Recent Peer-reviewed Articles
By Ugo D’Ambrosio
24 SEPTEMBER 2025
PHOTOS COURTESY OF Inanc Tekguc
The High Atlas of Morocco, one of the Mediterranean’s most distinctive biodiversity hotspots and a living mosaic of Amazigh cultural landscapes, faces accelerating ecological and socio-economic pressures. This blog introduces three complementary, peer-reviewed contributions that together provide an evidence-based foundation for action. The first offers the most comprehensive IUCN Red List assessment to date of endemic vascular plants in the High Atlas, quantifying extinction risk and clarifying spatial vulnerability. The second, grounded in gender-segmented focus groups across three mountain communes, illuminates how women and men perceive environmental change, negotiate trade-offs, and articulate locally grounded pathways for regeneration. The third, focusing on agdal-like institutions, documents how village assemblies (j’maa) regulate seasonal grazing closures, allocate irrigation through timed “water turns,” and coordinate orchard management. Despite the 2019 reform of the 1919 dahir, which introduced women’s rights while facilitating land transfers, executive tutelage persists; accordingly, explicit legal recognition of agdal and co-governance with public authorities is necessary to safeguard tenure, biodiversity, and livelihoods.
Read together, these studies bridge ecological diagnostics with biocultural and historical insights, underscoring that effective conservation must integrate species-level priorities with community knowledge, governance, and equity considerations. They also delineate practical entry points for policy and program design, from agdal management and varietal restoration to market strategies and social infrastructure, that can align conservation outcomes with livelihoods and cultural continuity.
1. Red List Conservation Assessment of the High Atlas Flora
Rankou, H., Ait Babahmad, R., M’Sou, S., Aghraz, A., Caruso, E., D’Ambrosio, U., Martin, G., & Ouhammou, A. (2025). IUCN Red List conservation assessment uncovers a high level of extinction risk to the High Atlas biodiversity hotspots. Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society.
https://doi.org/10.1093/botlinnean/boae085
This article presents the first complete IUCN Red List assessment of the endemic vascular flora of the High Atlas. Over 100 strict endemics were evaluated through a combination of field surveys, herbarium studies, and literature reviews, following international IUCN standards.
Key findings:
95% of the species are threatened with extinction.
- 33% are Critically Endangered (CR).
- 62% are Endangered (EN).
- 4% are Vulnerable (VU).
- Only 1% is Near Threatened (NT).
Most species have extremely narrow distributions, often occupying areas of less than 500 km².
Major threats include:
- Climate change and drought.
- Overgrazing and habitat degradation.
- Deforestation, fragmentation, and urbanisation.
- Unsustainable collection and exploitation of plants.
- Tourism pressures and agricultural intensification.
This comprehensive dataset fills an important knowledge gap and provides an essential baseline for conservation planning at national and international levels. It will guide Moroccan authorities, conservationists, and policymakers in prioritising urgent protection measures for threatened plants.
Link to the article here.
2. Conserving and Regenerating High Atlas Cultural Landscapes: Gendered Perspectives
D’Ambrosio, U., Saadani Hassani, O., Ait Babahmad, R., Aghraz, A., Aakairi, M., M’Sou, S., Ait Iligh, F., Atyah, T., Ait Baskad, H., Ait Boujamaa, M., da Silva Cosme, P., & Teixidor-Toneu, I. (2025). Conserving and regenerating the High Atlas cultural landscapes: gendered perspectives from the local Amazigh communities. Environmental Development, 57, 101313.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.envdev.2025.101313
This study, part of the High Atlas Cultural Landscapes (HACL) programme co-led by GDF and the Moroccan Biodiversity and Livelihoods Association (MBLA), explores how local Amazigh communities perceive and respond to environmental change.
The research was carried out in Imegdale, Ait M’hamed, and Oukaïmeden, involving 92 participants (40% women, 60% men) in gender-separated focus groups. This approach enabled the team to capture the different ways in which men and women experience ecological change and propose solutions.
Main insights:
Perceived changes:
- Loss of traditional crop varieties and reduced productivity.
- Expansion of commercial crops (apples, prunes) and chemical fertilisers.
- Decline in herds and landraces, and increased costs of livestock maintenance.
- Deforestation, soil erosion, and reduced water availability.
- Shifts in food habits, with traditional diets giving way to modern practices.
- Women uniquely reported changes in medicine and health practices, noting both the decline of medicinal plant use and the increased reliance on modern healthcare.
Gendered differences:
- Women reported more total changes than men, particularly in domains such as food, medicine, and water.
- Men made more formal recommendations, often focusing on agriculture and economic diversification.
- Women highlighted positive changes—such as access to tap water, cooking tools, and healthcare—while also raising concerns about social infrastructure and illiteracy among older women.
Community-led action plans:
- Restoration of ancient crop varieties and soils.
- Better commercialisation of local products.
- Revitalisation of traditional food and medicinal knowledge.
- Strengthening of agdal (communal pasture) management.
- Support for women’s cooperatives and youth entrepreneurship.
These findings demonstrate that biocultural conservation cannot succeed without considering local voices, and that gender-sensitive approaches are essential to designing effective strategies.
Link to the article here.
3. Rights to Land among Amazigh Peoples in Morocco: The Case of the High Atlas
Bendella, A., D’Ambrosio, U., Caruso, E., Martin, G., M’Sou, S., Romera, M. C., & Dominguez, P. (2025). Rights to Land among Amazigh Peoples in Morocco: The Case of the High Atlas. In Land Rights Now: Global Voices on Indigenous Peoples and Land Justice. Cambridge University Press.
DOI: 10.1017/9781009521581.015.
This chapter examines how Amazigh communities in the High Atlas govern land and resources through agdal—customary rules that coordinate seasonal grazing closures, timed irrigation “water turns,” and orchard management, within a state-centred legal framework dating to 1919 and reformed in 2019. It shows that, although recent reforms admit women as rights-holders, executive tutelage and transfer provisions still expose commons to appropriation and fragmentation.
What the chapter covers:
- Historical–legal architecture. The 1919 decree placed collective lands under the Ministry of the Interior with limited judicial oversight; the 2019 law retains executive control while adding women’s rights and expanding avenues for transfers to private investors, often under “public interest.”
- Agdal as governance. Village assemblies (j’maa) manage rangeland closures, allocate water through precise “turns,” and coordinate overlapping property regimes in orchards (public land and water; private trees; collectively regulated access). Sanctions and consensus-based decisions maintain compliance and reduce conflict.
- Scale and ecology. Approximately 85% of High Atlas collective lands are rangelands managed through pastoral agdals—closures that protect vegetation during sensitive growth periods and support transhumant systems.
- Oral law and adaptability. Rules are negotiated, orally transmitted, and locally enforced; despite micro-political tensions, collective norms continue to discipline free-riding and sustain day-to-day cooperation.
Key insights:
- Persistent vulnerability of the commons. Even with reform, communal lands remain precarious due to executive dominance, broadened transfer mechanisms, and land-grabbing pressures. Titles and delimitations provide weak protection when administrative interpretation prevails.
- Opportunity through recognition. Aligning national policy with international instruments on Indigenous and local community rights can strengthen co-governance and provide operational safeguards for customary institutions.
The chapter argues for explicit legal recognition of agdal and structured co-governance with public authorities to secure tenure, conserve biodiversity, and sustain livelihoods—moving beyond symbolic acknowledgement toward enforceable, community-driven arrangements.
Link to the article here.
Why these studies matter
Together, these three publications offer a complementary, multi-scalar perspective. Rankou et al. (2025) quantify extinction risks for endemic plants across the High Atlas; D’Ambrosio et al. (2025) illuminate gendered perceptions of change and locally grounded pathways for regeneration; and Bendella et al. (2025) analyse the historical–legal architecture of communal tenure and the functioning of agdal institutions, underscoring the need for explicit legal recognition and co-governance.
Taken together, they affirm a crucial message: effective conservation in the High Atlas must integrate biodiversity outcomes with cultural knowledge and secure land-tenure governance. Protecting unique plants is inseparable from supporting the communities and institutions that steward them.
GDF remains committed to bridging science and practice, working hand in hand with Amazigh communities to ensure that conservation strategies are locally grounded, culturally sensitive, and ecologically effective.
