The paper introduces and demonstrates different uses of the Arab Spatial Policy Analyzer (ASPA), a new online policy database for the analysis of food and nutrition security in the Middle East and North Africa region. Using the ASPA database, we assess the nature of policy activity throughout the Arab region, specifically during the 2008 global food price crisis and the 2011 social uprisings. The ASPA is a means for identifying broadly those policy areas where governments are active and can help analysts, researchers, and decisionmakers discern what policy actions governments are undertaking to bring about stability and prosperity for their people. The ASPA database draws from a variety of sources: country reports of the Economist Intelligence Unit; datasets of the World Bank Food Price Crisis Observatory, the FAO Food and Agriculture Policy Decision Analysis Tool, and FAOLEX Legal Office; and the Global Agriculture Information Network reports of the US Department of Agriculture’s Foreign Agriculture Service. The database has several distinct features when compared to other policy monitoring tools, including a novel policy classification system and policy directions indicating either an increasing or decreasing value for determinate policy instruments – for example, an increase in food subsidies. We find that in times of crisis governments in the Middle East and North Africa region focus on “firefighting” policies that neglect both fiscal prudence and interventions with more impact, such as investments in infrastructure and targeted social protection measures.

Water and land grabbing is often an indication of growing control by an elite group over natural resources for agricultural production, marginalising their previous users. It may drive and exacerbate social, economic and political disparities and so increase the potential for conflict. In Southern Morocco’s Souss valley, the overuse of water resources is causing aquifer levels to sink and agricultural land to be abandoned. At the same time, irrigated agriculture is still expanding, often permitting the growing of lucrative citrus fruits. This export-oriented agriculture mostly benefits the economic elite, increasing their political influence. Small farmers, on the other hand, face growing threats to their livelihoods. A public-private partnership (PPP) project reallocating water through a 90 km pipeline from a mountain region to plantations in the valley has been implemented to enhance water supply and save dying citrus plantations. However, it is accentuating disparities between farmers. We trace the dynamics of marginalisation linked to this PPP and use emerging water conflicts as a lens to analyse the appropriation of water resources and the underlying political and economic relationships and strategies. On the basis of the case study, we show that water conflicts are as much struggles over political influence as over the resource itself and, consequently, that the related phenomenon of ‘water grabbing’ is not only driven by economic interests but also determined by a political agenda of regime stability and economic control. However, we also point to the opportunities presented by recent social and political changes in Morocco, including the influence of the ‘Arab Spring’, and argue that such processes as increasing transparency, decentralisation and the empowerment of local civil society support, the re-appropriation of water, livelihoods and power. We conclude by examining the limits of this PPP model, which has been internationally praised by financial institutions, and calling for a careful evaluation of its ecological and social impacts before such experience is replicated elsewhere.