A circular economy approach to promote the honey value chain in the Arid region of North Africa

The experiment was conducted in the Inzerki apiary, an Indigenous human civilization, rooted in the arid civilization which has highlighted for several centuries the association of the Saharan yellow bee and its melliferous argan based habitat. The reasons for establishing the apiary in 1854 fall into three categories. (i) the ecological welfare, as a hot spot of biodiversity with an extended sunshine, an appropriate altitude and a relatively temperate climate and abundance of melliferous plants, (ii) the welfare fate associated to the moral respect of good management practices including regulation of transhumance, and (iii) managerial reasons making from the apiary location an appropriate site to stand guard on the beehives. However, the honey value chain is experiencing serious problems exacerbated by climate change that hit the Inzerki area over the last decades, due to loss in biodiversity and subsequent scarcity of bee-fodder plants. The GEF/UNDP circular economy project aimed at reversing this trend by shifting management of honeybees from a production oriented value chain to an ecosystem service approach through the introduction of payment for ecosystem services (PES) associated to a biosphere reserve Ecolabel. The total direct value of MAD 10 Million compared to MAD 4 Million Marketed Direct Value provided strong economic evidence to pursue this new paradigm. The relevant external costs will make it possible to unlock substantial resources through PES and to reset the balance between social welfare and the environmental welfare.