Water Saving Measures in Morocco

Second workshop within the research project WANDEL and meeting with the Governor of Ouarzazate

  • News 09.01.2019

At the beginning of December 2018, the Wuppertal Institute in cooperation with the Institute MENA Renewable & Sustainability (MENARES) successfully conducted the second stakeholder workshop in the WANDEL case study on concentrated solar power plants (CSP) in Ouarzazate, Morocco.
The desert region in the province of Ouarzazate in the southeast of Morocco, offers optimal conditions for the generation of solar power from both CSP and photovoltaic power plants. Therefore, the province was chosen as the site for one of the largest solar power plants in the world. Although, the water consumption of the power plant is not critical today, representing  less than one per cent of the total annual water use, it remains of central importance to investigate how the water availability and the socio-economic water demand in the region will develop in the future against the background of climate change in order to be able to identify solutions and avoid competition for water at an early stage.

While the water issues of the region have already been the subject of numerous studies, concrete proposals for solutions have not yet been discussed and analysed together with local stakeholders and evaluated with regard to their applicability in the region. This was the aim of the second stakeholder workshop, which took place on 4 December 2018 in Ouarzazate. More than twenty stakeholders from the agricultural and water sectors as well as from the local administration and civil organisations discussed and assessed potential water saving measures. In the morning, the focus was on the discussion of criteria on which basis the water saving measures can be evaluated. In the afternoon, the presentation and a rather passionate discussion of selected water saving measures took place. The direct result of the workshop is on the one hand a validated framework of criteria for the evaluation of water saving measures in the region. On the other selected water saving measures have been evaluated with regard to their local acceptance.

During the stay in Morocco, the team of the Wuppertal Institute was also received by the Governor of the Moroccan province of Ouarzazate. The aim of the meeting was to present the work of the Wuppertal Institute and to discuss ideas for potential future cooperation.

Further information on the WANDEL project can be found in the following link.

Meeting with the Governor of the Province of Ouarzazate (from left): Sarra Amroune, Dr. Julia Terrapon-Pfaff and Dr. Peter Viebahn (Division Future Energy and Mobility Structures at the Wuppertal Institute), Abderrazak al Mansouri (Governor of the Province of Ouarzazate), Prof. Hsaine Zgou (University Ibn Zohr) and Dr. El Mostafa Jamea of the MENARES Research Institute. Photo: Wuppertal Institute


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