Groundwater use in North Africa as a cautionary tale for climate change adaptation

International audienceThe recent history of groundwater use in North Africa provides a cautionary tale for climate change adaptation. Even though the short- term threats of groundwater overexploitation are clear, and territorially bounded, and involve comparatively few players, in recent decades, agricultural intensification has consistently increased pressure on the available resources. Groundwater has been governed through a dynamic interplay between formal rules and informal practices that focused more on maintaining fragile socio-political compromises than on ensuring environmental sustainability. If it is to be effective, climate change adaptation will need to muster the sort of political legitimacy that sustainable groundwater management is currently lacking

The key role of supply chain actors in groundwater irrigation development in North Africa

International audienceThe role played by supply chain actors in the rapid development of groundwater-based irrigated agriculture is analyzed. Agricultural groundwater use has increased tremendously in the past 50 years, leading to the decline of water tables. Groundwater use has enabled intensification of existing farming systems and ensured economic growth. This 'groundwater economy' has been growing rapidly due to the initiative of farmers and the involvement of a wide range of supply chain actors, including suppliers of equipment, inputs retailers, and distributors of irrigated agricultural products. In North Africa, the actors in irrigated production chains often operate at the margin of public policies and are usually described as 'informal', 'unstructured', and as participating in 'groundwater anarchy'. This paper underlines the crucial role of supply chain actors in the development of groundwater irrigation, a role largely ignored by public policies and rarely studied. The analysis is based on three case studies in Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria, and focuses on the horticultural sub-sector, in particular on onions and tomatoes, which are irrigated high value crops. The study demonstrates that although supply chain actors are catalyzers of the expansion of groundwater irrigation, they could also become actors in adaptation to the declining water tables. Through their informal activities, they help reduce market risks, facilitate credit and access to subsidies, and disseminate innovation. The interest associated with making these actors visible to agricultural institutions is discussed, along with methods of getting them involved in the management of the resource on which they depend

Encourager la subversion : recomposition de l’État et décollectivisation des terres publiques dans le Bas-Chéliff, Algérie

National audienceCet article analyse le gouvernement du foncier en Algérie en retraçant, sur une trentaine d’années, la décollectivisation des terres publiques d’une commune du Bas-Chéliff. Comment l’État a-t-il conduit cette décollectivisation et géré ses conséquences, qui menacent pourtant l’une de ses bases sociales ? Cet article soutient que, à l’encontre de la vision d’un État autoritaire et rentier, la décollectivisation n’a pas été brutalement imposée par le biais d’une modification du cadre juridique (privatisation des terres) et d’une indemnisation des perdants. Soumis à des pressions contradictoires, l’État a plutôt opéré de manière lente et hésitante, en encourageant la subversion rampante de ses propres règles juridiques : d’abord en soutenant financièrement des acteurs privés extérieurs aux terres publiques ; puis en autorisant tacitement ces mêmes acteurs à exploiter en location une partie de ces terres. La redéfinition des acteurs politiquement « marginaux » et « centraux » se déroule alors de manière souple et négociée, à l’écart des rigidités de la loi

Specifying the differentiated contribution of farmers to groundwater depletion in two irrigated areas in North Africa

International audienceMuch attention has been paid to the issue of groundwater depletion linked to intensive groundwater-based agriculture in (semi-)arid areas. Often referred to as the 'overexploitation' of aquifers, groundwater depletion is generally attributed to the entire agricultural sector without distinguishing between different uses and users. Although it expresses a general concern for future users, the ambiguous term of 'overexploitation' does not acknowledge the contested nature of groundwater use and emerging inequalities. Also, the impact of inequality on groundwater depletion is rarely questioned. The aim of this article is to investigate how and by whom groundwater is depleted, and in turn, how unequal access to groundwater fuels the socioeconomic differentiation of farms and groundwater depletion. Based on a detailed analysis of groundwater use from a user perspective in two irrigated areas in North Africa (Morocco and Algeria), this study shows how the context of groundwater depletion exacerbates'and is exacerbated by'existing inequalities. The paper concludes that knowing how much is withdrawn, where, and by whom provides helpful information for more informed groundwater management by a better understanding of the response of users to declining groundwater conditions and the interests and incentives of different social categories of famers to contribute to groundwater management

Understanding individuals' proclivity for novelty seeking

International audienceHuman mobility literature is limited in their ability to capture the novelty-seeking or the exploratory tendency of individuals. Mainly, the vast majority of mobility prediction models rely uniquely on the history of visited locations (as captured in the input dataset) to predict future visits. This hinders the prediction of new unseen places and reduces prediction accuracy. In this paper, we show that a two-dimensional modeling of human mobility, which explicitly captures both regular and exploratory behaviors, yields a powerful characterization of users. Using such model, we identify the existence of three distinct mobility profiles with regard to the exploration phenomenon-Scouters (i.e., extreme explorers), Routiners (i.e., extreme returners), and Regulars (i.e., without extreme behavior). Further, we extract and analyze the mobility traits specific to each profile. We then investigate temporal and spatial patterns in each mobility profile and show the presence of recurrent visiting behavior of individuals even in their novelty-seeking moments. Our results unveil important novelty preferences of people, which are ignored by literature prediction models. Finally, we show that prediction accuracy is dramatically affected by exploration moments of individuals. We then discuss how our profiling methodology could be leveraged to improve prediction

Accès à l'eau souterraine et différenciation des exploitations agricoles dans le Bas Cheliff (Algérie) .

International audienc

Le rôle du faire-valoir indirect dans le renouvellement générationnel des agriculteurs irrigants en Tunisie

National audienceAccess to land for the young generation of farmers is hardly taken into account in the debates concerning the agriculture sustainability of agriculture in the Southern countries. In these countries, where the population is often very young, the procedures for the transfer of agricultural assets are frequently absent and generally ineffective when they exist. We show in this article through the case study of three irrigated situations in Tunisia, that measures to transfer lands to a young generation of farmers operate informally through indirect farming. We analyze the role of indirect farming in creating flexibility in local land use systems and discuss the sustainability of the resulting dynamics. We finally discuss finally the major challenge for the policy makers in Tunisia and in North Africa, to include informal agriculture in policy making to provide more sustainable perspectives. Better knowledge about the role of the indirect farming in providing flexibility to local land use and agrarian systems can provide ideas for a better use of land and water resources, which are disputed contested in Tunisia and elsewhere in North Africa.L’accès des jeunes agriculteurs aux ressources foncières est peu pris en compte dans les débats sur la durabilité des agricultures dans les pays du Sud. Les dispositifs de transfert foncier vers cette catégorie sociale, importante sur le plan démographique, restent rares et peu opérants. Nous montrons ici, à travers l’étude de trois situations irriguées en Tunisie, que des transferts de terres vers les jeunes existent mais qu’ils s’effectuent souvent de manière informelle et plus à travers différentes formes de faire-valoir indirect (FVI) qu’à travers un transfert de propriété. Nous analysons le rôle joué par le faire-valoir indirect dans la flexibilité des systèmes fonciers locaux et nous discutons le caractère durable des dynamiques qui en découlent. Nous discutons enfin le défi majeur que représente pour les décideurs politiques en Tunisie et au Maghreb, l’inscription de cette agriculture informelle dans une perspective durable. Approfondir les connaissances sur le rôle joué par le FVI dans la flexibilité des systèmes fonciers et agraires locaux, peut fournir des pistes de réflexions pour mieux valoriser des ressources en terre et en eau très disputées en Tunisie, et ailleurs au Maghreb

Topical collection groundwater-based agriculture in the Mediterranean

Groundwater resources in semi-arid areas and especially in the Mediterranean face a growing demand for irrigated agriculture and, to a lesser extent, for domestic uses. Consequently, groundwater reserves are affected and water-table drops are widely observed. This leads to strong constraints on groundwater access for farmers, while managers worry about the future evolution of the water resources. A common problem for building proper groundwater management plans is the difficulty in assessing individual groundwater withdrawals at regional scale. Predicting future trends of these groundwater withdrawals is even more challenging. The basic question is how to assess the water budget variables and their evolution when they are deeply linked to human activities, themselves driven by countless factors (access to natural resources, public policies, market, etc.). This study provides some possible answers by focusing on the assessment of groundwater withdrawals for irrigated agriculture at three sites in North Africa (Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria). Efforts were made to understand the different features that influence irrigation practices, and an adaptive user-oriented methodology was used to monitor groundwater withdrawals. For each site, different key factors affecting the regional groundwater abstraction and its past evolution were identified by involving farmers' knowledge. Factors such as farmer access to land and groundwater or development of public infrastructures (electrical distribution network) are crucial to decode the results of well inventories and assess the regional groundwater abstraction and its future trend. This leads one to look with caution at the number of wells cited in the literature, which could be oversimplified