By Yossef Ben-Meir, Marrakech, Morocco
I do not know if it is a rule or commonplace as to whether a small act in the area of social development can launch thousands, even countless, small and large acts of sustainable change and growth. In Morocco, there may have been such a relatively modest action taken 32 years ago although at the time, without the pattern in history to gauge its significance, it seemed as big or grand as any good action. What came of it, with a ripple effect for me and for the people in the region—marked by a no-longer-needed, still-standing signpost, now rusted over—was a guide and inspiration in conjunction with encouraging national policies from which we can trace the ensuing decades of community-determined projects.
In 1992, a group of biologist Peace Corps Volunteers was assigned to take inventory of the natural life of Morocco’s national parks, including its oldest and largest protected area (at the time) in the heart of the High Atlas Mountains: Toubkal National Park. Members of Aroumd village told Peace Corps’ Brian Gay that hikers to the summit of Mount Toubkal, North Africa’s tallest peak, were unaware that they were walking through the village’s cemetery, a sacred and solemn place where shepherds never grazed their flocks.
They asked the park administration in the National Agency of Waters and Forest to install a sign directing visitors not to traverse upon the remains of the dearly departed. The park management fulfilled this request, of course, and so began the now well-established gateway for community-park collaboration, development with communities neighboring the nation’s national parks and forests, and much more.
I arrived in Morocco that next year and, fortunately, my Peace Corps assignment overlapped with Brian’s. I sincerely internalized lessons from his experience and that signpost, coming to understand the needs that communities determine and express and the responsibility of development agencies to respond accordingly. This primary tenet of sustainability is so simple, and yet it has taken decades for prior generations worldwide (and still may require generations going forward) to truly forsake the destructive control of central planning in lieu of people’s own decision-making as it impacts their lives.
In 2000, I founded the High Atlas Foundation, a Moroccan-U.S. organization committed to assisting development that is entirely responsive to Moroccan communities. Whatever the High Atlas Foundation has become can only reflect Morocco’s own irrefutable commitment to sustainable development and attaining it through participatory community approaches. In the early 2000s, soon after the ascendancy of King Mohammed VI to the throne, Morocco’s own framework for national reconciliation and unity was driven by self-expression and recognition. This process was followed by a freeing of civil society to define and pursue their missions in such a way as to promote livelihoods, public health, and the natural environment.
By 2004, enhanced women’s empowerment was further nationally codified, with greater legal entrenchment of gender equality in the making today. Morocco’s National Initiative for Human Development was created in 2005. It is a multi-billion dollar funding source for local development projects across the sectors. Also importantly, it explains sustainability to be in part contingent on natural resources, but also on social, cultural, economic, historic, geographic, financial, and technical factors. Therefore, it is called to be designed by way of inclusion, with community at its crux, in order to bring to bear all these critical perspectives and generate benefits in this range of areas as well.
The nation’s municipal charter then came to obligate all locally elected officials to create participatory development plans by and for the people, putting in place short- and long-term project initiatives reflecting the common will. The Decentralization Roadmap of 2008 committed national administrative structures to empower subnational levels and forge private-public partnership to achieve locally-determined development projects and goals.
The Constitution of 2011 ordained the nation’s greatness in diversity and their opportunity to grow individually and collectively. Moroccan multiculturalism is a historic, celebrated, and conformable reflection of normal daily life, and the nation sees this beauty in itself and rightfully seeks its dynamism to lead toward sustainable human development.
South-South, Maghreb, and African unity are also pillars of Moroccan society and major national priorities, understanding that regionalism in this way is not just essential for shared prosperity and security (including environmental) but is also a key stepping stone towards securing the transformational benefits of globalization. Morocco's commitment to renewable energy has attained the status of a global benchmark.
The sign in Aroumd village was for so many people a first sign of the kind of Moroccan direction that was increasingly forthcoming. The projects since, and that hopefully soon will be, still share that core concept of community first, with good intention and strategy for widespread improvement of people’s lives. However, with this infinite potential also comes the reality that the implementation remains dissatisfying for the majority of people, predominantly in rural areas and most acutely in mountain places, where poverty conditions around the world are, unfortunately, concentrated.
The participatory methodology or activities have not been uniformly applied though we can be trained to effectively apply them in real community settings and assist individuals and groups to know what they seek most of all and pursue the projects that will bring meaning into their lives. Methods for people’s own analysis, prioritizing, and action planning that is bound to their innermost self-described interests are, by necessity, also reflective of locational characteristics, cultural norms, and relative conditions. In other words, they must be adapted and or actually born from the society of development experience’s beneficiaries.
Added to the challenge of methodology formation is creating widespread experiential learning programs for people from all walks, agencies, sectors, businesses, and places who interface with or are from the benefiting communities. For example, the National Agency of Water and Forest seeks all of the country’s forest guardians to be trained in facilitation participatory planning and empowerment approaches to engage communities in their self-development. They are needed to catalyze and assist these processes to the point of projects designed, implemented, evaluated, improved upon, replicated, and scaled, and, finally, satisfying the overall Moroccan intent: community-driven, national sustainable development.
As overwhelming and direly needed, yet possible, as is this undertaking, so is a flexible financial provision that meets the local communities’ ranging needs as they see them. For example, support is needed to effectively address the climate crisis and advance communities’ resilience to economic and natural disaster shocks before and during their occurrence and to rebuild following them.
Securing vital finance is the challenge of launching community development movements with the people’s shared determination and support for their projects (never a smooth, linear process but one requiring heartfelt consensus if sustainability is to occur). The majority of donors for development establish their own criteria toward what their funding supports, but this might not fully conform to communities’ highest priorities.
From a seemingly unremarkable posted sign signaled the direction to a national development vision and well-established international model that is remarkable for people in and outside Morocco. The purposeful journey is a gift, especially when it meets the struggle of poverty that runs so deep. This Moroccan story will hopefully soon include a climactic chapter where its participatory model for sustainable development for all will be a signpost rooted to guide nations along their journeys toward people’s fulfilled selves.
Dr. Yossef Ben-Meir, a sociologist, is President of the High Atlas Foundation in Morocco.
Aug. 28, 2024