Dismantle green colonialism and stop corporate and northern government greed – The Mail & Guardian

(The Times/Esa Alexander)

The reality of climate change is already visible in North Africa and the Arab region, undermining the ecological and socio-economic basis of life.

To tackle the global climate crisis, we must drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions and rapidly transition to renewable energy sources.

But there are potential dangers that such a transition could perpetuate current practices of dispossession and exploitation, perpetuating injustices and increasing socio-economic exclusion.

Every year, political leaders, advisors, media and corporate lobbyists gather for another UN Conference of the Parties (COP) on climate change. Despite the threat to the planet, governments continue to allow carbon emissions to rise and the crisis to escalate.

After three decades of what Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg called “blah blah blah,” it has become clear that these climate negotiations are bankrupt and failing.

They have been hijacked by corporate power and private interests that promote profitable, false solutions such as emissions trading and “net zero” and “nature-based solutions,” rather than forcing industrialized countries and fossil fuel companies to reduce their carbon emissions and leave fossil fuels in the ground.

With COP28 in 2023 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, the Arab region will have hosted climate conferences five times since their inception in 1995.

At COP27, held in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt in 2022, an agreement was reached on compensation for loss and damage, hailed by some as an important step in holding richer countries accountable for the damage caused by climate change in the Global South.

But because the agreement lacks clear financing and enforcement mechanisms, critics fear it will suffer the same fate as the broken promise (first made at COP15 in Copenhagen in 2009) to provide $100 billion in climate finance by 2020.

As for COP28, the UAE’s appointment of Sultan al-Jaber, chairman of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, to lead the talks appears to symbolize the deep commitment to continued oil extraction, regardless of cost, that has characterised the negotiations so far.

It is becoming increasingly clear that the same greedy and authoritarian power structures that contributed to climate change are now also determining the response to it.

Their main goal is to protect private interests and make even more profit. While the international financial institutions, such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, and Northern governments and their agencies, such as USAID, the European Union and the German International Cooperation Agency (GIZ), are now articulating the need for a climate transition, including in the Arab region, their vision is of a capitalist, and often corporate-led, transition, not one led by and for people.

The vision of the future being pushed by these powerful actors is one in which economies are subjected to private profit, including through further privatization of water, land, resources, energy — and even the atmosphere. The latest phase in this development involves the public-private partnerships now being implemented in every sector in the Arab region, including renewable energies.

Morocco is already working on this development, and so are Egypt, Jordan and Tunisia.

In Tunisia, for example, efforts are currently underway to privatise the country’s renewable energy sector and encourage foreign investors to produce green energy in the country, including for export.

Tunisian law, amended in 2019, even allows the use of agricultural land for renewable projects in a country that is struggling with acute food dependency, a dependency that was painfully exposed during the Covid-19 pandemic and is now evident again as the war rages in Ukraine.

Green colonialism

Inspired by a colonial and orientalist environmental narrative, the Arabian deserts (Sahara) are usually described by these powerful actors as a vast empty land that is sparsely populated. It represents an Eldorado for renewable energy and a golden opportunity to provide Europe with cheap, clean energy.

For example, several examples from the Arab region show how energy (neo)colonialism and extractivist practices are reproduced even in the transition to renewable energy, in the form of what has been described as “green colonialism” or “green neocolonialism”.

Such dynamics are clearly visible in the renewable energy projects that are being established and built in occupied territories such as Palestine, the Golan Heights and Western Sahara. These projects are being carried out at the expense of colonised peoples and are in conflict with their right to self-determination.

In Western Sahara, illegally occupied by the Moroccan kingdom, there are three operational wind farms. These wind farms are owned by Nareva, the wind energy company owned by the holding company of the Moroccan royal family. These renewable projects are used to entrench the occupation by deepening Morocco’s ties with the occupied territories, with the complicity of foreign capital and companies.

In occupied Palestine, the story is not so different, although it is somewhat more brutal and violent. Israel portrayed Palestine before 1948 as an empty, barren desert, which became a flourishing oasis after the establishment of the state of Israel.

Israel covers up its war crimes against the Palestinian people by presenting itself as a green and developed country, better positioned than the fearsome and arid Middle East.

This position has been strengthened by the signing of the Abraham Accords with the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan in 2020, and by agreements to jointly implement environmental projects in the areas of renewable energy, agriculture and water. This is a form of what is called eco-normalization.

Export-oriented projects

In the context of the war in Ukraine and the EU’s attempts to reduce its dependency on Russian gas, we see once again that the EU’s energy security is paramount. We see more gas lock-in, more extractivism, more path dependency and a halt to the green transition where those extractive projects are taking place, such as with the agreement for Algeria to increase gas supplies to Italy.

The Algerian national company Sonatrach and the Italian ENI will pump an additional nine billion cubic meters of water between 2023 and 2024.

The export-oriented projects aimed at securing the EU’s energy security also extend to the renewable energy sector, in projects such as Desertec, Xlinks, TuNur and planned green hydrogen projects in North Africa.

In 2017, the company TuNur applied for the construction of a 4.5 gigawatt solar power plant in the Tunisian desert, which would supply enough electricity via submarine cables to power two million European households.

This as yet unrealized project openly described itself as a primarily export solar project connecting the Sahara and Europe. Given that Tunisia relies on Algeria for most of its energy needs (gas), it is scandalous that such projects focus on export instead of producing energy for domestic use.

The same goes for another project proposed in 2021 by a former CEO of Tesco, in partnership with Saudi ACWA Power, which aims to connect southern Morocco to the UK via submarine cables that will carry electricity over 3,800km. Once again, the same extractive relationships and the same land-grabbing practices are being perpetuated, while the people of the region are not even self-sufficient in energy.

These large renewable projects, while proclaiming their good intentions, end up disguising brutal exploitation and plunder. It seems that a familiar colonial plan is being rolled out before our eyes: the unlimited flow of cheap natural resources (including solar energy) from the Global South to the wealthy North, while Fortress Europe builds walls and fences to prevent people from reaching the coast.

A green and just transition must fundamentally transform the global economic system, which is not fit for purpose on a social, ecological or even biological level (as revealed by the Covid-19 pandemic). It must end the colonial relations that still enslave and dispossess people. We must always ask: who owns what? Who does what? Who gets what? Who wins and who loses? And whose interests are served?

Because if we do not ask these questions, we will go straight to a green colonialism, with an acceleration of extraction and exploitation, in the service of a so-called common ‘green agenda’.

In many ways, the climate crisis and the necessary green transition offer us an opportunity to reshape politics. Dealing with the dramatic transformation requires a break with existing militaristic, colonial and neoliberal projects.

The struggle for a just transition and climate justice must be fiercely democratic. It must involve those most affected, and it must aim to meet the needs of all.

It means building a future in which everyone has sufficient energy and a clean and safe environment: a future with an ecosocialist horizon in harmony with the revolutionary demands of the African and Arab uprisings: popular sovereignty, bread, freedom and social justice.

Hamza Hamouchene is a researcher at the Transnational Institute. He is co-editor of Dismantling Green Colonialism: Energy and Climate Justice in the Arab Region (Pluto Press, October 2023).