Water governance in a context of scarcity

Pr. Houria Tazi Sadeq
Lawyer and chairwoman of the Coalition Marocaine pour l’Eau

Morocco has made access to drinking water a priority for many years. Among other actions, the country has adopted a series of legislative measures and institutional reforms to improve how water management is defined and regulated, remedy inequalities of access, protect water quantity and quality, and reuse it. In large urban areas, innovative mechanisms such as subsidized connections have been put in place to help the most disadvantaged communities.

However, the current climate emergency, with its particularly negative impact on water, means we need to rethink the challenges of water and its governance. In a context marked by scarcity, ensuring water sustainability is crucial, as clearly laid out in the Sustainable Development Goals (Goal 6). We must reassess the resilience of how this vital resource is managed by adopting participative, crosssectoral and interdisciplinary approaches to develop the tools for the governance model now needed: social water management.