An Integrated Approach to Rebuilding Resiliency in Morocco
By Fatima Aly
In September 2023, Morocco was hit by its strongest earthquake in over a century, destroying around 60,000 homes. As displaced Moroccans seek refuge in tents and migrate to new towns, debris threatens the quality of soil, air, and water.
While infrastructural disasters in European countries often receive monetary aid from the United States, developing countries like Morocco must solve humanitarian and environmental crises with limited resources. Because resources are limited, rebuilding efforts must be well thought-out to maximize their long-term impacts on damaged regions. Cities must invest in resilient, integrated infrastructure to protect against future natural disasters, especially as they intensify under climate change.
In Ukraine, one building company has found a way to address humanitarian and environmental problems together. For over a decade, Neo-Eco has been transforming rubble into sustainable building material, assessing the remains to determine what is suitable for rebuilding, and then working to strengthen and test it. Even rubble deemed unsuitable for building gets repurposed and incorporated into roads rather than dumped into fields as it traditionally does in the debris-clearing process.
Adopting this technology could completely transform Morocco’s infrastructure. Most destroyed homes in Morocco were made of mud brick, a safer alternative to rebuilding with modern materials since it lacks chemical pollutants.2 While the mud brick debris will weaken due to the damage, a potential solution lies within the local earth. Mud brick can mix with a limestone derivative called lime cement to improve the brick’s strength and erosive resistance.3 The Atlas Mountains, just a few minutes away from the destroyed villages in Morocco, contain large amounts of limestone, making implementing Neo-Eco techniques more promising.4
Repurposing debris into building materials and transporting locally sourced materials to building sites, Neo-Eco technology significantly reduces the cost and time of clearing rubble and completing reconstruction. This reduction makes it possible to rehouse displaced people more quickly and within a reasonable budget. For Morocco to reap the full benefits of this technology, its implementation must account for the growing climate crisis and the concerns of the native people. Developing countries will likely face a higher frequency and severity of natural disasters as the climate crisis worsens, making it necessary to think long-term to mitigate the expected damage.
The United Nations has developed Integrated Strategic Environmental Assessments (ISEAs) to “guide the initial stages of recovery and reconstruction so that new developments minimize environmental impacts and build resilience to disaster, climate and conflict risks.5 Like Neo-Eco conducts building material assessments, ISEAs conduct risk and opportunity assessments on whole regions before generating mitigation options and rebuilding plans. The UN has employed ISEAs to rebuild communities in Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Cote d’Ivoire. In each of these regions, the UN-generated maps account for everything from previous cyclone pathways to flood regions to areas at risk of deforestation — sustainable blueprints for rebuilding plans in the region. ISEAs would aid Morocco in generating resiliency by identifying the areas most susceptible to natural disasters and working with the local population to rebuild more resiliently.
An integrated rebuilding approach would adopt new building technologies to local regions and implement them within an environmental resilience. However, the success of this integrated model relies heavily on the inclusion of the local community in rebuilding efforts. Natives of destroyed regions can offer insight into the strength of building materials, the conservation of natural resources, and the functional needs of the community — all of which are pivotal elements of a successful restoration.
1 https://www.vaticannews.va/en/world/news/2023-10/morocco-earthquake-rebuilding-north-africa.html
2 https://www.fastcompany.com/90844641/how-one-company-is-turning-50000-tons-of-rubble-into-apartment-buildings-in-ukraine
3 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214509522001553
4 https://www.britannica.com/place/Atlas-Mountains/Climate
5 http://www.eecentre.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/ISEA_Guidance_Note_EN_interactive.pdf
