Reducing the impacts of drought in Morocco: How the MENAdrought project is supporting Morocco to enhance its water and food security

The MENAdrought project aims to provide tools to anticipate, prepare for and mitigate drought impacts; by enhancing self-reliance capacities, and supporting ownership of the drought-management responses with the help of open-source data and software. In the past, Morocco experienced spells of drought about once every decade. But since the 1970s, extreme drought has become a more regular element of the country's climate.

In Morocco, in collaboration with officials from the government, IWMI and partners will develop a drought framework encompassing institutional planning and the work of a task force on drought management. The technology and framework will initially be developed for the economically and socially important Souss-Massa and Oum Er-Rbia river basins, which have many sectoral water users – from cities to agriculture. The work will then be scaled up across the nation.