as part of the Green Morocco Plan made it possible, at the end of 2019, to develop and modernize nearly 800,000 ha under irrigation, or about 50% of the irrigated area at the national level. The investment made was 36.1 billion DH for the benefit of 235,000 farms, which made it possible to save and recover annually more than 2 billion m 3 of irrigation water, of which 1.6 billion m 3 for the water savings of the National Irrigation Water-Saving Program. The area irrigated by drip rose from 9% of the area under irrigation in 2008 to 37% in 2019.

Greenhouse gas emissions mitigation programs

Climate change linked to Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions is a major problem with global reach requiring major actions to mitigate them. Although Morocco is considered globally as a low emitter of greenhouse gases, it is strongly involved in the international process of combating climate change, in particular through the ratification of the Paris Agreement and the presentation of its Nationally Determined Contribution (CDN) comprising objectives for the mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions and adaptation to climate change by 2030.

Morocco has therefore designed a portfolio of mitigation measures. Actions comprising 55 measures, 14 of which relate to the agricultural sector and relate mainly to fruit tree planting programs.

Plantations carried out under pillar II and program contracts for the olive, citrus, phoénicole and arboricultural sectors covered an area of nearly 490,000 ha between 2008 and 2019, exceeding the objective of the Green Morocco Plantation Plan. of 12 million trees per year, and which thus reinforce by more than 33% the potential for annual CO2 sequestration of the total of the agricultural orchard.