MEGA­IRRIGATION AND NEOLIBERALISM IN POSTCOLONIAL STATES MEGA­IRRIGATION AND NEOLIBERALISM IN POSTCOLONIAL STATES: EVOLUTION AND CRISIS IN THE GHARB PLAIN, MOROCCO by Paola Minoia MINOIA, P. (2012): ‘Mega­irrigation and neoliberalism in post- in many postcolonial states. More specifically, it colonial states: evolution and crisis in the Gharb Plain, Morocco’, Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography 94 (3): aims to contribute to the geographical debate about 269–286. the importance to build environmental histories to scrutinize power relations and impacts in historical- ABSTRACT. This article explores the development, evolution and ly situated socio­natural settings. impacts of large­scale irrigation schemes in the formation of the postcolonial state of Morocco and in more recent neoliberal dec- The theoretical framework is situated in the ades. In particular, the article focuses on the Gharb Plain in the political­ecology perspectives that look at society Sebou River basin, which was targeted by huge investments to be- and nature as deeply intertwined, and at engineer- come the core region for national development. In this area, three ing interventions in the landscape as political acts, stages of development – colonial, early independent, and the ag- gressive politique des grandes barrages post­1970 – have creat- aiming to produce new socio­natural landscapes ed two clearly different and successive landscapes. The traditional that are coherent with the decision­makers’ strate- landscape has been overlain, and largely obliterated, by colonial gies (Swyngedouw 1999; Robbins 2004; Minoia and postcolonial governmental landscapes, reflected through dif- 2006; Heynen et al. 2007). The need to focus eco- ferent spatial, economic, cultural, and political patterns over time. In the present, a fourth stage of neoliberal development is occur- logically appropriate and socially just insights ring in the landscape, in which diffused poverty and ecosystem col- (Davis 2009) well integrates post­development ge- lapse coincide with greater concentrated wealth and the building of ographies in deconstructing official, internation- technological infrastructures. The article aims to complement criti- al narratives that would explain the current crisis, cal studies on neoliberal environments, by focusing in particular on the manipulation, dispossession and commodification of water and especially in the countries of the Global South land resources in irrigated agriculture in Morocco. These emerging (Escobar 1995). Studies in environmental histo- rationalities are closely related to the changing policies of the con- ry allow positioning specific facts of water and na- temporary Moroccan state. ture re­engineering in line with globally dominant Keywords: mega­irrigation schemes, Morocco, neoliberalism, governmentalities (McNeill 2000; also Swearingen postcolonial development, state territorialization 1988, for a Moroccan case study). Critical research on neoliberalism and its effects is also considered, in terms of changes of political, social and economic Introduction nature that are induced by external pressures, espe- The Gharb irrigation scheme is an example of mega­ cially in developing countries, by international fi- projects, typical of many state development policies nancial agencies (Harvey 2005; McCarthy 2007). during the past century, and of postcolonial states in This work also builds upon literature that has the past 50 years. Considered as economic engines, studied impacts of neoliberal water policies (e.g. their territorial impacts have largely been disregard- Castro 2007; Goldman 2007) and further develops ed until recent times, when their contradictions have a critical analysis of the water demand management become more evident because of progressive state approaches that are currently so popular internation- disengagement, connected to a critical economic ally. Davis’ (2006) contribution is also relevant, for environment. the way she relates neoliberalism and agricultural The Gharb’s history is not only significant for restructuring policies and deconstructs declention- the exploration of the development, evolution and ist colonial environmental narratives in Morocco. impacts of large­scale water schemes in the forma- However, also due to the different geographical tion of the Moroccan state, as it allows exploring focus of this article, which is on an irrigated plain critical phenomena that are commonly experienced (while Davis’ case is based in the rain­fed South), © The author 2012 269 Geografiska Annaler: Series B © 2012 Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography PAOLA MINOIA territorialization and hydro­political theories have Hydraulic territorialization in postcolonial more centrality here. states As for the case study, this article will initially fo- The territorializing nature of water infrastructures cus on the territorial changes superimposed on the has been explored for decades (e.g. Wittfogel 1957; Gharb Plain, part of the Sebou catchment area, which Hunt and Hunt 1978; Waterbury 1979), explaining were pushed by planners with the intent to create a the ways in which mega­engineered projects have core productive region that would power the national influenced the development processes of places economy and enforce the political project of the new through the control over their human and natural re- nation­state. Second, the article will observe the im- sources. According to McNeill (2000, p. 150): pacts of the recent neoliberal developmentalism, in which the state has selectively reduced its directive Churchill ... Lenin, Franklin Roosevelt, Nehru, role in the agricultural sector, while new trade agree- Deng Xiaoping, and a host of lesser figures saw ments and landownership structures have led to a re- water in much the same way, and encouraged turning foreign presence. This governance shift has massive water projects in the USSR, the United also produced relevant impacts, despite the minor en- States, India, and China. They did so because gineering intervention that occurred in this phase. In they all lived in an age in which states and socie- fact, the new rules have contributed to a further dis- ties regarded adjustments to nature’s hydrology possession of natural resources from the local com- as a route to greater power or prosperity. munities and thus increased their vulnerability. These consequences have been observed Thus the inclusion of nature in the socio­political through a close contact with the studied areas and construction allows deepening of the concept of ter- their actors, to access different sources and to re- ritory over which powers exercise their own strate- cord local insight. Fieldwork has been very impor- gies (Delaney 2005). By establishing infrastructures tant for this study. Visits completed between 2005 and setting up new rules, hydraulic territorialization and 2008 have allowed access to a large amount of reflects and incorporates features of the social order literature that is locally available on issues related to that creates them. In postcolonial contexts, and par- politics and water­related fields either in Morocco or ticularly in the first decades of independence, this the Gharb and that includes, besides books and arti- order has tended to be coherent with, and support- cles, unpublished theses, newspapers, governmen- ing of, the production of strong nation­state terri- tal reports and statistics. Visits to the Gharb Plain torial discourses. The construction of regimes has have allowed observation, semi­structured and un- followed the ideal model of the Keynesian wel- structured conversations. A field trip and two sem- fare national state, characterized by an ‘autocentric inars were also organized with a class of Master circle of mass production’, although not consider- students in geography of the University of Rabat in ing the need to secure mass consumption, but ‘se- 2007, as part of a course I gave as a visiting lecturer. cured through a distinctive mode of regulation that These events allowed observation of the landscape was discursively, institutionally and practically ma- and questions to be raised, particularly through in- terialised’ (Jessop 2002, p. 55). New infrastruc- terviews with regional technical officers working in tural works that are functional of new production the water and agricultural sectors in the Gharb, con- schemes and activities have been conceived by sultants involved in the water management reform, state powers as material signs for territorial control, and local farmers, including women, whom we met while their symbolic power entails a significant so- in the fields and in small towns. While the experts cial transformation and is often constitutive of new provided local statistics that had not been published national identities (Turco 1988). Similar models in national reports, the aim of the interviews with have been performed in non­developing countries; farmers and local residents was to gather qualitative particularly, the experience of Spain under Franco insight into the ways certain political and manage- reported by Swyngedouw (2007) illustrates the ment changes have been enacted in that particular linkages between nationalism and techno­natural context, how they have been perceived, and what material infrastructures in articulating a new geo- personal consequences they have led to in peoples’ graphical project. However, the peculiarity of the lives (Secor 2010). A very important experience was postcolonial countries resides in their