RECOMMON · Living Infrastructures, Just Waters: Recommoning Cisterns and Khettaras in Djerba and Tafilalt (RECOMMON)

Water governance is deeply political in North Africa, where climate change converges with postcolonial marginalization and resource depletion. Traditional infrastructures such as cisterns in Djerba (Tunisia) and Khettaras in Tafilalt (Morocco) remain vital for daily life and collective memory, yet are increasingly mobilized by diverse actors—from communities and NGOs to state agencies, donors, and heritage institutions. This project investigates how recommoning—the process through which communities reclaim collective control over resources—emerges around traditional water infrastructures in semi-arid North Africa. It advances three research objectives: (1) to conceptualize recommoning as a discursive, symbolic, and material process, moving beyond institutionalist approaches to the commons; (2) to document how local actors frame and practice recommoning through cisterns and Khettaras; and (3) to assess under what conditions these infrastructures sustain collective governance or, alternatively, become co-opted by external agendas of the state, market, or heritage industries.The project combines discourse analysis, ethnography, and co-production workshops to capture imaginaries, practices, and governance outcomes. By bridging political geography, commons scholarship, and critical water governance, it delivers theoretical innovation, grounded empirical insights, and policy-relevant recommendations. Beyond academia, RECOMMON engages communities in shaping knowledge about water, while informing adaptation and heritage policies in line with the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Ultimately, it reframes traditional infrastructures not as relics of the past but as living socio-ecological systems offering lessons for equitable and sustainable water governance in water-scarce regions worldwide.