The Kingdom of Morocco shared its experience in disaster risk management during a meeting of Arab ministers concerned with disaster risk reduction held on Wednesday at the Arab League headquarters in Cairo, in Egypt.
Mohamed Jrifa of the Directorate of Natural Risk Management within the Ministry of the Interior highlighted Morocco’s susceptibility to natural disasters due to its geographic location, geological characteristics, and climate diversity, Morocco’s press agency (MAP) reported.
Jrifa highlighted that the speech delivered by King Mohammed VI following the 2004 Al-Hoceima earthquake signaled a pivotal turning point, identifying the necessity to bolster the kingdom’s capabilities in monitoring, forecasting, and developing proactive measures.
The shift in the nation’s risk management approach moved away from a traditional reactive stance towards a more integrated anticipatory disaster risk approach.
Tested and proven to be both effective and cost-efficient, the new approach focuses on observation, monitoring, vigilance, tracking, surveillance, early warning, awareness, and prevention for greater synergy in the kingdom’s developmental programs.
As part of this new strategy, Morocco enhanced the institutional governance of disaster risk management by strengthening the human and material resources of key national institutions, including the Civil Protection, the National Institute of Geophysics, the Meteorology Agency, the National Institute of Geophysics, the Royal Remote Sensing Center, and basin agencies.
In 2008, a new Crisis Coordination and Vigilance Center was established to manage crisis interventions effectively and efficiently. Another development occurred a year later, when Morocco created a Natural Disaster Impact Mitigation Fund.
Morocco initiated an integrated disaster risk management program in 2016. The program, financed by the Natural Disaster Impact Mitigation Fund, has supported 323 preventive projects valued at approximately $461 million from 2015 until the present.
The projects span a range of initiatives, including structural flood management, non-structural efforts such as developing monitoring, forecasting, and early warning systems, as well as risk maps, urban planning suitability maps, and flood prevention plans.
Jrifa also noted that Morocco’s adoption of the Sendai Framework and its commitment to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) recommendations on major risk governance have reinforced the country’s dedication to advancing disaster risk management. He assured the severe social, economic, and cultural impacts of disasters on Morocco are well recognized.
Moroco’s representative emphasized the crucial role of scientific research and technology in mitigating disaster risks, highlighting the nation’s strategic investment in cutting-edge technology for monitoring, forecasting, and early warning systems.
From 2015 to 2023, the Natural Disaster Impact Mitigation Fund financed 50 projects focused on the establishment of such systems.
Morocco has developed a modern and comprehensive seismic monitoring network, encompassing 42 fully autonomous seismic activity tracking stations. The kingdom has also enhanced its capacity to forecast weather patterns and predict climate change with the introduction of a highly advanced weather monitoring and supercomputing system.
To further streamline these efforts, the Ministry of the Interior established a directorate in 2020 to spearhead and oversee the government’s disaster risk management policy.
In line with the goals set out in the Sendai Framework, Morocco has adopted a national strategy for disaster risk management, covering the period 2020-2030.
The strategy is based on four core principles, including engagement with all relevant stakeholders at the central and local levels, diversification of funding sources for preventive projects, promotion of scientific research, and enhancement of international cooperation.
The kingdom has developed a priority action plan (2021-2023) and a comprehensive action plan (2021-2026) to accelerate the implementation of this strategy.
Discussing more recent events, Jrifa also alluded to the solidarity of Moroccan citizens under King Mohammed VI’s leadership in response to the Al Haouz earthquake in 2023. He discussed a reconstruction and rehabilitation strategy for affected areas with an estimated budget of approximately $12 billion over five years.