In Guelmim, the gateway to the Sahara, when natural resources, particularly water, are mentioned, Chakib Nemaoui, from the Southern Development Agency, speaks of "management of scarcity" and the agricultural services of "structural drought and frequent floods." In order to mitigate the violence of this contrast, a purification plant was put into service in 2004. The Guelmim station, an urban commune of 15,000 souls, treats 50 litres of wastewater per second and operates according to the natural lagooning mode, a process that does not use any chemical agents. "We carry out quarterly analyses which all prove to be compliant," explains Mohamed Aït Attou, local representative of the Ministry of Energy, Mines, Environment and Water.

What is the water purified by this structure, which required an investment of 23 million DH, intended for? The answer from the local representative of the ministry in charge of Water is most unexpected: "Due to the legal vacuum, we do not currently have authorisation for any use. For this, the services of the ONEEP, the Hydraulic Basin Agency, the environment, health, agriculture, the Southern Development Agency, and the users' association would need to agree," laments Mohamed Aït Attou, according to whom a local consensus has been found while awaiting the central agreement. "We could, in the first instance, use this treated water for the irrigation of green spaces," he hopes, specifying that Guelmim only has a water table for its drinking water supply which, due to the increase in urban water consumption, has subsided and the water is now at a depth of 60 metres, whereas before 2010, a 20-metre borehole was enough to reach this precious liquid. The Guelmim Cactopole. Adaptation to climate change also involves better valorisation of natural resources, acclimatised to their natural environment for millennia. The prickly pear, the opuntia of botanists, occupies an estimated area of 30,000 hectares in Guelmim. This bounty, already used on an artisanal scale, is at the origin of the creation of a "cactopole" in the future industrial zone: "This is the first essential oil extraction campaign. From this unit, 400 litres of essential oils were exported to the United States for an amount of 4 million DH," according to Chakib Nemaoui, from the Southern Development Agency. This unit, built on the first phase of the future industrial zone, will also produce animal feed from the by-products of the prickly pear and the local couscous called "khoumassi," because, unlike soft wheat couscous, which is generally consumed, the Guelmim one is composed of five different cereals: barley, roasted barley, durum wheat, soft wheat, and maize. A bounty that only asks to be exploited in areas where exodus is a social phenomenon.