Desertification and Its Control in Morocco - Combating Desertification in Asia, Africa and the Middle East - page 99

• satisfy the demand for red meat by the year 2020;

• create a facilitating economic environment for the long term participation of

producers and for the sustainability of animal production systems;

• organize stakeholders and facilitate the modernization of pastoral activity;

• conserve natural resources and improve livestock productivity.

The following actions are being taken at different levels in order to achieve the
stated objectives:

5.2 Policies and Legislation: Review and Update

• Strengthen management capacity to make better economic use of investments and

for the integration of livestock into farming systems. This would be a prerequisite
to improving livestock productivity on rangelands;

• Improve marketing channels to benefit herders, particularly the large number

of small-scale operators, by providing them access to agricultural credit and
markets.

5.2.1 Land Tenure Reform

• Promote community-based organization(s) to ensure active and continued partic-

ipation of all members of the community in the management of grazing land, to
establish and/or clarify by delimitation and registration the status of collective
pastoral lands, and especially to put restrictions on land sub-division and shifting
agriculture;

• It must be made clear that range management is not simply a technical issue

because it also translates land policy into economic use/conservation of basic
resources, and the type of development provided to producers without adversely
affecting the interest of their heirs or of the nation;

• The selection of interlocutors is crucial to the success of the endeavor, given the

nature of the activities to be undertaken. Consequently the beneficiaries must
all have similar needs and aspirations in order to minimize conflict. The group
leaders must also be clearly identified.

5.2.2 Conservation and Sustainability

One of the main objectives of the strategy for rangeland development relates to the
sustainable use of the resources. Protection of the environment is central to this strat-
egy (combating desertification, conservation of biodiversity and agro-biodiversity).
Each year, 100 million tons of soil is removed. Several soil conservation technolo-
gies have been developed in Morocco and are available for large diffusion but in
many cases these technologies have not been permanently adopted.