Opening address by the Prince of Orange

Speech | 14-11-2005

at the conference Entre moulin et noria (Between windmill and noria) on sustainable use of water in Morocco and the Netherlands,

Ladies and gentlemen,

Four hundred years of relations between our two countries began with an adventurous journey to Marrakech by the first Dutch emissary to Morocco, Pieter Coy. That journey has been commemorated on many occasions this anniversary year, and in fact, it is the reason why we are gathered here today. Of course, the intensity of this relationship has varied over those four hundred years. In the nineteenth century, in particular, there was a kind of 'radio silence'. However, starting in the eighteen-eighties, the Dutch took a new interest in Morocco. But this time it was artists who travelled to North Africa, instead of the traders, diplomats and soldiers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Let me assure you that I'm not trying to show off my knowledge of history. I wouldn't even dare, with so many eminent historians in the audience, even my own professor. But one of those artists did turn the spotlight on one great difference between Morocco and the Netherlands when it comes to water. That artist was the writer and painter Jacobus van Looy.

In 1901, Van Looy visited Fès. Only a few Europeans had ever seen the city before, and he felt like Alice in Wonderland. In a letter he sent to the Netherlands, he wrote, "This city is the kind of sight one only sees in a dream". All the stories, drawings and paintings that Van Looy created in Fès express an overwhelming sense of wonder at all the new and unfamiliar things he found there. This is certainly visible in his beautiful series of watercolours, in a style reminiscent of the young Vincent van Gogh, which depict water-carriers.

The idea that carrying water could be a job was entirely new to Van Looy. If there's one problem we've never encountered in the Netherlands, it's a long-term water shortage. Instead, our great problem has always been too much water. In Morocco, on the other hand, water has always been scarce. That's why water carriers were as exotic to Van Looy as a Dutch cheese-carrier would have been to a Moroccan visiting the cheese market in Alkmaar in the same period.

The title of this conference, Entre moulin et noria, also neatly sums up the contrast between Morocco and the Netherlands. Dutch windmills have been pumping away excess water for centuries, so that we can keep our feet dry even though a major part of our country is below sea level. At the same time, Morocco's waterwheels brought scarce water to the people and the land where it was needed. And so it's understandable that we have only just started working together in the field of water.

But now more than ever we have good reason to work together more closely. That reason is climate change. All the forecasts show that this process will aggravate existing problems. In other words, Morocco will have even less water and the Netherlands even more. But what we have in common is that we are pursuing similar types of solutions. I owe this insight to Dr Mohammed Aïti Kadi, Morocco's leading water expert and President of the General Council for Agricultural Development. I recently read an interview with him in which he discussed water management in Morocco, saying, "For the past 30 years, we have concentrated on capturing resources. Now we are concentrating on managing our water resources." When I read that, I realised that the same basic principle applies in the Netherlands too. In the past, we spent all our time trying to keep out the water with pumps and dikes. But now we are much more interested in the best way of managing our future water surpluses.

Against this background, I see a number of interesting parallels between our two countries. I would like to discuss a few of them with you, to fuel your discussions over the next two days.

The first thing that strikes me is that both Morocco and the Netherlands have made a definite decision to adopt Integrated Water Resource Management - in short: IWRM - as a unifying principle of water management. In Morocco, this approach is set out in the National Water Plan, and the Netherlands has a policy document entitled "Water policy in the twenty-first century". This means that we share the same basic belief; namely, that intervention in the water system can never be seen in isolation. First of all, because all the levels of the water system are closely related. And second, because there is almost always a direct link to other interests: spatial, social, economic and ecological. Integrated Water Resource Management aims to do justice to all these interests.

That brings me to the second parallel I would like to highlight. In both countries, the adoption of IWRM has led to a major shift in focus, as I implicitly suggested earlier. For centuries, in the Netherlands, we followed the same procedures. We held back water, whenever and wherever we could, with the highest dikes possible. And if - in extremely wet periods - that wasn't good enough, we pumped it into the sea as fast as we could. But in the future, increasing rainfall and rising sea level will render that approach useless. That's why we've moved from our old motto - "Pump for your lives!" - to a new motto: "Make room for water." In keeping with this new approach, we are replanning large areas of our country to accommodate high water levels. I can assure you that this is quite an adjustment in a country that for centuries did just the opposite, namely reclaiming land from water.

Morocco is undergoing a similar kind of paradigm shift. In the past few decades, this country has concentrated on large-scale infrastructure projects, making enormous efforts to maximise the available water resources. And those efforts have been successful. Since the late nineteen-sixties, its storage capacity has risen from 2.3 billion to 16 billion cubic meters. Today, Morocco's constant aim is to use its existing water resources in the most efficient, sustainable and socially responsible way possible. This paradigm shift is an essential one, not only because of climate change but also in view of the country's growing population. Without far-reaching measures, Morocco's per capita renewable water resources will drop from the current level of 850 cubic meters to 410 cubic meters in 2020 (1700 cubic meters will be needed for crop). These figures speak for themselves. Just to give one example of the challenges that Morocco will have to meet with the integrated approach: the volume of urban effluents has increased by a factor of ten since 1960. Obviously, that places enormous pressure on potentially usable water resources, and that pressure must be relieved without delay.

And now for the third parallel. In both Morocco and the Netherlands, one sector has a special contribution to make to water management, and that sector is agriculture. In the Dutch case, this is mainly because when we make room for water we limit the possibilities for using that space for other purposes. In most cases this applies to farmland because large-scale flood storage areas don't tend to be located in towns or cities. Especially since there is a trend to combine these projects with the development of new water-rich nature areas - a direct consequence of the integrated approach.

In Morocco the impact of water management on agriculture is even more direct and goes even deeper. That's understandable if you consider that almost ninety percent of water is used for irrigation. Greater efficiency would free up water to address urban water needs. Policymakers here in Morocco have identified two ways of doing so. First, irrigation can and must become more efficient, through better technology and organisation. "More crop per drop" may not be a new idea, but it is a very important goal for Morocco. Second, within each region, they have decided to explore which crops are most compatible with sustainable water use. Globalisation of the market for agricultural products is also part of the picture, because these days it may be more sensible to let other countries take care of the water-intensive crops. Of course, this is all a radical shift for Morocco. And the Moroccan government is managing that shift carefully, with close consultation, information campaigns and a lot of practical support for the farmers who are affected.

And that leads me to the fourth and final parallel I'd like to bring to your attention. Despite all the differences between Morocco and the Netherlands, in both countries it is absolutely crucial to get the public involved as closely as possible in policymaking on water management. In the Netherlands, we are conducting a large-scale, multiyear campaign with the slogan "The Netherlands Lives with Water". That slogan has several meanings. Above all, of course, we want to let go of the outdated notion that water is our enemy, and look at it more as a new friend. But living with water also involves recognising that we need to give water a place alongside places for living and working, and that this comes with a price tag.

Another important way to get more people involved is to make the greatest possible use of local knowledge and know-how. In 1997, in the south of the Netherlands, for instance, a project got under way to encourage farmers to place weirs in their own drainage ditches. That allows them to kill two birds with one stone: leaving more room to accommodate high water levels while raising the water table in the summer, so that they can start using sprinklers a bit later.

Like all farmers over the world, Dutch farmers are the first to realise when something is good for them. The same is true of their Moroccan counterparts. Near here, in the Imlil valley, five communities have joined forces to take on the challenges of water shortages, seasonal fluctuations and long distances to rivers and water points. Their venture is rooted in the age-old J'maa tradition of community-based water organisation. With the addition of advice and training in modern technological, legal, medical and communications skills, this approach has led to clear new agreements about who is allowed to use water and when. After tackling the question of resource-sharing in this way, the next step could be to incorporate the integrated approach into local projects too, because an integrated approach can only be successful if it makes its way into the tiniest capillaries of the water system. Yet another argument in favour of closely involving local communities in national water policy!

Ladies and gentlemen,

I've told you about some of the parallels I see between Moroccan and Dutch water management. Clearly, I have no intention of denying the very real physical, social and cultural differences between our two countries. That would be absurd. But it seemed like an appropriate way to open a wide-ranging comparative conference like this one. And as I said before, the similarities also show that there is plenty of justification for a joint approach to the challenges of water management. That's an important step towards a sustainable future. And that's why my wife and I have a group of young Dutch people with us here in Morocco. Because it is the young who stand to benefit most from a sustainable future.

I wish you a productive conference and I'm sure it will be, because even after four hundred years, we have a lot of new things to learn from each other in the field of water management. And what better place to meet than this historic city of khettaras and fountains. I am very curious about the results you will achieve. The thought I'd like to leave you with for the next few days is that the differences in our approaches to water management are often just as interesting as the similarities. Because it is those differences that we can learn from. As Jacobus van Looy showed us, a little sense of wonder can lead to a lot of wonderful things.

Thank you.