Agricultural Use of Groundwater and Management Initiatives in the Maghreb: Challenges and Opportunities for Sustainable Aquifer Exploitation

International audienceThe rapid development of groundwater use for irrigation in the Maghreb has resulted in significant agricultural growth, but in many regions, such development has become unsustainable because of aquifer overexploitation or water and soil salinization. The paper examines groundwater use and management in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia based on a study of national institutional and policy mechanisms and nine local case studies. Farmers address the problem of decreasing borehole flow-rates (or water salinization) either by constantly investing more in order to continue to have sufficient quantities of fresh water for their crops, or by adjusting their cropping systems to adapt to this decrease. Legal frameworks have laid management foundations, but they only have a limited impact. Concomitantly, some collective initiatives have been conceived at local level. In the cases considered, jointly used instruments have made it possible to limit increases in withdrawals and to facilitate water enhancement, without, however, restoring the resource-use balance. The design and implementation of strategies for sustainable aquifer exploitation require the building of coalitions of actors, which should include organizations responsible for water resources, those involved in agriculture, but also - and especially - farmers