IE University x RAIA Research Program 2025

1st Policy: Green Morocco Plan

The Green Morocco Plan delivered significant gains in agricultural output and value added. Annual agricultural GDP grew to nearly 7% on average during 2008–2018, an improvement from the prior decade’s 2% rate, making agriculture a stronger driver of overall economic growth. 

Production of key commodities expanded rapidly as olive yields grew 7.4% per year, citrus by 6.3%, and meat by 4–5% annually during the plan’s implementation. Higher volumes and improved supply chains boosted exports accordingly. Agricultural export earnings rose by over one third after 2008, reaching around MAD 55 billion by 2018. Notably, an additional 400000 hectares of fruit and olive orchards were planted under the Plan, and irrigated farmland expanded by about 11%, reflecting the plan’s emphasis on intensification and water infrastructure. 

These changes enhanced agroindustrial value chains. More produce underwent processing or marketing through aggregation schemes linking small farmers to agribusiness, and the sector attracted new private and foreign investment. By most measures, the Plan achieved its core objective of making agriculture a growth engine. For example, Morocco’s agricultural value added grew much faster than non-agricultural sectors over the period, and export-oriented horticulture became a pillar of the economy. Furthermore, the emphasis on high-value crops and yield improvements helped Morocco meet certain targets ahead of schedule, such as reaching 500,000 tons of red meat production before 2020.

Morocco’s strides in hunger and poverty alleviation during this period have been partly attributed to the Green Morocco Plan’s interventions. Rural malnutrition fell significantly. By 2015, only about 4.6% of the rural population was classified as malnourished, down from over 7% in 1990 and Morocco achieved the UN Millennium Development Goal of halving extreme hunger two years early. The FAO lauded the Plan for creating “an irreversible momentum” in Moroccan agriculture and contributing to food security gains unseen in previous decades. Thousands of small farmers benefited from Pillar II projects aimed at diversifying livelihoods, and about 550 community projects were implemented, focusing on improving yields, switching to higher value crops in marginal areas, and supporting micro enterprises. 

A cooperative movement flourished under the plan’s implementations. Between 2008 and 2020, the number of registered agricultural cooperatives more than doubled as the plan directly encouraged the creation of over 10000 new cooperatives to integrate smallholders into value chains. This led to greater participation of rural communities in agricultural business. For example, local cooperatives began producing and marketing products such as argan oil, olives, and medicinal herbs, giving farmers a stake in downstream processing. King Mohammed VI himself noted that the “balance” between large commercial projects and subsistence farming in the plan was crucial for “improving people’s income”, underscoring its inclusive intent. 

Social programmes like rural extension services and vocational training in agriculture also expanded alongside the plan, aiming to make farming more attractive to youth and to build capacity among small producers. By 2020, Morocco’s rural poverty rate and food insecurity indicators had improved to the pre-2008 baseline.

Despite these positive impacts, critical assessments of the Green Morocco Plan point to trade-offs between economic growth and equity, and between productivist expansion and environmental sustainability. A critique is that the plan’s benefits were unevenly distributed. The majority share of investment flowed into Pillar I mega projects, roughly MAD 150 billion, which was about 85% of total funding, went to large-scale farms and agricultural business initiatives, where only a fraction reached the smallholder-focused Pillar II. This imbalance, observers argue, meant that wealthier commercial farmers and agricultural business firms reaped most of the gains, through better access to land, credit, and technology, while many poor farmers in remote parts saw relatively limited direct support. 

The UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food praised Morocco’s production gains under the Plan but “cautioned that more needed to be done” to reach marginalized smallholders, especially in uplands and oasis communities. Indeed, by 2020, Morocco still struggled to “leave no one behind” in rural development: gaps persisted in agricultural extension coverage, market access for isolated villages, and financing for small family farms. 

Gender and social equity issues also emerged. Research on the plan’s income-generating cooperatives found that rural women’s empowerment lagged behind the rhetoric. In many cases, women participated as low-paid labor in cooperatives while educated male leaders captured the economic rewards, indicating “women’s participation in decision-making (was) virtually non-existent” despite the plan’s focus on female inclusion. Such findings temper the narrative of universally shared benefits, suggesting that deeper structural changes are needed to ensure small farmers, laborers, and women fully profit from agricultural modernization.

Environmental and sustainability concerns have likewise been highlighted as a mixed consequence of the Green Morocco Plan. On one hand, the plan promoted climate adaptation measures, for example, subsidising drip irrigation on over 500,000 hectares to improve water efficiency and embraced the concept of sustainable agriculture in its official agenda. These efforts have introduced more advanced irrigation technology and some climate-resilient practices in Moroccan farming. On the other hand, evidence suggests that the intensification paradigm under the plan came with ecological trade-offs. The expansion of drip irrigation often became a means to “produce more crops per drop”, rather than reduce water consumption. Subsidized modern irrigation allowed some farmers to expand cultivation into drier areas or switch to thirstier crops, potentially increasing total water extraction from aquifers and reservoirs. 

Morocco’s groundwater depletion and drought exposure were not resolved during the plan’s span, and critics note that agriculture remains highly vulnerable to rainfall variability, as nearly 60% of cultivated land is still rain-fed grains, and the country continues to import millions of tons of wheat in drought years. The UN rapporteur urged Morocco to “protect biodiversity and scarce water resources” in light of the large-scale monoculture plantations and intensified input use encouraged by the plan. Indeed, the push for export-oriented farming raised questions about long-term sustainability. Agricultural chemical use and soil degradation, as well as the carbon footprint of years’ worth of production, are areas that observers have flagged for closer scrutiny. Thus, while the Green Morocco Plan succeeded in starting a more dynamic agricultural economy, it also underscored classic development dilemmas, productivity versus sustainability, and growth versus equity.

To sum up, King Mohammed VI’s Green Morocco Plan had a profound impact on Morocco’s agricultural landscape. It modernized the sector, growing production and incomes, and showcasing a model of climate-aware agricultural policy in Africa. Yet the experience also revealed some limitations, including the need for more inclusive support to small farmers and more thought-out natural resource management. These lessons are influencing Morocco’s strategy moving forward with the “Generation Green” plan, which seeks to keep the gains of the Green Morocco Plan while addressing its social and environmental shortcomings. In the realm of climate leadership, the Green Morocco Plan stands as a case of a national solution that delivered on tangible economic results and progress on food security, even as it created new debate about how to achieve a truly sustainable and equitable agricultural development in the face of climate change.

2nd Policy: Act 81-12

Enacted when King Mohammed VI was on the throne, the 2016 Framework Water Law marked a sea change in Morocco’s approach towards managing water scarcity. This Act built on the groundwork laid out by the 1995 Water Law, recasting water as a public good as well as a primary human right, while adding new principles related to sustainability, equity, and climate resilience. The overhaul sought to go beyond Morocco’s traditional supply driven model, mostly based on dams and irrigation, by calling for a holistic approach of conservation, diversification of supply, and decentralized approaches of management. It reinforced the role of river basin agencies, made participatory planning a necessity through the medium of aquifer agreements, and explicitly recognized other sources, such as desalinated sea water, and treated waste waters. Through its institutionalization of the user pays and polluter pays principles, the act attempted to internalize the environmental externality built into over extraction, and pollution. Overall, it created a comprehensive legal framework for ensuring lasting water security for a country where per capita availability had already slipped below 620 m³ per year.

Environmentally, the law’s greatest success is putting groundwater protection at the heart of national policy. For years, aquifer depletion across areas like Souss-Massa, Saïss and Haouz endangered ecosystems and agricultural livelihoods. Act 81-12 mandated basin agencies to negotiate “participatory aquifer management contracts” regulating pumping, stimulating recharge, and facilitating public private partnerships. In Souss-Massa, where the water table was dropping by nearly 2 meters a year, such a contract implementation, with desalination investment, allowed for moderation of withdrawals from deep, over exploited wells and provided a public private partnership model. The law also equipped a professional water police at the basin agencies with the mandate for inspecting wells, punishing illicit withdrawals, a previously abandoned enforcement role. While quantifiable recovery of the aquifers remains narrow, national depletion continues to outpace natural recharge by some 25–30 percent, the institutional shift towards the instrument of monitoring, regulating, is a step forward. For the first time, Morocco has at its disposal the legal, administrative tools to monitor, manage, and gradually decrease unsustainable abstraction.

The Act dramatically reshaped Morocco’s approach to water supply, framing it within climate resilient adaptation goals. It enshrined the harnessing of non-traditional waters, enabling desalination and wastewater recycling as supplements to traditional dams. The Agadir desalination program, which began soon after the Act, produces 275,000 m³ per day, serving urban centers, agriculture, and thus lessening stress on the Chtouka aquifer, sustaining livelihoods across a 10,000 hectare irrigated farming area. At the national level, treated wastewater reuse attained a volume of 64 million m³ per year by 2019, supported by the pollution control charges and environmental protection provided for under the act. Although capital intensive, such efforts illustrate how Act 81-12 shifted Morocco’s adaptation model from reactive drought response towards proactive diversification of water supplies. In a second respect, the Act boosted river, wetlands, and flood protection conservation by expanding the public hydraulic domain’s scope of coverage, and adding environmental flow objectives to watersheds plans. Still, the above efforts notwithstanding, the recurring problems introduced by seasonal drought and long term groundwater abstraction reflect a failure on the part of legislative change alone to temper climatic pressures. Realization of its full effects remains contingent on sustained implementation, investment, and effort.

Socioeconomically, Act 81-12 has strengthened equity and resilience, particularly at the rural level. Through codification of the right to water, it reinforced Morocco’s efforts towards universal coverage. Between the early 1990s and the late 2010s, coverage of drinking water at the rural level improved from 14 percent to 97 percent, a success underpinned by the law’s adoption of domestic supply priority for decisions on supply allocation. When, during subsequent eras of successive drought, authorities have evoked the law when guaranteeing household coverage even when irrigation had to be halted, this illustrates its role of social protection. The legal enshrinement of water as a public good also underpins new efforts on filling gaps left behind, particularly at the remote level, using inter basin transfers and supply infrastructure at the village level. Act 81-12 also advanced participatory water governance as river basin councils now have representatives of irrigators, municipalities, and civil society, which heightens transparency and local accountability. While inter ministerial and inter agency coordination remains imperfect, the framework already eased the fragmentation long criticized of Morocco’s water policy regime.

In agriculture, the biggest water consumer, the impact of the law goes hand in hand with that of the Green Morocco Plan. By synchronizing irrigation programs with water availability limitations, Act 81-12 reinforced the association between agricultural modernization and resource effectiveness. Government support for drip irrigation backed by the water conservation mandate, converted more than 550,000 hectares to local irrigation by 2022, reducing farm consumption by up to 40–50 percent. These efficiencies enhanced yield and revenue, enabling rural farmers to resiliently endure droughts. Nevertheless, the overall impact on overall water consumption has been ambivalent as efficiency improvements have frequently allowed farmers to increase areas cultivated or change crops to more water consuming ones, constraining net reduction. This so-called “efficiency paradox” highlights a structural contradiction between Morocco’s export driven agricultural development and environmental limitations. Act 81-12 makes available instruments like pump quotas, aqueduct concessions, and pricing schemes to meet this, yet implementation remains politically sensitive. Large commercial farms have the advantage, whereas smallholders rely on shallow wells and lack capital for investing in technologies. Without firmer compliance and social protection, disparities in water accessibility might increase despite the egalitarian wish of the law.

At a larger socioeconomic level, the impact of the law is also seen in building climate resilience. It has legally enshrined the National Water Plan and harmonized water governance with Morocco’s National Adaptation Plan. This alignment has enabled the nation to access climate finance for climate change adaptation projects such as the Green Climate Fund, thus connecting environmental sustainability with a generation of jobs. Through the incorporation of water governance into provincial development planning, Act 81-12 promotes territorial cohesion, ensuring that relief for droughts and investments are shared between central urban regions and peripheral provinces. Still, progress has not been uniform. While actions against illegal wells and pollution have enhanced impacts, they remain constrained by administrative capacity. Basin agencies experience staff deficits and overlapping mandates, and many local users lack awareness of their role under the new legislation. In regions such as Haouz and Souss-Massa, disputes often arise between small farmers and controllers when holes are closed or pumping hours restrictions are introduced. These challenges demonstrate that Morocco’s water transition is multifaceted. It requires confidence, incentives, and shared accountability.

Overall, Act 81-12 is a crucial institutional milestone for King Mohammed VI climate plan. Through Act 81-12, Morocco has strengthened its water infrastructure, integrated climate adaptation into the planning process, and authorized new conservation, enforcement, and citizen participation tools. Environmentally, it has begun to check exploitation and diversify water sources. Socioeconomically, it has secured drinking water supply and enhanced rural resilience capability. Nevertheless, its success remains imperfect. Water stress continues to intensify, per capita availability could dip below 500 m³ by 2030, and the gulf between legal intent on high ground and ground level impact remains wide. The law’s success hinges, after all, on political will, inter-ministerial coordination, and behavioral changes on the part of water users. Its true proof, however, is if Morocco is successful at translating this sophisticated legal instrument on paper into actual replenishment of the aquifers, cleaner rivers, and equitable access for all. As part of Mohammed VI overall environmental program, Act 81-12 is a victory of governance and a proof of performance. It is a much needed step towards a sustainable water security for a climate constrained world.

3rd Policy: National Adaptation Plan (NAP1)

The National Adaptation Plan (NAP1) led by King Mohammed VI has made a significant difference for Morocco in terms of climate resilience and national development. Particular in adaptation methods and institutional changes. The National Committee for Climate Change and a climate-focused directorate in the Environment Ministry were two important structures that were set up. The 4C Maroc competence centre also helped build capacity and improve cooperation between African countries. From 2016 to 2024, adaptation funding went from 1.7% of the budget to between 6.5% and 9% of the budget each year. Morocco promised more than $35 billion (2020–2030) to help with adapting to changes in water, farming, and forestry.

These investments have led to real projects. The goal of the “Forests of Morocco 2020–2030” program is to plant trees on 600,000 hectares, create jobs in rural areas, and restore ecosystems. Morocco also set up a dual public-private disaster insurance and solidarity fund that helped over 180 projects to reduce risk and supported people affected by the 2023 earthquake .“Génération Green” and other climate-smart programs encourage crops that can survive drought and better irrigation. All of these actions made Morocco a regional climate leader, especially after it hosted COP22 and pushed for adaptation to be a top development goal.

Whilst the policy has made several breakthroughs, Morocco is still vulnerable to climate stress, especially in the form of drought and water scarcity. 12 major droughts can be followed back to 1980, and the one in 2025 is the longest one yet. Critics mention that while adaptation efforts work across different sectors, it is missing effectiveness at a local level. Climate risk data often doesn’t help with city planning, which makes it harder to respond to problems. Also, centralised governance has made it easier to keep an eye on things, but it has pushed local voices and civil society participation to the side, making it less effective for the most vulnerable groups.

In the water sector, a supply-oriented approach is the most common. Dams, reservoirs, and desalination plants are all very popular. Some people say this model won’t work in the long run and call for a shift to demand-side solutions like choosing the right crops and fairly distributing water. Morocco’s agricultural exports, which often use a lot of water, are still putting a strain on aquifers, making rural areas even more vulnerable. Adaptation technologies, like advanced irrigation, are still mostly available to large farms and businesses, while small farmers have a hard time getting them. This could make inequality in rural areas worse.

NAP1 has successfully made climate policy a top priority for national development, but the results on reducing vulnerability are still uneven. Water security, farming productivity, and the lives of people in rural areas are still in a lot of trouble. But King Mohammed VI’s leadership has made adaptation a part of Morocco’s long-term vision. His government has spent a lot of money on climate change, more than two-thirds of it goes towards adaptation, and made caring for the environment a key part of national security and prosperity.To conclude, while NAP1 has made many successful changes in Morocco and improved the reputation of the country around the world, there are still gaps in how things are done. How well NAP1 works as a long-term model for climate resilience or a partial success will depend on how well these issues are addressed through decentralised planning, policies that promote equity, and participation that includes everyone. Not only does King Mohammed VI’s legacy depend on his vision, but it also depends on how well adaptation practice continues to improve to protect Morocco’s most vulnerable people and ecosystems.

IExRAIA Summer Research Program:

This article is an excerpt from a report on King Mohammed VI produced as part of an RAIA research program on climate leaders. For a full picture of Ruto’s climate leadership, including the sources, read the full report. This project was fully financed by IE University’s IE School of Politics, Economics and Global Affairs.

Authors: Finja Ullrich & Aleksej Obradovic

Editor: Ruby Hawari

Project Leads: Roxane de Bergevin & Stefani Obradovic