Thursday, August 13, 2020

Environment

News Roundup: Pipeline Approved; Supplies Initiative Began; Hundreds Still Stranded

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Photo credit: World Pipelines.

March 27, 2020.

Three stories you need to read today. Compiled and broken down for you by Reporting Morocco student journalists — every day. Brought to you from the School for International Training’s journalism program, Rabat.

Morocco Grants Rights to Sound Energy for Tendrara Gas Export Pipeline

Source: Morocco World News

Lede: British industrial company Sound Energy announced on March 20 that it received full rights to carry out its Tendrara Export Pipeline project in Morocco.

Key Background: The British company wants to build and operate a 120-kilometer 20-inch gas pipeline to connect the upcoming gas treatment plant and compression station (CPF) with the Gazoduc Maghreb Europe pipeline (GME).

SIT Students Visit Alum Perry DeMarche at Dar Si Hmad

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SIT Journalism and New Media students visited former SIT participant Perry DeMarche (Spring 2017) at Dar Si Hmad for Development, Education and Culture in Agadir on February 20th. After receiving her bachelor’s degree in cultural anthropology, DeMarche worked as an English teacher in France before she began working at Dar Si Hmad as the Ethnographic Field School manager. In this role, DeMarche manages field programs in environmental anthropology for university students. SIT students were also given the opportunity to hear about Dar Si Hmad’s fog harvesting project. This project uses revolutionary technology to capture the water from fog, so Moroccan women no longer have to spend up to four hours a day collecting water.

Out in the Cold: Development Transforms Moroccan City But Doesn’t Address Most Difficult Problems

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This article was published in U.S. News and World Report. Find it here: “Out in the Cold”

By Olivia Fore

RABAT, MOROCCO – AT night under the orange light of new street lamps, residents stroll along the Bouregreg River. Vendors sell toys and kites; children ride miniature cars on the pavement and musicians entertain a friendly audience.

A new Grand Theater, still under construction, looms in the shadows. A new bridge extends tram service to commuters from the city of Salé, across the river.

The five-year “Rabat City of Lights” program launched in 2014 aims to put Morocco‘s administrative capital on equal footing with other major world cities by “promoting its cultural heritage, preserving green space, improving the economy, access to social services, governance and road infrastructure,” according to the country’s Ministry of Culture and Communication.

Morocco’s environmental movement finds a champion in a former professional surfer

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By Celia Heudebourg

CASABLANCA, Morocco – Saad Abid’s phone rings constantly. In the space of an hour, he answers five calls, juggles plans with colleagues and texts extensively, keeping everyone clued in on happenings he has just been informed of. He has the urgency of a trader and the diplomacy of a politician, but his washed out jeans, bright orange G-Shock watch, and palm tree-printed messenger bag paint a different picture of the nature of his work: environmental activism.

“I have a vision, a strategy and I want to apply it.

A Water Problem

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By TABOR SMITH

SBAA ROUADI, Morocco– Karime Zaraoui, 30, stands barefoot in a stream of water, his feet sinking into the moist earth that his father purchased from French colonizers, the land that will one day be his own. Karime worries about one thing; water.

“It’s not a drought, but the land suffers from scarcity of water,” Zaraoui said. He predicts within 15 years, a lack of water will make it hard to cultivate the land, which grows primarily cilantro and olives.

The Zaraoui family’s property lies in what is called Sbaa Rouadi, a small cluster of villages near Fez.

Olive growth provides a sustainable way forward in Morocco

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Olives are more than food for vendor Mohamed Filale – they are a way of earning a living. In 30 years of working at a fruit stand in Rabat, Filale has supported himself and his family by selling one of Morocco’s most popular foods.

“We live off of the olives,” he said.

This story is the same for numerous competing vendors lining the streets in Morocco’s “souks,” or markets. Olives are a staple in the Moroccan diet, and they are also one of the country’s most prominently exported items. But a serious problem looms: the World Bank projects water availability in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region could drop by 50 percent per capita by 2050.

Moroccan Farmers Would Benefit From Insurance

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By GRANGER TRIPP

Photographs by JP KEENAN

Rachid Lazaar, 26, needs only a steady flow of water and a small hoe to flood his entire field before the next crop is planted. He carves countless narrow valleys into the barren land to funnel the water exactly where he it needs to go, it seems more a work of art than fieldwork.

With the hottest and driest part of the year over, watering his land like this is a relief for Lazaar. Drought is a dangerous reality for small, rural farmers in Morocco and it appears he has escaped it, at least this year.

In Moroccan Villages, Solar Energy Powering Education

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By SADIA KHATRI

Gladiator sets and ancient Berber qasbahs are immediately associated with the Moroccan city of Ouarzazate.  But bustling behind its desert winds is a third, equally impressive feat: the pioneering of solar energy. A $9 billion plant launched in 2009 is slowly being assembled to life, while smaller plants on the city’s outskirts have already begun subsiding electricity costs. Yet, an earlier solar project has proved more monumental in some ways, by tackling a local problem: education in villages.

Each morning, in villages dotted around southern Morocco, children skip school to fetch water from nearby wells.

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