The Waters of Ben Smim

"By means of water, we give life to everything."

-Qur'an

"The scarcity at the heart of the global water crisis is rooted in power, poverty, and inequality, not in physical availability."

-UNDP Human Development Report, 2006

"Water has an economic value in all its competing uses and should be recognized as an economic good."

-UN Dublin Statement on Water & Sustainable Development

"Water is like blue gold to us. It is our right, and then someone comes and tries to take it away from us."

-Ben Smim Village Elder

The Atlas Mountains were one of the things that interested me most in coming to Morocco. As a whole, they stretch across a huge part of northwestern Africa, including Algeria, and Mauritania, but the highest ranges stretch the length of Morocco from northeast to southwest like a spine. Last week, my group had the opportunity to spend a few days in the Mid Atlas, one of three different ranges of the Atlas running through the country. The Mid Atlas is, predictably, the middle of the three, lower than the High Atlas and higher than the Anti Atlas range. It also seems to be the most populated section, which isn't necessarily saying much. After being on the coast for so long, it was refreshing to see mountains again, and breathe some fresh mountain air.

Our home for the first three days of the expedition was a guest house just outside of Ben Smim, a small village nestled in a mountain valley. Our first night was a great way to get to know the area- watching sunset behind the mountains, a perfectly clear, starry night on top of a nearby hill, and a concert by some local hippies who were studying traditional Berber music. A lot of the music combines many different influences, using a beat typical of West Africa along with a lot of themes from Arab culture. It was a great night of singing and dancing, and we were joined by a few of the locals, both adults and kids. A lot of it belied the struggle going on beneath the surface in that village at the same time.

The group on the deck of the hotel

The next day, we began to learn a little more about issues the area is facing. The next place we visited was a dam being constructed in a valley above the village. In Vietnam, we had learned about dams as a form of controlling fast-flowing rivers, generating electricity, and avoiding floods. Here in Morocco, however, many dams serve more for water catchment and irrigation. When there is little rainfall and lots of heat to evaporate the water, having a constant source of water can be helpful. But the people of Ben Smim have lived without a dam for centuries, why use one now? Partly, we learned, it was in recompense for a serious conflict that had gone on a couple of years back. The nature of that, I still wasn't entirely sure.

The hillsides in the area were absolutely beautiful.

Ben Smim Village can be see at right.

That became clearer with the next visit, just down the hill. Since arriving in Morocco, bottled water has been in high demand. I normally really dislike bottled water in the States (why pay extra money for something that comes out of your sink?), but in a place where you often can't drink tap water and other potable water sources are few and far between, I've come to appreciate it. The brand that dominates in Morocco is Aïn Ifrane, each bottle emblazoned with the typical image of a snow-capped peak and fresh mountain stream. Down at the corner of the label are the words "Bottled in Ben Smim".
Looking at the Ben Smim village area, rushing streams and abundant water are not the first image that comes to mind. The hillsides are a study in shades of grey, brown, and red, and most of the soil is cracked, dry, and eroded. Why use the one small spring in the area? The story, it turns out, is far more convoluted than one might think. In the late 19th century, when Morocco was still a French colony, a Frenchman visited the mountains in the area and drank from the spring. As the story goes, the asthma he had been suffering from his entire life was suddenly cured. He then went on to tell everyone he could about the healing properties of the spring water and mountain air of Ben Smim. After World War 2, a sanitarium was built on a ridge overlooking the village, where injured veterans could come to enjoy the fresh air and begin to heal their wounds. The sanitarium closed in the fifties, but the building still remains, a Soviet-style block of concrete stooping over the village with broken windows and chipping paint. Apparently there have been three attempts to reopen the facility, but each time "something" has happened to scare builders away from it. Local legend has that it's haunted, and looking at it now, I'm pretty sure I believe them. I don't have any pictures, unfortunately, partly because it was a ways away, and partly because I don't want the ghosts of angry soldiers haunting my camera.
Ever since then, the waters of Ben Smim have been associated with pureness and healing in the Moroccan popular consciousness, which would explain the demand for a water bottling company in the area. The facility itself is a huge building permeated with the smell of chemicals and filled with high-tech equipment. The machinery was so loud I could barely hear a word the presenters were saying, and I wasn't particularly inspired to learn about the intricacies of water packaging to begin with. I did, however, get a sense of just how many resources are put into the sale of so deceptively simple a product.

Perhaps the only interesting thing I learned there was that water bottles begin looking like a test tube, then get expanded with a blast of heat into the top.

That night, we got a little bit more of the story. One of the Ben Smim Village elders (who I won't name here) came and talked to us about the full story behind the dam and Aïn Ifrane. Villagers had enjoyed the water coming from the spring for centuries, using it for drinking and crop irrigation. Morocco as a whole has been experiencing lower rainfall and warmer temperatures for a year, and the village is no exception; water flow from the spring has been steadily decreasing, putting more stress on already fragile crops.
In the 2000's, the Moroccan government, under it's "structural adjustment" program (encouraging free trade, cutting social programs), decided to grant a 30-year lease for rights to the spring water to a French corporation, Euro-Africaine des Eaus, in order to sell water from the spring. The corporation would profit hugely given the image behind Ben Smim and its waters already in the Moroccan consciousness, and the government would profit heavily from tax revenue as a result. It was a win-win situation, with one tiny problem: the people of Ben Smim village had received no prior consultation on the matter, and would receive none of the money received from selling the water. To add insult to injury, the state-run electricity company, ONEE, came in and decided to begin charging villagers for the water they had always gotten for free. The precious water was simultaneously privatized and commodified, when it had previously been a public resource.
The villagers launched several marches in protest of the loss of their water, marching from the village to the source of the spring. Originally the protests were disorganized, but they gained the support of many activists in Morocco and internationally, especially among anti-globalization and anti-privatization organizations. The results of the protests weren't entirely encouraging. The government argued that, by law, it owned 60% of the water from the spring, it had a right to sell off whatever rights it desired. Twelve protestors from the village were arrested for obstruction for some of their actions, and the rest of Ben Smim was the subject of a lawsuit from the government. Each villager was charged $3,000 (about twice their annual income) for their actions, but this was suspended on the condition that they never speak out against or otherwise oppose the water bottling company. The government also decided to build the dam in order to say that they were "developing" the area, and as a way of keeping villagers happy.

The Ben Smim raises many issues about privatization, public goods, and resource usage. Why should villagers be forced to pay for water they have used for free for centuries, especially when they are already losing much of it because of government decisions and other factors outside their control? Why does the same government that has done so little to develop the area previously have the right to charge them for something so essential to survival? Literacy rates in Morocco hover around 60%, and are even lower in poor, Berber-majority villages like Ben Smim.
Should water ever be privatized? This is a question I've been struggling with for a while. On one hand, the tragedy of the commons is a real thing. If all water is provided for free, what is to discourage large industry from overusing it or polluting it for others? But on the other hand, why should one have to pay for something they literally can't do without? I'm not sure I can justify that, at least in the form it's taken in Ben Smim.

I asked the village elder if he thought that the protests had been a successful. He thought for a moment before he responded.

"Yes. If we hadn't protested, we would be paying for our water right now."

The next day, we visited the city of Ifrane, a ways up from Ben Smim. The best word I can use to describe Ifrane is "creepy". It was built in the 19th century as a resort town for rich colonizers to visit over the winter, so the architecture is distinctly non-Moroccan. It looks more like a Swiss village than a city in North Africa. October isn't peak tourist season, so most of the village was silent and empty. One of my professors described it as "the set of Edward Scissorhands", which is pretty accurate.
Things only got weirder when we visited Al Akhawayn University, an American-style university that is the off-season centerpiece of the city. It was built in 1993 as part of a grant from the king of Saudi Arabia. The money was originally meant for environmental cleanup, as a Saudi oil tanker had capsized off the coast of Morocco. However, the prevailing winds blew the oil off the shore, so none of it was needed. Instead, the king of Morocco decided to establish a vastly expensive college in the weirdest city in the country. Al Akhawayn really is "American-style"; the system is basically the same as any liberal arts college in the States. Almost all of the classes are taught in English, and many of the professors are foreign. The campus itself also looks otherworldly, especially after coming from impoverished, traditional Ben Smim.

Al Akhawayn is strictly the domain of the rich and powerful. The parking lots are filled with Fiats, Mercedes', and BMW's, and students are uniformly well-dressed and progressive. Tuition is about $50,000 a year, and the university offers exactly one full-ride scholarship a year for poorer applicants. All this in a country where average yearly income is less than $8,000. To be fair though, I didn't feel all that much more out of place than I do at my prestigious liberal arts school in America.

At the university, we met the students who were part of the 1-year-old Environment Club- all five of them. It was really nice to have some interaction with people our age who spoke our language, something that has been distinctly lacking in Morocco so far. There was a presentation towards the end where one of the professors at the university talked about the environmental and economic situation in the country. Morocco has been eagerly liberalizing its economic system, opening up most of its produce for export, and at the same time importing food from other countries to replace that. The message I've been getting throughout this program, both in class and with guest lecturers, has been virtually uniformly anti-free-trade. Many of those arguments make a lot of sense to me, but I can't help but feel like there's a lot of the story being left out because of it. Part of recognizing that there's definitely some conclusions we're supposed to draw from our education in the program- conclusions that were engineered by the program itself- is realizing that it's important to remain skeptical of everything that I hear, especially when there's only one side of the story given. Which is most of the time.

One point that did resonate with me, however, was a question asked by Jawad, our country coordinator: why should Morocco, a country where water is a scarce, precious resource, raise water-intensive crops such as tomatoes in order to export them to richer European countries that have no shortage of it? Doesn't that essentially amount to sending water from a country that doesn't have enough to places that already have too much? It's a question I'll have to keep in mind as I move on with my economics classes.

Sunset over Ben Smim

The next day's site visit was to a fish farm nearby Ben Smim. The fish farm raises two different types of trout: an endangered species native to the Atlas Mountains (whose name escapes me) and Rainbow Trout imported from North America. Rainbow trout are used for game fishing, and apparently can't reproduce naturally in the streams in the Atlas Mountains, so don't run the risk of becoming an endangered species. From what it seemed, the Rainbow Trout seemed like a source of income for the fishery so that they could aid in the conservation of the native trout. It reminded me of the anecdote I learned on my first day of Economics class, wherein the best way of conserving endangered African animals was by raising them in game parks in North America in order to be hunted.
I think what struck me most about the fishery was the location: fish were raised in a semi-dammed pond in a mountain valley, surrounded by cattails, shrubs, and yellow-leaved aspen trees. It looked more like a scene from Colorado than anything I'd experienced in Morocco before that. It was actually surprisingly nostalgic.

Fall foliage- something I hadn't realized I missed until I saw it again.

An albino variety of the native trout

So... this is Morocco?

A giant reservoir on the drive south. Very otherworldly.

The final stop of the journey was the Afourer Station, the second-largest hydropower station in Africa. The dam itself was predictably gargantuan, and the director, despite looking like a supervillain from a James Bond movie, had a lot of interesting information about it. Because of a few free-trade agreements Morocco has made, they are obligated to buy most of their power from a European corporation, JLEC. JLEC charges the country quite a bit, and does not change prices throughout the day, meaning that they have to pay just as much during the day as they do at night, even though there is far less electricity consumed during the day. In order to assuage a bit of this, the Station stores electricity during the day when it isn't needed, then sells it to the system at night for lower prices. It's also for a measure of energy sovereignty, so that the government does not have to depend entirely on foreign corporations for essentials such as electricity. I didn't completely understand the entire presentation, since I'm by no means an engineer, but I could definitely appreciate the sheer scale of it.

This is not the reservoir of the dam, but a water storage pond- I honestly can't really say what the actual purpose was. The reservoir is far, far larger.