Marcel KuperFrench Agricultural Research Centre for International Development | CIRAD
Marcel Kuper
PhD Habil.
Currently Director of the Joint Research Unit G-EAU (Water Management, Actors, Uses)
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266
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Introduction
Additional affiliations
January 2021 - present
UMR G-Eau
Position
- Managing Director
December 1997 - August 2000
Publications
Publications (266)
Initially associated with hi-tech irrigated agriculture, drip irrigation is now being used by a much wider range of farmers in emerging and developing countries. This book documents the enthusiasm, spread and use of drip irrigation systems by smallholders in the global South to explore and explain under which conditions it works, for whom
and with...
Developing irrigation technology for a diversity of farmers with rapidly changing demands can be hard for designers, especially when the technology concerns smallholders in developing countries. Innovation networks supporting the adopted technology increasingly include both globalised players and very local actors, making innovation intermediaries...
The development of intensive irrigated agriculture in arid California has inspired many governments and
people around the world. In the paper, we show how 'California' as a social imaginary influenced North Africa’s
irrigation policies. We trace the influence of this imaginary at two very different and critical junctures: in Morocco
under the Frenc...
Efforts to measure and regulate groundwaters and irrigators are notoriously ineffective. The starting point of this article, therefore, is to question the continued faith in techno-managerial solutions to groundwater depletion. We discuss the potential of the conceptual vocabulary of ‘care’ to complement, refresh and expand ways of talking about an...
Pour contribuer à la durabilité des écosystèmes oasiens maghrébins, il est nécessaire d’avoir des systèmes de recharge de la nappe pérennes, inclusifs et concertés
Au Maroc, les politiques agricoles et rurales, pour faciliter leur déploiement, encouragent la mise en place d’organisations de développement local telles que les coopératives. La création massive de ces organisations peut être comprise à la fois comme une stratégie opportuniste de la part des populations rurales, et comme une injonction descendant...
Onze récits originaux de chercheurs de diverses disciplines (sociologie, génie des procédés, sciences de l’eau, modélisation informatique, anthropologie, hydrogéologie, agronomie, écologie) illustrent dans ce livre des manières concrètes de pratiquer l’interdisciplinarité en vue de construire des recherches engagées sur l’eau en société. Dans un mo...
Dans les oasis de Todgha Ferkla au sud-est du Maroc, les agriculteurs ont recours à la recharge de la nappe comme une réponse innovante afin d'atténuer le déséquilibre entre l'offre et la demande en ressources hydriques. Ce déséquilibre est accentué par les phénomènes de changements climatiques, notamment la sécheresse et par la course accrue vers...
Le présent article explore la gouvernance de l'eau à travers une étude de cas sur la plaine de Berrechid au Maroc. Cette région subit une pression croissante sur ses eaux souterraines, exacerbée par l'augmentation des surfaces irriguées (maraîchage et fourrages) et un pompage intensif. Cette situation a conduit à une surexploitation de la nappe, av...
Dans les zones oasiennes du Maroc, l’agriculture a connu une extension très importante depuis 30 ans en dehors des oasis, basée principalement sur l’exploitation des eaux souterraines et stimulée par des politiques agricoles volontaristes. Les oasis et leurs extensions sont aujourd’hui confrontées à des pénuries d’eau conséquentes, accentuées par u...
This paper analyses the central role of water infrastructure in the transformation of hydrosocial
territories through a case study in the Forquilha catchment in Brazil’s Nordeste. Decentralised state-led
infrastructural development reinforced the resilience of communities to drought, leading to more sustainable water
access by many families; this w...
Rural communities often face problems of securing sustainable supply of water for drinking, domestic and agricultural uses, due to fluctuations in water availability, organizational problems maintaining collective networks, and weak connections with external actors. Using a water resilience lens, we present a participatory approach to develop an op...
Dans le Souf, un bassin maraîcher a émergé depuis les années 2000. 35 000 ha de pommes de terre, irriguées par des pivots artisanaux, alimentent les marchés nationaux en hiver. La nouvelle organisation hydraulique et agricole, extractive et intensive, est à première vue en rupture totale avec l’agriculture paysanne et le système hydraulique fermé d...
There are quite different ways of making sense of wetlands: as wastelands to be drained and reclaimed, as hotspots of biodiversity to be preserved or restored, as buffer zones, or as hydrosocial territories in which people live and produce. We argue that such ontologies not only represent ‘a reality out there’ but help bring this reality into being...
Ce travail explore l’aménagement hydro-agricole des merjas centrales de la plaine du Gharb au Maroc, en suspens depuis plusieurs décennies. Différentes visions contrastées, quant à l’évolution et à la mise en valeur de ces zones humides temporaires, sont avancées par les institutions publiques, les considérant comme zones d’expansion des crues ou d...
Notre analyse montre comment une petite agriculture entrepreneuriale, située à Oued Souf, a traversé une crise d’effondrement des prix de la pomme de terre grâce aux ressorts issus du répertoire séculaire des paysanneries soufies. Ce système de production sous pivot artisanal a réussi sur le plan socio-économique là où les programmes de la grande m...
Water scarcity is a growing challenge to the governance of water resources and to multiple water uses. Dealing with water scarcity requires a better‐shared understanding of water supply and demand dynamics on the part of the different stakeholders who contribute to and/or suffer the consequences of water scarcity. This study highlights the importan...
Groundwater is essential for early-season agriculture in many arid regions. In such regions, however,
groundwater recharge is generally low, leading to groundwater degradation. State responses are seldom effective
in addressing this issue, which leads to fatalist narratives of the unsustainability of profitable agricultural growth
and the collapse...
The intentional recharge and use of aquifers for drinking, domestic use and irrigation is one of the most
elaborate community initiatives in groundwater governance. Communities deal with difficult waters like flash floods
and runoff for short periods, and for more prolonged periods with dry spells that prompt frugality in water use.
These collectiv...
This article provides a theoretical introduction to the Special Issue and briefly presents the various
contributions. It starts with a general plea for inserting the analysis of groundwater and its gradual depletion into a
broader critical analysis of 'development'; it does so in order to trace how particular forms of groundwater use and
management...
Immergés en hiver, les marais saisonniers (merjas) de la plaine du Gharb au Maroc étaient traditionnellement exploités pour le pâturage en été, à côté d’autres usages productifs. Pourtant, ils étaient considérés par l’administration coloniale comme des milieux insalubres et peu valorisés, malgré leur abondance en ressources naturelles. Au cours du...
Les agriculteurs utilisant les eaux des khettaras, galeries souterraines drainant la nappe phréatique et donnant un accès collectif à l’eau souterraine dans les oasis, font aujourd’hui face à un dilemme. Les khettaras se tarissent sous l’effet conjugué du pompage pour l’eau potable et de l’irrigation des exploitations agricoles des nouvelles extens...
This paper is motivated by the pressing need to understand how water use and irrigated agriculture can be transformed in the interests of both social and environmental sustainability. How can such change come about? In particular, given the generally mixed results of simplified, state-initiated projects of social engineering, what is the potential...
In many countries, the challenge of sustaining rural water supplies is entrusted to community organizations, which have difficulties in performing durably the operation, maintenance and cost recovery of rural water supply systems. This paper analyzes how rural communities struggle to ensure a sustainable access to water, while seeking close interac...
One of the most elaborate community initiatives for the management of groundwater consists of managed aquifer recharge and use. In the oases in the M’zab valley in the Algerian Sahara, the collective action that upholds these initiatives has been challenged in past decades by the development of intensive groundwater use with individual pumps in new...
User-led innovation is increasingly happening in a globalized context, connecting local experience to outside ideas, knowledge, and technologies. Alternatively, local innovations designed, manufactured and marketed for a particular context travel to other settings. We analyze the diffusion of a low-cost artisanal irrigation pivot from the Suf Valle...
Local development organisations are now widespread in rural regions of North Africa. In the past, these organisations were usually only involved in a few sector‐specific activities. This study investigated the activities of 24 local development organisations in the Saharan regions of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. The fields of action of these organ...
Despite the attention given to the water–energy–food nexus, there is little field evidence of how this plays out for irrigators. This article analyses the diversity of irrigation system configurations and their related water and energy use in semi‐arid Morocco, where groundwater‐fed and pressurized drip irrigation, although supposedly thrifty, is e...
The current focus on water saving in drip irrigation projects has stifled more classical engineering debates on the relevance of different irrigation techniques for specific field conditions. We show that these debates remain important by analysing a drip irrigation project implemented in a sprinkler irrigation district in north‐west Morocco. The o...
The foggara in the Algerian Sahara has often been portrayed as a traditional ingenious but immutable irrigation system incapable of keeping up with the radical socioeconomic and environmental transformations of the 20th and 21st centuries. Yet, oasis populations continue to use a large number of foggaras. The aim of this study was to reveal the imp...
Les eaux souterraines sont devenues indispensables pour l’agriculture dans les pays semi-arides et dont les ressources en eau sont sous forte pression. À de rares exceptions près, elles sont longtemps restées invisibles. Leur mise en visibilité – sur les plans physique, social, économique, territorial, et institutionnel – résulte d’un processus de...
If the success of agricultural intensification continues to rely on the depletion of aquifers and exploitation of (female) labour, transformations to groundwater sustainability will be
impossible to achieve. Hence, the development of new groundwater imaginaries, based on alternative ways of organizing society-water relations is highly important. Th...
Drip irrigation technology in existing collective surface irrigation schemes is frequently implemented through top-down policies and black box projects, causing significant changes in agricultural water management, uneven effects on local practices and organisations, and very different reactions in the social structures of irrigation. In this paper...
La pression exercée sur les eaux souterraines, notamment par l’agriculture, s’accroît dans toutes les régions du monde. Des courses au pompage s’engagent dont les agriculteurs les plus pauvres sont rapidement exclus. Ce papier présente les solutions proposées notamment par les pouvoirs publics pour encadrer l’accès et l’usage de ces ressources afin...
This paper presents an analytical framework to identify and understand grassroots water governance practices, which we call ‘rooted water collectives’ (RWC). RWCs can be multi-scalar organizations that engage in common property resources management or multi-scalar social movements that advocate for common property resources governance. The framewor...
In 2012, the Turkish state launched a nation-wide program, "1,000 gölet in 1,000 days", to increase irrigated areas. However, these gölet (small hillside reservoirs), which are to be transferred to farmers’ organizations, are often implemented in areas where farmers already irrigate from groundwater, and from one village to another, their appropria...
Dans un contexte de développement de l'agriculture irriguée et de surexploitation des eaux souterraines, le Maroc s'est lancé dans des processus de mise en place de contrats de nappe dans le but de responsabiliser les différents usagers et de les encourager à s'impliquer dans la gestion de ces nappes. C'est le cas pour la nappe de Berrechid où l'ag...
The need for lasting returns on the large investment in state-sponsored drip irrigation projects and the ambitious objectives aimed to achieve requires thorough and continuous assessment of the performance of irrigation systems in use. However, few studies have evaluated the performance of systems once they have been installed, leading to overestim...
This paper aims to analyze interactions between local practices of obtaining private access to groundwater for irrigation, and public policies of groundwater management.
The aquifer system in the Saïss Plain in Morocco has enabled the development of an intensive agriculture, supported by ambitious agricultural policies. At the same
time, the River...
In rural areas in developing countries, the origin and persistence of prevailing narratives of failed collective action have often been explained by the existence of relations of domination. This article focuses on a case in which power relations alone cannot explain the persistence of a prevailing narrative. In a large-scale irrigation scheme in M...
Au Maroc, l’exploitation individuelle des eaux souterraines a permis le développement rapide d’une agriculture irriguée intensive. Dans la plaine de Berrechid, la ressource est limitée et surexploitée. L’agence de bassin tente depuis une dizaine d’années de mettre en place une contractualisation avec différents acteurs pour réguler les prélèvements...
In this paper, we examine the greenhouse horticulture in Algeria’s Sahara, which
is one illustrative example of the agricultural transitions that have taken place in
North Africa on the new irrigation frontiers created through groundwater use. The
entrepreneurial farming systems in the region are characterized by considerable
mobility. Geographic m...
Au Maghreb, la mobilisation des eaux souterraines a permis le développement rapide de filières agricoles basées sur des systèmes de production très intensifs en capital. Ces transitions rapides ont entraîné dans bien des situations une surexploitation des eaux souterraines. L'objectif de l'article est d'analyser comment une telle surexploitation af...
Since the 1980s, the Biskra region in Algeria's Sahara has undergone rapid agricultural change leading to territorial transformation. Horticultural production under greenhouses, associated with a rapid expansion of date palm plantations, has led to a tangible agricultural boom that is constantly pushing the boundaries of agricultural production and...
Cet article s’attache à analyser comment l’évolution des pratiques de pompage pour l’exploitation des eaux souterraines offre une grille de lecture des transformations sociales et territoriales qui traversent un territoire agricole rural au nord du Maroc (la plaine du Saïss). Il met en évidence une temporalité environnementale, à savoir une coévolu...
Since the 2008 global food crisis there has been renewed interest in irrigation infrastructural development, which has sometimes been taken up by the same agencies that developed large-scale surface irrigation in the 20th century. This article presents a case study of the recent '1000 small dams in 1000 days' programme in Turkey to analyse the cont...
The aim of this paper is to analyze the emerging entrepreneurial practices on family farms in two agrarian reform cooperatives in Morocco. Their emergence can be explained by the constant negotiation of multiple and sometimes even antagonistic logics within these farms in a context of rapid agrarian change and the juxtaposition of capitalistic, ent...
Are young rural men and women interested in farming or in rural futures? This question challenged a group of researchers to document the experiences of young rural men and women in several agricultural areas in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. In North Africa there are many signs of rural youth engaging in agriculture and even returning to their villa...
Socio-hydrology advanced the field of hydrology by considering humans and their activities as part of the water cycle, rather than as external drivers. Models are used to infer reproducible trends in human interactions with water resources. However, defining and handling water problems in this way may restrict the scope of such modeling approaches....
Agriculture in the Algerian Sahara underwent radical transformations during the second half of the 20th century. Agricultural development programs, aiming to integrate the Sahara in the national economy, were based on an agribusiness model implemented outside existing oases – in the so-called extensions – through the conquest of new agricultural la...
Drip irrigation is widely used in a range of different farming systems. Farmers generally adapt drip irrigation systems to their specific conditions. Irrigation performance is usually related to the hydraulic parameters of drip irrigation, and is usually expressed as a single static value. We developed a comprehensive approach to account for irriga...
Agriculture in the Algerian Sahara underwent radical transformations during the second half of the 20th
century. Agricultural development programs, aiming to integrate the Sahara in the national economy,
were based on an agribusiness model implemented outside existing oases – in the so-called extensions
– through the conquest of new agricultural la...
Oases in North Africa: Territorial dynamics and sustainability of farming systems. The Saharan oases experienced particularly profound and destabilizing changes in the second half of the 20th century, accompanied by social, economic, agricultural and environmental transformations. New extensions and agricultural projects have been implemented throu...
Groundwater use has favoured the emergence of more intensive agricultural systems in North Africa, often referred to as the “groundwater economy”. In this communication, we are looking at one illustrative example of the agricultural transitions that have taken place in North Africa on the new irrigation frontiers created through groundwater use, th...
This chapter shows how, through a process of ‘bricolage’ on drip irrigation, a distributed innovation agency emerged across different local actors. This allowed drip irrigation to be adapted to a wide range of users and uses in North Africa. It simultaneously created local experience and expertise, and increased the demand for drip irrigation. ‘Bri...
The introduction to this book sets out to question why the belief that drip irrigation is a promising technology to save water, modernise agriculture and help the poor remains powerfully intact, despite growing evidence of more contrasted field situations. It pleads for going beyond these narratives to understand the multiple realities of drip irri...
Groundwater service markets are important and dynamic institutions that provide water to a wide range of farmers in many regions. However, these institutions represent arenas of complex and often antagonistic relations, which determine which farmers gain access to water and how. This study analyses the emergence and functioning of groundwater servi...
Surface water and groundwater for irrigation are frequently used conjunctively, especially in semiarid and arid regions. Planning conjunctive management involves several difficulties, one of which is adapting irrigation institutions and infrastructure to coordinate the management of multiple water resources. This article focuses on the social and m...
Durant les cinq dernières décennies, le Sahara algérien a connu plusieurs programmes de
développement agricole fondés sur l’exploitation de l’eau souterraine. Les pompages d’eau souterraine
effectués dans les nouveaux périmètres de mise en valeur sont souvent montrés du doigt pour avoir fragilisé
les systèmes hydrauliques ancestraux des foggaras (o...
Conventional irrigation performance assessments narrowly confine the possible effects of using drip irrigation to what it is designed to do, i.e., improve efficiencies. While helpful in the design, such assessments leave little scope for the possibility that irrigators adopt the technology for reasons other than improving efficien-cies. Using a cas...
Water is a limiting factor for the development of oasis agriculture. Water use efficiency needs to be improved by searching for different strategies of deficit irrigation. In this context, the response of date palm to these strategies was evaluated by the experimental study of the effects on the vegetative growth of mature palms cv Majhoul. The exp...
ABSTRACTThe recent history of groundwater use in North Africa provides a cautionary tale for climate change adaptation. Even though the short-term threats of groundwater overexploitation are clear, and territorially bounded, and involve comparatively few players, in recent decades, agricultural intensification has consistently increased pressure on...
Efficient irrigation technologies increase agricultural production and potentially save water. Using the case of modernization projects in a small-scale farmer-managed irrigation system in Morocco, we critically discuss the wisdom of solving problems of water scarcity through technological solutions such as drip irrigation and canal lining. In part...
Irrigation designers generally do not target smallholders for drip irrigation and their standard low-cost kits are not suitable for smallholders’ diverse and evolving requirements. Incremental farmer-led innovation of drip irrigation may be more suitable for small-scale farmers. This chapter describes the different farmer-led adaptations of drip ir...
In a context of water shortage and liberalized land and water markets, peasants have increasing difficulty obtaining access to irrigation. The Chilean state promoted the improvement of irrigation efficiency through the introduction of irrigation technology as a solution to this problem. This chapter analyses the process of state-led technology tran...
Abstract
In North Africa, the development of groundwater-based irrigation enabled agricultural intensification and market-oriented production. Groundwater use was also often said to alleviate smallholder poverty. However, there is growing evidence linking the expansion of groundwater-based agriculture with increasing socioeconomic inequalities in a...
This chapter analyses the paradox of continued promotion of drip irrigation through state subsidies and donor-funded projects, on the basis of claims of water savings that are rarely backed up with evidence. Focusing on groundwater, two questions are proposed to unravel this double paradox: why is there increased pressure on groundwater resources d...