Only a few words carry as much poetic imagery as the term “oasis”. As a garden in the desert, it symbolizes lush amongst aridity, life amidst emptiness. It is a place where gazelles and goats run their way through a fertile valley made of lavish palm trees reflecting themselves in shimmering waters, where nomad tribes come to rest and replenish their food and water supplies before continuing their journey through the dunes of Northern Africa. It is a place for brief encounters and prosperous trade, a place where stories are shared and promesses are made.
The moving border of the Sahara
An old well, still connected to potable water, is abandoned in the middle of a former farmland. With the modernisation of agricultural techniques leading to higher farming costs and the increasing alphabetisation rate, the number of peasants has severely declined over the years. Yet, cultivating the land is the best way to prevent desertification.
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Economic development as a factor of desertification
The profitable business of unsustainable agriculture
The remaining peasants of M’hamid El Ghizlane play a crucial role in stopping the progression of the desert. Cultivating the land is the best way to prevent desertification, but it requires an investment not everyone can afford. Modern agricultural techniques come with higher costs as the wells now work with an electric pump or solar panels.
In the neighbouring region of Zagora, farmers have found a way to make their land quite profitable. They benefit from the worldwide fame of Zagora watermelons, a species that’s widely appreciated for its sweet and refreshing taste. The demand is so high that almost every farmer switched their crops to watermelons, leading to an all-year-round monoculture that’s extremely water-demanding, as each watermelon requires more than a ton of water to fully grow. This intensive and unsustainable agricultural model is emptying the groundwaters, when Morocco is already planned to become a “chronically water-stressed” country by 2020 according to the World Bank.
Over the last decades, the Sahara has significantly gained ground in the Drâa Valley. The ongoing desertification has been induced by human activities – political decisions, social development and economic growth – and made worse by climatic dynamics: the more arid a piece of land is, the less rain it is likely to receive. As water management becomes a very sensitive topic in the MENA region and in Morocco, both international and local policies will have to address the issue. Building smaller, locally managed dams to collect rainwater, helping aspiring farmers to buy modern agricultural equipment such as solar panels and regulating single-crop farming are only a few examples of bottom-up approaches that are definitely worth digging into. After all, if men are the cause of desertification, they should be able to revert the tendency. ■
Despite the ongoing desertification, the land is still fertile when cultivated. The most prosperous farms are equipped with solar panels that pump water from the wells, thus ensuring an even irrigation of the cultures. If local farmers had enough means to buy them, they would be better armed to win the battle they're fighting against the moving sands of the Sahara.