Troubled Waters: the Fraught Political Economy of Wastewater Reuse in Morocco and Tunisia

Résumé En

The dominant discourse on wastewater reuse is heavily depoliticised. This unconventional resource isgenerally promoted as a 'no regret' solution to water scarcity. When political issues are broached, they take fairlyinnocuous forms that appear quite easy to resolve in a consensual manner, such as the need to overcome the'barriers' of social acceptance and intersectoral collaboration. In this paper, we challenge what we see as superficialapproaches to the politics of wastewater reuse. We do so by discussing the cases of treated wastewater reuse forirrigation (TWWRI) in Zaouiet Sousse (Tunisia) and Tiznit (Morocco). We argue that in both cases, TWWRI has beenplagued by unresolved tensions that are deeply rooted in the specific political economy of how this resource isproduced. We particularly highlight three structural political-economic contradictions. These are: 1) thecontradictions between the state’s preference for the largest possible schemes and the lack of interest of (many)peri-urban farmers who would rather urbanise their land and/or practise low-intensity farming alongside otheroccupations; 2) the tension between high operational costs and the poor smallholders who are typically targeted;and 3) the contradiction between the pockets of stringent state monitoring thus created and the surrounding seaof laisser-faire. We show how these contradictions play out somewhat differently in Morocco and Tunisia due to amore robust structuring of the water users association in Tiznit than in Zaouiet Sousse. We also show that thesematerial contradictions are associated with different conceptions of the meaning and worth of TWWRI projects,which argues in favour of a cultural political economy of wastewater reuse. In conclusion, we argue for re-politicisingand democratizing TWWRI more decisively instead of striving to depoliticise it.