Abderrahim El Ouali
CASABLANCA, Sep 29 2007 (IPS) – Industrial pollution is causing at least two billion euros worth of damage every year in Morocco, environmentalists estimate.
This is a serious problem in Morocco and the situation is getting worse and worse, environmentalist Mahfoud Atif from the independent watchdog Modernity told IPS.
The last official study into industrial pollution was carried out by the ministry of environment in 2004. The study that looked at 220 industrial units showed that 81 of these are extremely polluting.
The food-processing industry comes first, generating 68 percent of toxic and organic refuse. Olive oil industrial refuse is the main source of pollution of water sources, especially the main rivers Oum Rabî and Sebou.
Chemical activities produce 20 percent of toxic discharges, and the leather and textile industries nearly 10 percent.
The most notorious case is at Jorf Lasfar in the east where a phosphate complex generates a great deal of refuse that is polluting seawater. The plant causes considerable air pollution as well.
Fresh water availability is declining. The situation is catastrophic. The annual availability of water for each citizen is diminishing. It was 3,000 cubic metres in 1971, then became less than 1,000 cubic metres in 1998, Larbi Moussaif from the Tamdakourt Association for Development and Environment Protection (TADEP), told IPS.
By 2020 there will be just 500 cubic metres annually for each citizen, Moussaif said.
Atif says the escalation of industrial activities, without any preventive measures to protect the environment, is seriously affecting nature.
However, not all industries are indifferent to the environment. Some industrial sectors have recently begun respecting the environment, but this is not enough. Others should also take similar measures, Atif said.
The cement industry has been the first to initiate decontamination projects in Fez about 120km east of capital Rabat, and at Safi, along the coast to the west. Decontamination of industrial units costs more than 136 million euros a year.
Protection is better than cure. If the environment was respected as it should be, such important funds could have been used in other projects of development, Atif said.
Decontamination is necessary once natural surroundings have been affected. But this may not be good enough, environmentalists say.
The ecosystem is not a machine that we can repair. Nature is to be respected and preserved. If the ecosystem is imbalanced, it is impossible to bring it back to its initial state, Atif said.
Some fear that it is too late to repair the damage. The country is losing 30,000 hectares of forests each year mainly because of industrial pollution, and this is seriously affecting biodiversity, Moussaif said.
Authorities are trying to compensate this but not successfully. They hardly could plant trees in 5,000 hectares annually, he said.
Morocco has nine million hectares of forests, which represents 12 percent of its surface. This is less than the 15 percent international norm to maintain a balanced ecosystem, Moussaif said.
Imbalance of the ecosystem has a dangerous effect on health. Each year public health services register more than 100,000 cases of typhoid fever because of water pollution that is mainly due to industrial liquid refuse, Atif said.
Faced with this dangerous situation, the ministry of the environment has set up an Industrial Decontamination Fund (FODEP). The fund has been financed with 92.2 million euros from the German Financial Cooperative Agency (KFW).
Some 17 projects of decontamination have been completed so far at a cost of 10 million euros.
All factories that have a turnover of less than 36 million euros can benefit from the fund to introduce decontamination projects or to get access to less polluting technologies.
It is important to help small and medium-sized firms to introduce decontamination projects, Atif said. But it is more important to increase the environmental awareness of industries so that they would preserve and protect the ecosystem before it gets damaged.
Civil society is beginning to take a hand in increasing environmental awareness.
As far as the environment is concerned everyone should do their bit, Abderrahim Wardane, member of the Moroccan Association for Solidarity and Development (MASD) told IPS. However, civil society action over the problem of industrial pollution is not yet efficient enough. This is due especially to the lack of qualified human resources and financial means.
But if NGOs lack human and financial resources, municipalities do not. Municipalities should get more involved in protecting the environment and fighting industrial pollution, Mahfoud Atif said.
One way they can do this is to make sure that giving permission to industrial units should be tied to clear specifications regarding respect for the environment, he said.
Permission is at present granted by municipalities with no environment committees. Environmental awareness among members of municipalities is not yet deep enough, Atif said.
