16.05. Desert Crops: Drought and Human-Plant Relations in a Southeastern Moroccan Dryland

Recurring droughts, a fungus that kills palm trees, the spread of plantation agriculture, and other extractivist ventures: southeastern Moroccan drylands are undergoing radical socio-ecological changes. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in the Drâa River Basin, one of the driest in the world, this contribution engages with the intersection between socio-ecological crises and shifting human-plant relations. Through a focus on olive trees and watermelon vines, it aims to explore how the lived experience of water scarcity can precipitate changes in human-plant dynamics that come to redefine local agrarian life worlds.

Elena Stecca is a PhD candidate in Environmental Anthropology at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Italy. She is interested in the intersections of rurality, environmental imaginaries, and extractivism in arid lands, specifically focusing on Morocco.