The Head of governmentwhich represents His Majesty the King au One Water Summitwhose work began Tuesday in the Saudi capital, specified on this occasion that the Kingdom has dedicated more than 14 billion dollars for the implementation of an ambitious national program aimed at guaranteeing theaccess to drinking water and to theirrigation waterand this through a global and innovative approach allowing the Kingdom to guarantee a strategic water reserve.
Thus, several main axes have been deployed, the first being the realization of structuring projects linking the hydraulic basinsin particular through the establishment of a water highway ensuring the water connection between the North and the Center of the Kingdom, he said, specifying that the Morocco managed to complete the first phase of this project by connecting the basins of By myself a you Bouregregwith a water conveyance capacity averaging one million cubic meters per day.
The second axis, he continued, concerns the realization of projects of sea water desalinationspecifying that the Morocco has already built 14 desalination plantsincluding those of Agadir and Dakhla.
Mr. Akhannouch underlined in this regard that the Kingdom is striving to accelerate the construction of 16 additional stations, the main of which are those of Casablanca – the largest of its kind in Africa – and Rabatwhich will be carried out as part of a public-private partnership. These seawater desalination projects aim to increase the current capacity, estimated at 254 million cubic meters, to an overall capacity of 1.7 billion cubic meters per year by 2030.
Regarding the third axis, the Head of Government mentioned the promotion of unconventional water resourcesnotably the reuse of treated wastewaterparticularly for the irrigation of green spaces in several cities, such as Rabat, Marrakech and Agadir.
The fourth axis concerns, for its part, the promotion of water saving irrigation systemsthanks to the generalization of irrigation techniques and systems aimed at rationalizing water consumption in the agricultural sector, explained Mr. Akhannouch.
And to note that the Kingdom, within the framework of Green Morocco Planhas equipped approximately one million hectares with irrigation systems, including more than 650,000 hectares with drip irrigation systems, thus saving more than 2 billion cubic meters of irrigation water. With the “Generation Green” strategyMorocco intends to increase the area irrigated by drip irrigation to reach one million hectares by 2030, he said.
The fifth axis, he added, concerns the policy of dams aimed at strengthening water supply, recalling that Morocco adopted this strategy in the 1960s, which allowed it to equip itself with an infrastructure major hydraulic project, including 154 large dams with a capacity of more than 20 billion cubic meters, to which are added 17 dams currently under construction with a capacity of nearly 5 billion cubic meters. This will bring the total storage capacity to 25 billion cubic meters by 2030, he said.
Despite Morocco’s numerous achievements in terms of management of water stressmany challenges and constraints remain, and which can only be met through a serious and responsible commitment, the continuation of participatory action, and the strengthening of innovative investments and the development of public-private partnership, concluded Mr. .Akhannouch.
