Water scarcity and management of this problem are increasingly acknowledged in development policies as well as in adaptation and migration discourse. In South Mediterranean countries, insufficient water supplies in oases are the biggest limitation on yields of sufficient quantity and quality and increase in arable land, in short, the development of agriculture. Insufficient income from agriculture, when it is the main source of revenue, can push people to migrate. However, migration does not have to be the measure of last resort. Proper adaption to this limitation, including proactive migration, can reduce forced movements from this region in the future. The main aim of this paper is to identify and analyse household strategies, including migration, to cope with and adapt to the impact of environmental changes and limitations on agricultural development in the South Mediterranean. This paper is based on field research carried out in the El Faouar oasis area in Tunisia using a mixed-method approach. The results show that the inhabitants of El Faouar must cope with unforeseen crop destruction limiting their daily expenses by selling livestock or, in years of drought, migrating to look for additional sources of income. The results also show that local households try to increase their resistance to climate change, environmental limitations, and permanent migration by developing their agricultural capacity, provided they have additional resources from such endeavours as work outside El Faouar or remittances. Moreover, migration has become part of a wider process of socioeconomic transformation in which people leave in order to cope with or adapt to environmental changes.

This paper is part of a series of works aiming to study the efficiency of EU policies in the countries of the South Mediterranean under the MEDRESET project. It provides a bottom-up assessment of European policies made by different stakeholders operating in the fields of water and agriculture in Morocco. The study is based on a qualitative methodology combining literature review, content analysis and around fifty semi-structured interviews. The paper highlights the local stakeholders' perception of national and international policies in the fields of water and agriculture. It outlines the different issues as presented by the stakeholders in their diversity as well as the perception of the EU's role and the possible ways to improve the EU's approach towards Morocco in terms of assistance and trade policies.

This thesis charts and theorises a general transition from authoritarian to participatory forms of governance and natural resource management, as viewed from the locale of a Saharan oasis town situated within wider temporal and spatial change processes. Ostrom’s (2014) work on the ability of communities to regulate access to the commons hinges on resource users jointly agreeing on and conforming to rules of use. Similarly, recent theoretical developments related to Social Ecological Systems and adaptive management also emphasise group consensus as a prerequisite for adaption. These approaches presume a degree of equality in social relations across the group. In Beni Isguen, Algeria, by contrast, the management of water commons is complicated by class inequalities. This region has recently seen a shift from religion to capital as the dominant ideology behind ruling factions, entailing the contraction of a theocratic influence, with the accession of a secular merchant class. This latter faction has achieved this by ideologically and pragmatically positioning themselves within the hierarchical administration of the nation-state, and thus conforming to national laws. This key shift in political alignment followed a long period of local resistance to over-arching ruling powers. I argue that this conformation has entailed a displacement of a localised ‘social contract’ whereby welfare, labour and regulation were previously achieved through the ‘moral economy’ of reciprocal relations, to a citizen-state contract based on the assumption of rights and certain services (e.g. protection of private property, creation and maintenance of infrastructure), and a reliance on the market to provide goods and other services (e.g. labour). These historical social changes have implications for theoretical developments regarding the role of the citizen-state relationship in terms of the protection of private property vs. protection of communal property, of anthropological perspectives of legal pluralism, and social contract theory. Furthermore, the thesis describes mixed modes of resource management involving new voluntary associations as alternative forms of local governance from below, alongside customary regulatory officials in charge of water. The emancipatory idea of some regarding civil society has received thorough critique by anthropologists (Benthall 2000; Comaroff & Comaroff 1999), yet along with Butcher (2014), I argue that despite this, the recent opening of the civic sector has created an opening for new forms of activity within the Algerian political landscape. However, the informal agreements of voluntary associations appear to lack the ‘teeth’ necessary to regulate uncooperative individuals. Authority today is locally perceived as the prerogative of the state, and so some state regulation appears necessary. The study thus views these processes from the viewpoint of the crucial determinant of life in the desert: water, and from there its social dependents, and how they organise themselves.

To address sustainability challenges of agro-ecosystems located in Mediterranean urban regions, this paper focuses on the multidisciplinary subject of urban agricultural systems. To better understand the diversity and dynamics of peri-urban agro-ecosystems and the main drivers of their sustainability, we compare six case-studies located in Southern Europe (Montpellier, France; Pisa, Italy; Lisbon, Portugal; Athens, Greece) and the Maghreb (Constantine, Algeria; Meknes, Morocco). The research is based on fieldwork in each urban region (qualitative analysis) and literature analysis aimed to position each case study in its national and Mediterranean contexts. The comparison between local contexts indicates large discrepancies in the integration of environmental focus among the respective urban planning objectives. Generally, urbanization tends to accentuate agricultural diversity. The different forms of peri-urban

The aim of this study is to define the main factors of sustainable agriculture and forestry in Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia and Turkey. The study is based on the review of existing literature and country level analyses. In the study indicators which can be used to measure sustainability are defined and examined and data on these is collected. Major challenges of the sector in the study countries are tentatively examined. According to the study relatively much data is available, but not enough to guarantee balanced sustainability assessments. More data is needed especially on resource quality and land degradation, agricultural productivity and to some extent also on rural poverty. To biodiversity and cultural values should be given stronger emphasis than is currently done. For better understanding of the development, data gathering systems in the countries should be widened so that data is collected periodically and also from the regions and that in data collecting all aspects of sustaina...

This publication reviews the historical and current literature on land degradation in Morocco and presents the results of a case study in the western part of the country. It is intended as a reflection on the baseline causes for land degradation, so contributing to the development of enabling agricultural policies and the associated institutional dynamics that are needed to overcome degradation problems. Government employees, land care agencies, NGOs, policy makers, farmers and rural communities are the key target audiences. This report identifies crucial policy inconsistencies and dysfunctions that were, so far, ineffective in overcoming the different forms of land degradation in Morocco. As a result of such deterioration, the capability base of natural resources has been seriously diminished, leading to cuts in productivity in some agricultural systems. In Morocco, soil erosion is a result of several factors. The most important being increased population pressure over limited natu...