The right to water in Morocco: Between Scarcity and Access Disparities, Toward Climate and Territorial Justice

Introduction

The right to water constitutes one of the fundamental pillars for safeguarding human dignity and achieving sustainable development, and it is recognized within the framework of economic, social, and cultural rights. In the Moroccan context, the significance of this right has grown in light of escalating challenges related to water scarcity, successive years of drought, and the increasing demand for water driven by urban expansion and agricultural and industrial activity.

Official data reveal an alarming decline in the average per capita share of renewable water resources in Morocco, falling from approximately 2,600 cubic meters in 1960 to around 600 cubic meters at present—a decrease exceeding 70 percent. Projections indicate that this share is expected to decline further to approximately 500 cubic meters per capita by the 2035–2040 horizon (Minister of Equipment and Water 2025). This situation is often described as approaching the threshold of “absolute scarcity,” set at 500 cubic meters per capita per year. However, while this quantitative indicator carries important warning value, it remains limited when employed within a reductive Malthusian framework that primarily attributes the crisis to demographic pressure. Water stress in Morocco does not merely reflect a natural shortfall in supply; it is fundamentally linked to patterns of governance, public policy choices, the distribution of uses across sectors, and to social and spatial inequalities in access to water. In this context, Morocco’s current condition reflects a state of structural water stress (CESE 2023), the social, economic, and environmental repercussions of which are becoming increasingly evident, raising profound issues that extend beyond the logic of quantitative scarcity toward questioning water justice and the right to water.

At the regional level, North Africa and the Maghreb are experiencing acute climatic transformations, marked by an increasing risk of desertification and declining precipitation, rendering water security a strategic imperative akin to food and energy security. A report by the World Bank (World Bank 2021) warned that North Africa will be among the regions most exposed to water scarcity by 2050, amid rising temperatures and increasingly erratic precipitation patterns. In this context, strengthening the right to water, assessing the public policies associated with it, and analyzing the legal and institutional framework acquire an urgent character and constitute a rights-based priority requiring collective mobilization and sustained vigilance.

This report adopts a descriptive and analytical methodology grounded in a multidisciplinary approach, intersecting legal studies and public policy analysis with environmental and social perspectives, as well as rights-based approaches. It also accords particular importance to territorial and social disparities in access to water, and to the issue of water justice as a central component of social and spatial justice.

Based on this methodological approach, it is necessary to define the central concepts upon which the report relies. The right to water is a fundamental human right, recognized by the United Nations General Assembly in 2010. Its content and normative standards were defined in General Comment No. 15 of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (2002), particularly with regard to availability, quality, and physical and affordable access without discrimination.

Water justice is a concept that transcends the legal approach to the right to water, and follows a broader framework linking water issues to social and environmental justice. It emphasizes power relations, patterns of distribution, and the degree of participation of affected actors in decision-making (Sultana & Loftus, 2012; Zwarteveen & Boelens, 2014).

This approach highlights the gap between the legal recognition of the right to water and its effective realization, particularly for the most vulnerable populations and territories. In the framework of strengthening the participatory dimension and rights-based vigilance, focus groups and interviews were conducted with researchers and stakeholders from public institutions and civil society to document their experiences and gather their views on the challenges facing the sector. This consultative process enabled the incorporation of diverse local voices into the formulation of the recommendations and ensured an articulation between theoretical analysis and field experience.