IMAROM project

Introduction
 

IMAROM stands for “Interaction between Migration, Land & Water Management and Resource Exploitation in the Oases of the Maghreb”. This interdisciplinary research project was conducted between 1 March 1998 to 1 March 2001 and funded by the INCO-DC programme of the EC (DG XII, contract number IC18-CT97-0134). IMAROM studied the impact of migration and concomitant socio-economic changes on land and water management and resource exploitation in the oases of in Morocco and Tunisia. The IMAROM project was initiated and co-ordinated by Dr Hein de Haas and Professor Leo de Haan, then both affiliated to the AGIDS institute of the University of Amsterdam (Netherlands).

The results of the project counter simplistic views on desertification, land degradation and migration. The project exemplified that the agricultural and ecological crisis in North African drylands and oases are fundamentally man-made, and have nothing to do with climate change. IMAROM also showed that the large-scale migration that occurred from these areas since the 1960s cannot be explained by environmental degradation.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, the agricultural crises that many oases are experiencing are related to decreasing rather than increasing population pressure on traditional agricultural resources. Socially and economically, migration has been a predominantly positive experience. By providing an alternative source of revenues, (international) migration has enabled a dramatic and unprecedented improvement of livelihoods of former serfs and sharecroppers. Migration and remittances have freed oasis dwellers them from dependency on traditional oasis agriculture.

Migration has undermined traditional ethnic and political hierarchies. Furthermore, the influx of remittances has enabled migrants and their families to invest in private motor pumps and the establishment of new, individually managed farmland in the desert. These socio-ethnic changes and increased individual pumping have further undermined the functioning of traditional agricultural institutions managing land and water resources. Uncontrolled pumping has in many cases led to a lowering of water tables and a further undermining of traditional oasis systems.

Whereas in Tunisia the state has often successfully intervened in establishing central village wells and establishing village water users associations, the Moroccan state has generally not intervened in community-level water management. This partly explains the paradox that Tunisian oases, where water resources are very scarce, are endowed with a flourishing date-exporting agriculture, while Moroccan oases, with their relatively abundant water resources, are characterised by stagnation and decline.