Recommended Support and Project Follow-up

Routine and strategic decisions on resource fees and taxes and forest sector development must be supported by accurate and regularly updated valuations of the country's forest land and environmental resources.

Updated inventories on the quantity, quality and distribution, etc. of those resources forms the physical bases of resource valuations. The economic basis of resource valuation requires cost and productivity data on infrastructure development, harvest, transformation, distribution and related activities.

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Recommendation: The infrastructure and human resource capacity of the MCEF to conduct regular and timely resource valuation must be broadened.

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Recommendation: The MCEF valorisation service must be broadened to include all of Morocco's forest land environmental services.

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Recommendation: Forest and forest environment products and service fees and taxes, and the mechanisms for their calculation, should be authorised through "schedules" to relevant acts and dahirs.

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Recommendations: A mechanism to incorporate timely adjustments to fees and taxes should be developed and appended to all relevant MCEF contracts.

It is easy to demonstrate that the fragmentation of forestry responsibilities amongst a number of ministries damages government’s ability for sound fiscal management of Morocco's forest land and environmental resources. Compromises occur that expose government to criticisms of:

lack of commitment to its MCEF

unaccountability through diluted scattered responsibility

poor design and implementation of resource development strategies

wasted financial and physical resources

unresponsiveness and delays in addressing critical environmental degradation

Forest sector development strategies - including resource transformation and revenue generation targets - depend upon the input from a number of non-forest sector actors (ministerial, industrial, transportation, financial, etc.). Each of these actors must be consulted or be part of the country's overall effort at defining forest sector development targets and timetables. Each should also be involved in monitoring the progress towards reaching promulgated strategies.

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Recommendation: Government should consolidate within the MCEF direct responsibility for all of Morocco's forest land and environmental resources.

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Recommendation: Intra-agency mechanisms should be implemented to facilitate co-ordination of individual ministry objectives with respect to forest land and environmental resources.

Inappropriate user access is a critical factor leading to the degradation of Morocco's forest land and environmental resources - which appear very clearly unmanageable under existing land tenure and property rights regimes.

Forest capital depletion is resulting from individuals' efforts to "privatise" the benefits of an "open access resource". The introduction of appropriate "exclusive" individual or collective property rights must be attempted to reverse consumption patterns and promote sustainable use and forest capital enhancement.

Physical capital investments in the forest sector will remain unattractive until Morocco can provide operators a reasonably secure access to a raw material supply (through appropriate market mechanisms). Current resource and sectoral management practices place this in question.

Overall financial performance and contributions to government revenues will remain sub-optimal until land use and property rights are rectified.

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Recommendation: The MCEF should calculate the loss of revenues resulting from current "open access resource" - (using the MCEF's "resource valuation" service and approaches recommended above). This information must be used to direct land tenure reform.

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Recommendation: Government and MCEF should develop land tenure pilot projects to develop and assess the appropriateness of alternative tenure arrangements for access to Morocco's forest land resources.

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Recommendation: To meet the needs of a variety of potential forest sector operators, new forestry tenure arrangements (licenses, leases, etc.) should provide for short-term, long-term, and large and small volumes of raw material.

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Recommendation: New tenure arrangements should include provisions for performance assessments and for revocation of user rights or renewal of user rights dependent upon compliance with tenure conditions.

Subsidies constitute a transfer of national resource rentes from the country's forest patrimoine to private sector operators. Forest revenues are diminished as a result of subsidies because of:

direct payments to the operator

discounts or otherwise lower cost access to raw materials (logs, electricity, tax relief, etc.)

loss of investment because of the distinct competitive advantage of the subsidised operator

Granting subsidies should be subject to a rigorous, transparent and accountable process - if they are used at all. They should be made available through competitive mechanisms and awarded to proponents delivering the best proposal.

Subsidies should be permitted only for very limited periods and only while certain precipitating circumstances prevail. In any event, beyond the specified term, subsidies should normally be discontinued. The continuation of the precipitating circumstances under which the subsidies were justified should not constitute a reason for extending the term of the subsidy. The above stipulation should constitute a condition of the subsidy - before it is granted.

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Recommendation: The use of subsidies to encourage the development of the Moroccan forest sector should be reviewed - (using the MCEF's "resource valuation" service and approaches recommended above).

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Recommendation: Subsidies should be awarded through competitive processes, should be limited in duration and should not be extended. Subsidies should be introduced on a pilot project basis to assess their suitability for meeting their intended objectives.

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Recommendation: As much as possible, the use of subsidies should be discouraged.

Morocco's forest taxation should be "rationalised" to ensure that its various components are consistent and direct sector developers and resource users towards predictable desirable behaviour and outcomes.

Many forest land resource "users" currently escape being assessed "user fees" or taxes. The scale of the value of such "open access" resource use dwarfs the amounts that are actually collected for legitimate uses. This constitutes an enormous loss of revenue for government.

Similarly, many forest land and environment resource "uses" are currently provided - or appropriated - without any fees or taxes actually being prescribed by law.

The costs for user damages - forest land and environmental degradation, dam sedimentation, loss of agriculture productivity, loss of water quality, etc. - caused by sanctioned and unsanctioned resources use remains virtually totally unrecovered.

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Recommendation: Morocco should "internalise" the cost of user damages by properly attributing the damages - directly and indirectly - to a specific user group(s).

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Recommendation: Morocco should introduce the notion of "environmental" taxes to assign user costs for the services provided by the nations forest land and environmental services - and - too induce changes to resource use patterns to mitigate damages.

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Recommendation: Under the heading of the above mentioned "environmental taxes", government should give consideration to taxing consumption of water, fossil fuels and electricity.

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Recommendation: Under the heading of the above mentioned "environmental taxes", government should give consideration to directly taxing "open access" resource users.

The justification and objective of the two taxation regimes mentioned in the last two recommendations above is:

to recover the cost of repairing damage to and maintaining and improving forest land's soil and water conservation services, and

to induce resource use behaviour changes towards more sustainable patterns.

Though Morocco is a country in transition, it demonstrates a considerable capacity in many areas. In respect of forests and forestry, Morocco and the MCEF has a solid cadre of professional managers and planners. To a large extent, with some fundamental changes to relevant structures and mechanisms, Morocco could rely on its own public and private sector resources to achieve the sustainable development of its forest resources.

Morocco has successfully attracted the participation and assistance of international organisations in the past and has plans in place to do so in the future. The broad experience of such organisations brings considerable benefits and can hasten the rate at which capacity is enhanced and sustainable processes are implemented.

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Recommendation: Programmes and projects that develop structures, mechanisms or operations that contribute to improving government forest sector revenues or lowering related costs should receive a high priority for donor funding.

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Recommendation: Donor assistance should, as much as possible, be leveraged by integrating and co-ordinating programmes to maximise benefits, avoid duplication of infrastructure and administration, maximise technology and know-how transfer, and build upon previous efforts in a progressive way.

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Recommendation: The use of donor assistance should be limited to those areas of specialisation where socio-economic benefit /cost performance is highest and where Morocco may otherwise experience delays that jeopardise maximising resource benefits and revenues.

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Recommendation: As much as possible donor assistance should be applied to "investment" expenses that demonstrate an acceptable rate of social and economic return. The application of donor funds to "recurrent" (fonctionnement) costs should be avoided.

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Recommendation: Only programmes and projects that can demonstrate sustainable outcomes should be implemented. The consequence of supporting unsustainable activities includes 1) loss of funding support for other projects that can demonstrate sustainable benefits, and, 2) incurring debts that have produced no benefits themselves.

The discipline imposed by private sector partners routinely exceeds that seen in public sector operations. Many aspects of government's objectives can be advanced by simply creating circumstances conducive to competitive private sector activities.

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Recommendation: Morocco should actively recruit the participation of and work closely with the private forest sector to establish a comprehensive approach (policies, roles, structures, strategies) to developing its forest land resources.

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Recommendation: As much as possible, government should limit its role in the forest sector to ensuring:

competitive access for operators

normal profits for the private sector

surplus "rent capture" for the owners of Morocco's forest patrimoine.

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Recommendation: Government, MCEF and the private sector should work closely together to rebuild Morocco's relevant taxation regime to support all of the country's forest land development strategies.

Throughout Morocco there are areas where "high internal input" approaches are, in fact, the only practical and affordable way of managing and developing local forest resources. Local labour, for instance, can be recruited at local wage rates and, for several reasons, with appropriate supervision can often be noticeably more efficient.

Rural populations benefit most directly from Morocco's forest land resources. Some estimates of the value of their "privatised" grazing and fuelwood consumption exceed 3 milliard dirhams. These beneficiaries should be made very directly responsible 1) for the production of these services at sustainable levels only and, much more critically, 2) for the protection of the forest land from which they are produced.

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Recommendation: Rural populations, in conjunction with MCEF staff, must develop Programmes to base fuelwood harvesting and livestock grazing to sustainable levels.

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Recommendation: Rural populations must be made accountable for the damage they cause by establishing and implementing "resource practices codes", enforcing such codes, and imposing sanctions where infractions occur.

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Recommendation: Programmes to serve rural populations' needs for 1) access to credits, 2) forest and agriculture extension services, 3) environmental assessments, 4) and local forest industry development must be designed and implemented.

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Recommendation: The provision of the 1976 dahir granting forestry receipts to rural communes, should be repealed. All forestry investment on "public" forest land in Morocco should be under the direct supervision or management of the MCEF.