High Atlas Foundation

The High Atlas Foundation is a civil association registered in both Morocco and the United States that works with rural communities across all twelve regions of Morocco. Its core activity is community-driven development: staff and volunteers facilitate participatory planning processes through which communities identify and prioritise the projects they most want to realise, covering agriculture, water infrastructure, family literacy, waste management, and cultural preservation. The organisation employs ninety full-time staff, approximately forty percent based in Marrakech and the remainder working in the regions they serve, alongside a substantial volunteer network that speaks the full range of Moroccan dialects.

The foundation operates nine nurseries across Morocco, producing an average of one and a half million seedlings per year for free distribution to smallholder farming families. The nurseries stock exclusively endemic and drought-resilient species — including carob, argan, fig, almond, walnut, pomegranate, and pistachio — and do not produce fruit trees that require chemical pesticides. Land for the nurseries has been donated by the national water and forestry agency and by Moroccan Jewish communities, which make vacant land adjacent to rural cemeteries available at no cost. Several nurseries are managed by women's cooperatives. The foundation has planted in the order of five million trees since its founding roughly twenty-five years ago.

The foundation monitors planted trees for certified carbon offset credits, currently selling verified carbon units at approximately forty euros per tonne, with eighty percent of proceeds returned to farming communities. This carbon credit mechanism, developed in partnership with a Dutch organisation, represents the foundation's primary self-generated revenue stream, designed to reduce dependence on external donors and give the organisation discretionary funds to direct toward community-determined priorities. Historical funders have included the United States government and its development agencies, the European Union, the Moroccan national human development initiative, the German development agency, and a range of private-sector partners.

The foundation explicitly excludes from its nurseries any species requiring synthetic inputs, and its agricultural approach supports polyculture and agroecological diversification over monoculture, on the grounds that diversified plantings provide greater resilience to drought, heat stress, and price volatility. Water infrastructure — irrigation canals, cisterns, and mountain terracing — is identified as the organisation's largest single area of investment. The foundation holds partnerships with five Moroccan public universities and maintains field representation in all twelve national regions.