The energy transition translates into “ green colonialism ”, according to the author of this column. The Maghreb and the Sahara could provide electricity to Europe, while populations lack energy.
Hamza Hamouchene is co-author of Facing Green Colonialism. Energy transition and climate justice in North Africa ( ed. Syllepses ), published in October 2023.
With COP28 currently being held in Dubai, this is the fifth time that the Arab world has hosted climate negotiations since their creation in 1995.
In 2022, the COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh resulted in an agreement on payment for losses and damages, which made rich countries responsible for climate damage caused in countries in the South. But its lack of clarity regarding binding financing mechanisms risks making it suffer the same fate as the broken promise (formulated for the first time in 2009, during COP15 in Copenhagen), to grant “ 100 billion dollars of climate finance by 2020.
This is exactly the scenario that materialized on the first day of COP28, with just $400 million in funding pledges for the “ loss and damage ” fund provisionally hosted by the World Bank, versus the initial view of developing countries.
Complicit powers
Beyond these promises which, very probably, will be slow to translate into action on the ground, what alarms Arab ecologists is the perpetuation of the practices of economic dispossession which have prevailed since the colonial period. They can only cause the energy transition to fail in Arab countries, deprived of democratic debate by the pursuit of green colonialism backed by the authoritarian powers in place.
Whether it is the populist President Kaïs Saïed in Tunisia, the military dictatorship in Algeria or a predatory and authoritarian Makhzen in Morocco, these governing elites participate to varying degrees in the legalized and organized pillaging of their countries and populations they claim to represent.
Green neocolonialism
The authoritarian power structures that actively contributed to climate change are the same ones that are shaping the response to this crisis today. If international financial institutions, such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, today emphasize the need for a climate transition, their approach is that of a capitalist transition led by multinationals, and not by and for workers. · them.
The appointment, by the United Arab Emirates, of Sultan al-Jaber, CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, to chair the COP28 negotiations, is also symbolic of support for the continuation of oil extraction.
The future advocated by these actors is one where economies are subject to profit through increased privatization of water, land, resources, energy, and even the atmosphere. In Tunisia, for example, public-private partnerships ( PPPs ) are touted as the silver bullet to save the faltering economy.
A powerful dynamic is underway to privatize the renewable energy sector and direct it towards export. Tunisian law even allows the requisition of agricultural land for projects linked to renewable energy, although the country suffers from severe food dependence.
From the Sahara to Palestine
Inspired by a colonial and orientalist environmental narrative, the Arab deserts are described by various international neoliberal actors as barren and empty land, making it an El Dorado that can provide cheap energy to Europe. Extractivist practices find new momentum in transitions to renewable energies, in the form of “ green colonialism ” or “ green neocolonialism ”.
Such dynamics are evident in renewable projects in occupied territories such as Palestine, the Golan Heights, and Western Sahara, where development occurs at the expense of colonized peoples deprived of their right to self-determination.
The three wind farms developed by Morocco in Western Sahara belong to Nareva, the wind energy company part of the Moroccan royal family’s holding company. In occupied Palestine, the story is not so different, although it is more brutal and violent. The Zionist narrative describes Palestine before 1948 as a desert that became a flowery oasis after the creation of the State of Israel.
Tel Aviv hides its war crimes against the Palestinian people by pretending to be a green and advanced country compared to its neighbors. This position of colonial domination of Palestine was reinforced by the signing of the Abraham Accords with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan in 2020, which feature several partnerships in the areas of renewable energy and water.
Fortress Europe continues to plunder the South
The war in Ukraine and the European Union’s ( EU ) attempts to reduce its dependence on Russian gas underscore how the EU’s energy security comes before anything else. With the Algerian-Italian agreement to increase the flow of Algerian gas by 9 billion cubic meters of gas from 2023-2024, the mention of any ecological transition in Algeria is meaningless, given the increased enthusiasm for gas and extractivism, alongside a decline in the energy transition.
Efforts to ensure EU energy security also extend to renewable energy in projects such as Xlinks (in Morocco), TuNurTuNur (in Tunisia), Desertec (which aims to harness solar power from the Sahara), and green hydrogen projects planned in several North African countries.
In 2017, TuNur applied to build a 4.5 GW solar power plant in the Tunisian desert to provide, via submarine cables, enough electricity to power 5 million European homes and more than 7 million electric vehicles. This project, still unfinished, was openly described as an essentially solar energy export project linking the Sahara and Europe. Knowing that Tunisia depends on Algeria for part of its energy needs (gas), it is scandalous that such projects turn towards export rather than the production of energy for domestic use.
The same goes for Xlinks, proposed in 2021 by a former CEO of Tesco, in partnership with the Saudi company ACWA Power. The project aims to connect southern Morocco to the United Kingdom with submarine cables to carry electricity. Once again, the same relationships initiated by extractives, and the same practices of land grabbing are being established and perpetuated, even though the populations of the region do not have energy self-sufficiency and Europe continues to lock its borders.
Put an end to the dispossession of the South
On the contrary, an ecological and just transition must work towards the radical transformation of the global economic system. It must end the colonial relations that continue to enslave and dispossess the people of the Global South. Without asking questions such as: who owns what? Who does what? Who gets what? Who wins and who loses? And whose interests are served? we will go straight towards green colonialism.
The climate crisis and the need for an ecological transition offer a chance to reshape our policies. We will have to break with the colonial and neoliberal projects already in place. The just transition must be resolutely democratic, involving the most affected populations and seeking to meet the needs of all. It is about building a future in which everyone has enough energy and a clean and safe environment, a future that responds to the revolutionary demands of the African and Arab uprisings: popular sovereignty, bread, freedom, and social justice.
