North Africa bears brunt of Mena climate change challenges

Some countries in the Middle East, the Western Mediterranean, North Africa, and other countries neighbouring the region have experienced sudden and devastating natural disasters – floods and earthquakes – with massive human and material losses.

The most recent disaster befell northern Syria and southern Turkey. Meanwhile, other parts of the Arab region have faced hurricanes, floods, and wildfires.

Read more: No homes for the living, no graves for the dead

North African countries, especially Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, are experiencing a sharp decline in water resources from winter and spring rainfall, which have fallen by about 80% from their averages of the past three decades. 

Agriculture drains about 85% of all freshwater resources, followed by industry and services (9%) and household use (5.7%). Per capita, water supplies have declined dramatically in recent decades and years, as heat waves and droughts have been frequent, from a drought every 10 years to a drought every five years and then every three years.

In 1962, freshwater per capita was more than 2,560m3 in Morocco, 964m3 in Tunisia, 962m3 in Algeria, and 456m3 in Libya. In 2014, per capita water supply fell to 645m3 in Morocco, 381m3 in Tunisia, 289m3 in Algeria, and 112m3 in Libya. The Maghreb region is estimated to need an additional 25bnm3 per year to cope with the crisis in the next few years.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said that 4bn people are threatened by water stress and a quarter of the world's population finds it hard to access clean water.

It added that demand for water will increase by 30% due to competition between agriculture and cities over increasingly scarce water resources, warning that this could lead to wars among countries.

The Sahara and the regions south of North Africa suffer the worst cases of water shortage, drought, desertification, and high temperatures.

Mauritania in the south and Libya in the east are among the most vulnerable countries of the Arab Maghreb Union in terms of water resource availability and agricultural production. They depend on food imports from neighbouring countries, especially Morocco and Tunisia.

Rainfall is not a major concern in Tripoli (Libya), where the economy is dependent on energy exports and there's not enough land for agriculture, despite the country's vast and semi-desert area.

The situation in Algeria is complicated because, despite the country's dependence on oil and gas exports, it imports most of its food and agricultural needs from abroad. This has strained the balance of external payments and reduced benefits from energy revenues.

Tunisia is in a difficult climate, political, economic, and agricultural situation after the decline of plant oil production – it once ranked first in this field in North Africa and was named Green Tunisia.

Water challenges in Morocco

The effects of climate change in Morocco are reflected in lower rainfall, which has declined by about a third, or 34%, over the past few years, causing damage to agricultural production.

The country's food imports cost more than $8bn in 2022, a quarter of which was wheat imports, whose price rose due to the Russian-Ukrainian war.

Although Morocco produces the majority of its food needs, with wheat production estimated at 50 to 70% of these needs, weak rainfall has led to a higher cost of production.

This has negatively affected the purchasing power of large categories of citizens. It has pushed small farmers to abandon their land and villages to big investors and migrate to cities. About 10% of the direct causes of migration and displacement are due to drought. 

According to the World Bank, Morocco has reacted strongly to the challenges posed by climate change by working to reduce rising temperatures through a number of measures and policies in accordance with the Paris and Marrakesh agreements on climate and environment.

Morocco has committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and to a gradual shift toward a carbon-free green economy – which is an economically costly process.

The European Union plans to impose additional duties on industrial imports produced from unclean energy sources in an effort to pressure trading partners to abide by the climate agreements adopted at the sessions of the UN Conference of the Parties on Climate Change, which is due to hold its 28th session (COP 28) in the United Arab Emirates at the end of the year.

Morocco finds itself compelled to accelerate its response to the challenges of climate change and the lack of water resources, on the one hand, and to the new environmentally-friendly terms of global trade, on the other.

A meeting chaired by King Mohammed VI at the Rabat Palace announced an urgent investment plan of about $15bn to overcome the recorded shortage of freshwater resources.

It includes the construction of 12 desalination plants and 16 stations to transport water from the north to the centre of the country through pipelines connecting water basins – from Sebou to Oum Er-Rbia and Bou Regreg.

Read more: Moroccan economy sees rebound after difficult year

The plan, which runs into 2027, includes the construction of 18 large dams and 158 wastewater treatment plants to be used to irrigate public parks instead of freshwater resources.

Climate change places heavy strain on the economy

Despite the fact that the Maghreb region is at the gates of global commercial shipping routes — between the global north and south, Europe and Africa, and the Middle East and the Atlantic West — this important geographical location hides climatic difficulties and very costly environmental challenges for the Maghreb economy.

This is especially true for the Kingdom of Morocco, which depends on three sectors with heavy footprints on water resources: agriculture, manufacturing, and tourism.

If we add to that urban expansion and the fact that about 70% of the population lives on the Atlantic strip between Tangier and Agadir, it becomes clear how the water challenges have become the biggest dilemma facing economic ambitions.

According to three World Bank experts, Moroccans are on the frontlines of climate change threats – a number of areas of the Kingdom's northern coastline face severe erosion at a rate of one meter per year.

Moroccan cities, which contribute more than 75% of the GDP, are increasingly exposed to natural and climatic hazards, including extreme weather events such as floods, rising temperatures, droughts, and other slow-onset phenomena such as sea-level rise – such events are expected to worsen in the coming decades.

The events also include geological hazards, such as the earthquakes that hit the Rif Mountains in 2004.

The combined effects of natural and climatic hazards are estimated to cost Morocco more than $575mn a year, while the bill for water shortages and drought accounts for about 2% of the GDP, according to the High Commission for Planning.

Last year, Morocco allocated $1bn to help farmers whose crops have been hit by drought, and there's a tendency to replicate support this year.

This shortage poses a major threat to per capita income and limits the ability to reduce poverty and improve incomes in rural and rainfall-dependant agricultural areas.