Modélisation économique des ressources en eau dans la zone de Souss-Massa

Abstract

The Souss-Massa basin is providing most of the Moroccan agricultural exports and covers more than ten months of the food system needs in the country. However, the basin faces recurrent droughts exacerbated by climate change. Moreover, agriculture intensification based on the intensive use of irrigation decrease the groundwater potential and makes water resources even more limited and thus more expensive to extract. Therefore, all development activities will be constrained by scarcity of water resources in the area if no appropriate institutional and management strategies are implemented. This article presents a literature review of the main economic models that have been developed for water resources management. A critical analysis of different methods and models frequently used in the analysis of water economics suggests raising some methodological limits and highlighting the need to use other methods and tools that are more useful. The last part of this article analyzes the current state of water resources and the expected impact of climate change.

Keywords

• Water resources
• river basin
• economic modeling
• climate change