Morocco : Integrated Coastal Zone Management Project

Overview & Synopsis

Morocco’s coastal zones and associated marine environments form the backbone of Morocco’s economy. They face numerous threats including urbanization, pollution, resource depletion, and climate-related risks such as drought and sea-level rise. Coastal degradation and climate change endanger the livelihoods of millions of people dependent on fisheries, tourism, and agriculture. The threats to coastal and marine ecosystems have been exacerbated by sectoral activities working in isolation from each other, often with conflicting objectives. By 2012, the government of Morocco had already taken several steps to strengthen integrated coastal zone management (ICZM). Building on these steps, the World Bank’s ICZM Project was designed to pilot the ICZM approach in targeted areas along Morocco’s Mediterranean coast in the east. This Project Performance Assessment Report forms part of a cluster assessment of three World Bank projects that has informed the Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) evaluation Making Waves: World Bank Support for the Blue Economy, 2012–23. This assessment offers the following lessons: (i) The use of small pilot projects to demonstrate the benefits of ICZM can be an effective starting point to overcome resistance from different sectors and resource users, catalyze investment, and create buy-in for ICZM at the policy level. (ii) Small-scale ICZM projects are unlikely to achieve lasting benefits without sustainable funding, continuous adaptation, and wider efforts to address rapid, large scale changes occurring in coastal areas. (iii) Livelihoods subprojects may require deeper analysis of markets as well as support to create market linkages to produce viable economic enterprises. (iv) Results frameworks that do not measure environmental, economic, and social outcomes will fail to capture the mutual benefits resulting from ICZM approaches.