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Abstract With regard to internal autonomy, an overview of the policy adopted by Morocco concerning natural resources management in the Provinces of the South confirms the will of the country to have the Sahara Region benefit from a sustainable economic and social development. Ever since the return of the Sahara to Morocco in 1975, infrastructure has exceptionally developed thanks to the well-known attractiveness of the Region as well as to its capacity to accommodate industrial or service-related projects. When it regained its Saharan Provinces, Morocco has made enormous efforts towards developing these desert and arid areas, according to an integrated, participative and interdependent model of management that is beneficial to the populations of the Region. The goal in this respect was primarily to catch up on the delay inherited from the past and, at a later stage, to consolidate economic and social integration. Three sectors of investment particularly illustrate the efforts made by the country to the benefit of the populations of the Region: urbanization, basic facilities, and drinking water. The Kingdom of Morocco has considered other no less important fields. This positive tendency operates in keeping with a policy of social and economic development that is based on the protection and enhancement of potentialities, assigning them to serve the local populations, as well as using them as an emergency lever for the sectors of industry and services. The establishment of such a policy is feasible thanks to the participation of the local populations. Also, this approach will undoubtedly favor the creation of a hierarchy of national and regional economic goals, as well as the strategic management of actions that are intended to lead to the development of the Region, as a territory which is interrelated to other ones. This complementarity is carried out through the market as much as through the institutions concerned with development. The involvement of the entire set of partners in the process of development in infrastructure has allowed for the setting up and creation of several companies in the Sahara Region. Yet, despite the efforts made by the public authorities in this regard, the Region is lacking in a sector that could play the role of a regional economic base. This problem equally arises at the level of each province. These obstacles are overcome in the case of the relation between a central decision-making body and an autonomous region, maximizing social benefit. The amount of the State's budgetary transfers has significantly been increasing towards the Provinces of the South. It is measured up in terms of effective expenditure in the form of important tax exemptions that aim to encourage investment. The impact of this measure turns into the implementation of major infrastructure as well as the improvement of the basic social and economic indicators. The investments in question have turned the Sahara into a space for socioeconomic development based on the support of job and income-generating activities, as well as on the promotion of several axes of development. It is thus under an autonomous economic governance that the Provinces of the South of the Kingdom ought to operate the transition of a decision-making balance between the central and regional bodies to yet another one which, using the correct measures of local and central competences, would result in a restructuring process. Regional territorial authorities in charge of governance ought to consider initiation into local democracy by embracing participative approaches that involve local populations in meeting the needs, in setting up local projects, and in developing relations of cooperation. This huge investment workshop in the Saharan Provinces confirms the fact that these Provinces are already experiencing, at both the economic and social levels, the dynamics of autonomy advocated by Morocco, which is an established advantage in the settlement of the regional dispute over the Sahara issue. Larbi Hanane
Professor-researcher at mohammed v university, Rabat
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