Water in Morocco

Morocco built the region's great dam system: 146 large dams and 19.1 billion m³ of storage by 2020, and 154 dams holding 20.7 billion m³ by June 2025.²⁵²⁶ Then seven consecutive drought years drained it to record lows. The response has been the region's most decisive pivot. A national desalination programme is headed by Casablanca's 300 million m³-a-year plant. Transfers move surpluses from the Sebou to Rabat and Casablanca, and a national programme converts irrigation to drip. Morocco is what climate adaptation looks like when it moves at infrastructure speed.

The winter of 2025–26 broke the pattern. The national dam fill rate reached 70.7% on 18 February 2026, against 27.5% a year earlier.³¹ The drought years also built infrastructure in a hurry. The "water highway" from the Sebou basin to Rabat and Casablanca moved 871 million m³ between October 2023 and October 2025.³³

A quick-reference dashboard for Morocco: headline economy and water indicators⁴⁸⁴⁹, water stress against the scarcity thresholds, non-conventional supply, and the institutions behind the sector. The commercial picture, with buyers, deal structures and the project pipeline, is in the market brief.

One interactive map of Morocco's water, built from real geodata. Climate & drought maps the aridity gradient (WorldClim) with warming projections. The WRI Aqueduct layers, covering overall water risk, water stress and flood risk (plus groundwater decline where the trend is significant), shade every river sub-basin by its 0–5 risk score. Demand shows where the population, and the water demand, concentrate. Infrastructure brings the physical system together: rivers, dams (FAO AQUASTAT), treatment plants, desalination and the major conveyors. Hover any sub-basin or marker for detail; sources are cited under each view.

Morocco’s relief shapes its water. The Rif rises in the north, and the Atlas system of the Middle, High and Anti-Atlas peaks at Toubkal, 4,165 m.²⁸ Coastal plains run the length of the country, narrow on the Mediterranean and wide on the Atlantic. Desert plateaus lie south-east of the Atlas.²⁸ The Loukkos, Sebou and Oum Er-Rbia basins in the north-west hold 71.5% of surface water resources.²⁸

Rainfall

Average rainfall is 346 mm a year, from about 700 mm in the far north-west to 25 mm in the south-east.²⁸ The mountains can receive up to 2,000 mm, mostly between October and May.²⁸ Rain comes in two seasonal peaks, in winter and spring, and varies strongly from year to year, especially in the north.¹

Record heat, long drought

Morocco has warmed by about 0.2 °C a decade since the 1960s.² On 11 August 2023 Agadir recorded 50.4 °C, the first reading above 50 °C in the country.⁴ That year was the driest in at least 80 years, with a rainfall deficit of about 48%.⁴ 2024 was the hottest year on record, 1.49 °C above the 1991–2020 average, and the sixth consecutive year of drought.⁵ The drought broke in extremes. In late August and early September 2024, rain of centennial rarity fell on the eastern Atlas slopes and Tata.⁵ A World Weather Attribution study found that extreme one-day rainfall over a zone including northern Morocco has intensified by an estimated 23–49%.⁷

Projections

Morocco’s fourth national communication projects warming of 2–3 °C in the south and south-east by 2050 under a high-emissions scenario.¹ Rainfall could fall by up to 25% in some regions by 2050, against 1961–1990.¹ Surface water potential could drop by 3.5 billion m³ in an optimistic scenario and by 5 billion m³ in a pessimistic one.¹ The IPCC projects runoff declines of 10–63% by mid-century in Morocco and Tunisia. It names Morocco among the Mediterranean countries most exposed to sea-level rise.⁶ More than 65% of the population and 90% of industry sit on the coast.²

Rainfall and temperature in numbers

Averaged over the whole of Morocco, ERA5 reanalysis gives about 285 mm of rain a year and a mean temperature of 18.4 °C for 1991–2020. About 35% of that rain falls in October, November and March. Since 1971 the country has warmed by about 0.46 °C a decade. Average rainfall in 1993–2022 was about 17% lower than in 1951–1980, and single years swing widely around that.

Projected change

Source: World Bank Climate Change Knowledge Portal, retrieved September 2026. ERA5 0.25° reanalysis for the annual series (1950–2022) and the monthly climatology (1991–2020); CMIP6 0.25° multi-model ensemble median for the projections, as change against 1995–2014. These are national averages, which hide the gap between wet highlands and dry interiors, and reanalysis rainfall over deserts carries wide uncertainty.

Dams first

Surface water dominates the ledger. The dam network irrigates the great perimeters and supplies the cities, but inflows have fallen well below historic averages. National storage fell to 23% in January 2024.³⁰ Groundwater from the Souss, Saïss and oasis aquifers quietly financed the drought and is overdrawn nearly everywhere it matters; contracts de nappe (aquifer contracts) attempt collective restraint.

The new coast line

Desalination capacity reached 324 million m³ a year at the end of 2024, against a target of 2.2 billion m³ by 2030.²⁷ The plants include Chtouka, where desalinated seawater irrigates farmland, and Casablanca, part-powered by wind.³⁶³⁵ Treated reuse irrigates golf courses and green belts, with agricultural reuse next.

The main rivers

The table ranks the rivers of Morocco by the largest natural flow they reach inside the country. Natural flow is the modelled long-term average before any withdrawals. For a heavily used river it measures what the river could carry, not what arrives today.

Sources: Grill, Lehner, Thieme et al. (2019), Mapping the world’s free-flowing rivers, Nature 569, dataset under CC BY 4.0, for length, natural flow (WaterGAP, 1971–2000) and free-flowing status, meaning the share of the river’s length inside Morocco still classed as free-flowing. No flow figure is given below 20 m³/s, where a global model is too coarse to rank small rivers. Dams from the FAO AQUASTAT regional inventories, matched to the nearest river reach, so a dam on a tributary close to a main stem can be counted against the main stem. The same rivers are drawn on the water map above under Rivers & lakes.

Morocco’s renewable water per person fell from 2,560 m³ a year in 1960 to about 620 m³ in 2020.²⁵ Average surface inflow over 1979–2018 was 15 billion m³, against 18.4 billion over 1945–2018.²⁵ Irrigation dominates demand. In 2010 it accounted for 13.2 of 14.6 billion m³, more than 90%, FAO reported.²⁸

A million hectares

In a speech in Tangier on 18 September 1967, King Hassan II launched a dam policy. Its goal was one million irrigated hectares by the end of the century. The target was reached in 1997.²⁹ Irrigated land grew from 90,000 ha in 1961 to 1.46 million ha in 2004.²⁸ Nine regional agricultural offices, created in 1966, run the large public schemes, which cover 682,600 ha.²⁸ Between 1967 and 2020 the number of large dams rose from 20 to 146, and storage from 2 to 19.1 billion m³.²⁵ Silt now eats into that storage. Nearly 20 reservoirs are expected to fill with sediment by 2040.²⁵

Drip and the rebound

A national irrigation water-saving programme began in 2008 under Plan Maroc Vert. It aimed to convert about 550,000 ha to localised irrigation.²⁸ Plan Maroc Vert invested about US$10 billion between 2008 and 2018, 40% of it public.²⁵ Localised irrigation covered about 794,000 ha by the end of 2023, nearly half of irrigated land, up from 9% in 2008.²⁶ The Court of Accounts found that this had not stabilised irrigation demand.²⁶ It also found groundwater overexploited in every basin, with mobilised volumes more than 1 billion m³ above exploitable levels.²⁶ Génération Green, launched in February 2020, aims to double water efficiency.³⁸

Groundwater

Groundwater use grew in response to the late-1970s drought and now supplies about 35% of agricultural water.²⁵ Withdrawals of about 5 billion m³ a year exceed recharge by 1.1 billion m³.²⁵ In the El Guerdane citrus area of the Souss, the water table fell by more than 2 m a year from the 2000s. About 200 ha of orchards were abandoned each year.²⁸ The Chtouka aquifer, in a zone exporting 90% of Morocco’s tomatoes, runs a deficit of 58 million m³ a year.³⁶ The Saïss aquifer’s deficit is estimated at 100 million m³ a year.³⁷ Aquifer contracts have been launched in Chtouka, Boudnib, Berrechid and the Saïss.²⁵

Drought, transfers and the sea

Drought rules serve every other sector before agriculture, and some irrigation schemes received no allocation in 2022.²⁵ Dams were 23.22% full in January 2024, down from 34.2% two years earlier.³⁰ The Sebou–Bouregreg link, costing 6 billion dirhams, entered service at the end of August 2023.²⁶ A new link of nearly 300 km between the Sebou and Oum Er-Rbia basins was announced in August 2026.³⁴ Rain in 2025–26 lifted dams to a peak of 76% on 18 May 2026. They stood at 67.5% on 1 September.³²

Withdrawals over time

FAO’s AQUASTAT estimates put Morocco’s freshwater withdrawals at 9.0 billion m³ in 1975 and 10.6 billion m³ in 2022. Agriculture’s share of the total moved from 89% in 1994 to 88% in 2022.

Source: FAO AQUASTAT via the World Bank World Development Indicators, retrieved September 2026. AQUASTAT revises national figures irregularly and fills the years between surveys, so a jump between two adjacent years usually marks a new national estimate rather than a change on the ground.

Dams are the backbone. In June 2025 Morocco had 154 large dams with a total capacity of 20.7 billion m³, plus about 150 small and medium dams. Sixteen more large dams were under construction.⁸ Al Wahda, inaugurated in 1997, is the largest reservoir at about 3.8 billion m³, followed by Al Massira at 2,760 million m³.⁹¹⁰ The Tamri dam near Agadir, holding 204 million m³, was about 90% complete in March 2026.¹¹ Silt costs 58.3 million m³ of storage a year, and 10 dams are now below half their original capacity.¹²

Transfers and desalination

Water is increasingly moved and made. The Sebou–Bouregreg link, in service since 2023, carries water from the north-west toward Rabat and Casablanca.²⁶ A 185 km pipeline from Safi was reported in June 2026 to be bring about 100 million m³ a year of desalinated water from OCP Green Water’s plant to Marrakech.¹³ The Chtouka plant near Agadir starts at 111,000 m³ a day for irrigation, rising to 166,500 m³ by 2035.³⁶ The Casablanca plant, under construction since June 2024, is scheduled to start in February 2027 at 200 million m³ a year. A second phase takes it to 300 million m³.¹⁴

Networks, sanitation and floods

By the end of 2011, 1.46 million ha were equipped for irrigation, about 70% of it by the state.²⁸ Tertiary wastewater treatment capacity reached 231 million m³ a year in 2023, but 194 million m³ of it went unused.¹⁵ ONEE’s 2026–2030 plan earmarks MAD 42.1 billion for drinking-water infrastructure.¹⁶ Floods test the system. In February 2026 torrential rain and dam releases forced 154,309 people to evacuate in the north.¹⁷ The national disaster fund had agreed 367 risk-reduction projects worth MAD 4.89 billion between 2015 and June 2026.¹⁸

The asset base in numbers

Sources: FAO AQUASTAT regional dam inventories (CC BY 4.0), which list large dams with a published capacity and can lag recent construction; the MENA Water Review major projects register, where each record cites its source on the project page. The database follows large contracted projects, not the whole asset base.

Moroccan water quality is broadly acceptable or good but declining, the World Bank finds. Most industrial sewage goes untreated into the environment. Farming adds about 1,200 tonnes of nitrogen and 500 tonnes of pesticides a year.²⁵ Nearly 10% of the area of the main aquifers exceeds 50 mg/L of nitrate, and nearly 20% is at 25–50 mg/L.²⁸ In Chtouka, nitrate tops 50 mg/L around Belfaa and along the Massa river.⁴¹ Sampling of 22 wells in the Saïss plain in 2017–18 detected 27 pesticides.⁴² Soil salinisation affects about 500,000 ha.²⁸

The Oued Fès, a tributary of the Sebou, is a pollution hotspot. Cadmium there reached 850 µg/L and copper 690 µg/L, far above international standards. Researchers also found Vibrio cholerae at the sampling sites.⁴³ Near Boudnib, downstream of the Kaddoussa dam on the Guir, conductivity exceeded 1,400 µS/cm at all 15 stations sampled in November 2023.⁴⁴

Wastewater

In 2010 more than 90% of municipal wastewater, then 640 million m³ a year, was discharged untreated.²⁸ Treatment capacity grew from 50,000 m³ a day in 2000 to 900,000 m³ in 2016. Only 54% of the population was connected to treatment plants.²⁵ Reuse remains marginal. It reached about 37 million m³ in 2023, against a target of 100 million m³ a year by 2027.²⁶ Treated and reused wastewater is only 7% of urban wastewater, the Court of Accounts reported in 2025.²⁷ Nine implementing texts of the 2016 water law, including rules on reuse, were still missing.²⁷

The reported indicators

Sources: WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme via the World Bank; SDG 6.3.1 and 6.3.2 from the UN Statistics Division SDG database, retrieved September 2026. Safely managed means an improved source on the premises, available when needed and free from priority contamination. SDG 6.3.2 rests on each country’s own monitoring network, so a high share can mean few water bodies were assessed, and values move when methods change between reporting rounds.

Morocco’s big rivers rise and reach the sea within its borders. The shared basins lie in the east, where Morocco and Algeria share the Tafna, Guir, Dra and Daoura.³⁹ Morocco’s Kaddoussa dam on the Guir, near Boudnib, has been in service since 2021.³³⁴⁴ A study not yet peer reviewed projects rainfall in the Guir watershed falling from about 380 mm to about 280 mm a year by 2100 under high emissions.⁴⁵

Regional cooperation has been technical. From 2014 to 2022 Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia took part in a €5 million Sahara and Sahel Observatory project on sustainable water management in the Maghreb.⁴⁰ Morocco’s inter-basin transfers raise a different kind of sharing question. Water from the wetter north now supplies Rabat and Casablanca, and the planned Sebou–Oum Er-Rbia link would carry up to 800 million m³ a year further south.³⁴

The record

Shared river basins

The register also places small areas of Morocco in the Oued Bon Naima basin, too little to carry here.

Shared aquifers

• Angad-Maghnia Unconfined Aquifer; Jbel-Hamra Confined AquiferAlgeria · data moderate
• Aïn Béni MatharAlgeria · data moderate
• Chott Tigri-LahouitaAlgeria · data limited
• Errachidia Aquifer SystemAlgeria · data good
• Figuig OasisAlgeria · data moderate
• Tindouf Aquifer SystemAlgeria, Mauritania · data moderate

Source: IGRAC and UNESCO, Transboundary Aquifers of the World. Data reliability is IGRAC’s own assessment of the information behind each outline.

Water policy sits with the Ministry of Equipment and Water, led since October 2021 by Nizar Baraka.¹⁹ The water department became a ministry in its own right in 2013.²⁸ A Higher Council for Water and Climate sets the broad direction, and an interministerial water commission has operated since 2001.²⁸ Nine river basin agencies were created under the 1995 water law. The pilot agency for the Oum Er-Rbia opened in 1996 and the others from 2002.²⁸ ONEE, through its drinking-water branch, is responsible for national water supply and sanitation.²⁸

Law and plans

Law 10-95 of 1995 built on decrees of 1914, 1919 and 1925 on the public water domain.²⁸ Law 36-15 of 2016 kept and strengthened that framework.³ The draft National Water Plan for 2020–2050 foresees US$41.3 billion of investment over 30 years.²⁵ The emergency PNAEPI programme launched on 14 January 2020 with MAD 115 billion, later raised to MAD 143 billion.²⁰²⁶ Retail tariffs and sanitation fees still do not fully reflect costs.³

From concessions to regional companies

Municipalities are responsible for water and sanitation, which they run directly or delegate.³ A 2021 reform set out to replace delegated operators and municipal utilities with regional multiservice companies.²¹ Law 83-21, published in July 2023, created them.²² The first, in Casablanca-Settat, started on 1 October 2024, after Veolia was required to sell Lydec.²²²³ Rabat-Salé-Kénitra followed on 1 June 2025, though Redal keeps its Rabat contract until 2028.²⁴

Morocco is racing its own climate curve. Six drought years in a row, a record 50.4 °C and projected runoff losses of up to 63% by mid-century all point the same way.⁵⁴⁶ The response is heavy engineering: 16 large dams under construction, desalination at Casablanca and Chtouka, and new transfers.⁸¹⁴ Silt, evaporation and floods will keep testing that bet, as February 2026 showed.¹²¹⁷

The institutional reform may matter as much. Regional multiservice companies now run supply in Casablanca-Settat and Rabat-Salé-Kénitra, but tariffs still fall short of costs.³ Nine implementing texts of the 2016 water law were still missing in 2025.²⁷ If the aquifers keep falling, the export farm economy stalls first. Either way, Morocco is North Africa’s most investable water market this decade.