Dismantling Green Colonialism

Front matter

EDITED) By

HAMZA HAMOUCHENE & KATIE SANDWELL

DISMANTLING GREEN COLONIALISM

Contents

Tables and Figures Acknowledgements Abbreviations

Introduction: Just in Time - The Urgent Need for a Just Transition in the Arab Region Hamza Hamouchene and Katie Sandwell North Africa and West Asia as a key node in global fossil capitalism The colonial gaze and environmental orientalism What is “just transition”?

Why this book? Why now?

Part I: Energy Colonialism, Unequal Exchange And Green Extractivism

1. The Energy Transition in North Africa: Neocolonialism Again! Hamza Hamouchene

“Green colonialism” and “green grabbing”

Energy transition, dispossession and grabbing in Morocco

Green colonialism and occupation in Western Sahara

Which energy transition in Algeria? Drill baby drill!

Privatization of energy for export

Hydrogen: the new energy frontier in Africa

Desertec 3.0 — or jumping on the green hydrogen bandwagon

2. An Unjust Transition: Energy, Colonialism and Extractivism in Occupied Western Sahara Joanna Allan, Hamza Lakhal and Mahmoud Lemaadel

A brief history of the Western Sahara conflict

Extractivism in occupied Western Sahara

29 31 34 35 38 38 40 43

50 52

Vi e DISMANTLING GREEN COLONIALISM

Powering the occupation: how energy does diplomatic work for the

Moroccan regime

Powering oppression: Saharawi perspectives of the energy system in occupied Western Sahara

What would a Saharawi-led “just transition” look like? Inspiration and questions from the camps

3. Arab-Israeli Eco-Normalization: Greenwashing Settler Colonialism in Palestine and the Jawlan Manal Shqair

Eco-normalization projects

Prosperity Blue: Israel quenches parched Jordan

Eco-normalization: a violent onslaught on the Palestinians’ right to self-determination Eco-sumud: A vision for a just transition in Palestine Conclusion

4. What Can an Old Mine Tell Us about a Just Energy Transition? Lessons from Social Mobilization across Mining and Renewable Energy in Morocco Karen Rignall A just transition in Morocco Diverse forms of extraction in southeastern Morocco Similar actors and financial interests in conventional extraction and renewable energy Land conflict and resource politics in the legal and bureaucratic context Why taxes matter, or an argument for reparations Social mobilization and shared political claims across extraction and renewable energy Conclusion

5. Towards a Just Agricultural Transition in North Africa Saker El Nour Agricultural policy transformations in North Africa Agroecological and regenerative agriculture as vehicles for a just transition in North Africa Conclusion

68 69

79 82

89 91

95 99

102 104

121 126

CONTENTS e Vii

6. The Electricity Crisis in Sudan: Between Quick Fixes and

Opportunities for a Sustainable Energy Transition 134 Razaz H. Basheir and Mohamed Salah Abdelrahman The crisis 134 Supply 134 Consumption 143 The World Bank report 144 Conclusion 149

PART II: NEOLIBERAL ADJUSTMENTS, PRIVATISATION OF ENERGY AND THE ROLE OF INTERNATIONAL FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS

7. International Finance and the Commodification of Electricity in Egypt 157 Mohamed Gad After decades of prevarication, liberalization 158 The origins and development of liberalization 164 Outcomes of opening up to external finance 166 The social impacts of electricity liberalization 168 Conclusion 171

8. The Energy Sector in Jordan: Crises Caused by Dysfunctional and Unjust Policies 175 Asmaa Mohammad Amin Before the gas stoppage crisis 177 After the crisis 182 The future of the energy sector in Jordan 195 9. Renewable Energy in Tunisia: An Unjust Transition 201

Chafik Ben Rouine and Flavie Roche The renewable energy law: a turning point in Tunisia’s energy transition 203 Impacts of the current energy transition: a fair shift for Tunisia’s development and peoples rights? 209 Conclusion 214 10. The Moroccan Energy Sector: A Permanent Dependence 220 Jawad Moustakbal

The energy sector: from colonial control to neoliberal measures 220 viii e DISMANTLING GREEN COLONIALISM

Renewable energy in Morocco: a “green” neoliberalism Energy governance in Morocco Some avenues for a just energy transition in Morocco

Part Iii: Fossil Capitalism And Challenges To A Just Transition

11. A Transition to Where? The Gulf Arab States and the New “East-East” Axis of World Oil Adam Hanieh

From the Seven Sisters to OPEC

China, world oil and the Gulf’s political economy

Refining and petrochemicals

New “East-East” interdependencies

Confronting the climate emergency: Taking the Middle East

seriously

12. The Challenges of the Energy Transition in Fossil Fuel Exporting Countries: The Case of Algeria Imane Boukhatem The need for an energy transition in Algeria Algeria's climate and energy policy The renewable energy sector in Algeria Challenges of and barriers to the energy transition in Algeria Algeria's urgent need for a just energy transition Conclusion

13. Unjust transitions: The Gulf States’ Role in the “Sustainability Shift” in the Middle East and North Africa Christian Henderson

A green energy shift in the Gulf?

A new market

A region of inequality

The Gulf and the just transition

About the Contributors Index

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237 239 241 244

252 256 258 260 266 270

277 280 283 285

291 295

5:2 5-3

Tables and Figures

TABLES

Selected economic, social and demographic indicators shaping agriculture in North Africa

Selected practices of eco-regenerative agriculture in North Africa Examples of initiatives supporting eco-regenerative agriculture in North Africa

FIGURES

A comparison between the five-year plan of the Government of Sudan and the one proposed by the World Bank

A comparison between Egypt and OECD countries in terms of electric power transmission and distribution losses

(in percentage of output) - World Bank

Egypt's total energy supply by source in Tera Joule (TJ) - International Energy Agency (IEA)

Petroleum exports and imports (US ¢ billions)

Fuel subsidy and electricity subsidy (Egyptian pound billions) Peak load and nominal capacity (1,000 megawatts)

Financial statements of EEHC (Egyptian pound billions) Annual government losses during the gas stoppage period (US ¢ billions). The disruption of Egyptian gas flows to Jordan since 2011 led to the accumulation of losses for the state-owned NEPCO

The cost of producing electric energy from 2003 to 2018

(US cents per kWh)

Energy mix from 2010 to 2020 (in percentage)

The cost of producing the kilowatt-hour (kWh) in US cents The energy mix according to the Energy Strategy 2020-30 Average cost of various energy sources in US cents per kWh (2017-20)

110 123

162 163 164 167 167

181 182 182 184

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8.7

8.8

8.12

9.3

10.1

10.2

10.3 12.1

12.2

12.3

Comparison between costs of direct bids for renewable energy in Jordan with the average cost of renewable energy globally

(in US cents per kWh)

Comparison of the average total electric energy cost for 2021 with solar energy costs of the suspended third and fourth phases (in US cents per kWh)

The total installed capacity of electric power generation projects from renewable energy sources until 2021 (in MW) Government revenues from selling energy to major subscribers (US $ millions)

The amount of energy sold to major subscribers (gigawatt-hours GWh)

Renewable energy investments in Jordan 2015-20

(US $ millions)

The volume of investments in the renewable energy sector

(US $ millions)

Percentage of projects obtained by companies in tenders between 2017 and 2019 under the concession regime according to nationality

Share (in percentage) in the total power (MW) of electricity production projects obtained through the authorisation regime by companies according to their nationality

Share (in percentage) in the total power (MW) of the electricity production projects obtained through the concession regime by companies according to their nationality

Distribution of electricity production by source of energy (in percentage)

Distribution of electricity production by type of producer

(in percentage)

Typical financial set-up of Masen-led projects

Algeria's primary energy production in terms of quantity

(in percentage)

Algerias final energy consumption in terms of quantity

(in percentage)

Algerias primary energy exports in terms of quantity

(in percentage)

226 228

Acknowledgements

This book started long before we realized it would eventually become a book. It is the product of years of reflection and work. During this time, we accumulated a great intellectual and personal debt to innumerable friends, comrades and colleagues who, through their encouragement and sustained critique, enriched this book, sharpened its arguments and made its content much clearer. It is not possible to mention all of them here, but we will mention some.

First of all, we thank our wonderful colleagues at the Transnational Institute (TNI). In particular, Jenny Franco, Lyda Fernanda Forero, Daniel Chavez, Zoe Brent, Lavinia Steinfort, Pietje Vervest, Mads Barbesgaard, Sylvia Kay and Carsten Pedersen have been a constant source of inspiration and support. Our interactions and exchanges with them have been very fruitful and contributed greatly to the book's conception and development.

In addition, we are especially grateful to each of the contributing authors, the translators (Meriam Mabrouk and Nellie Epinat) and the various reviewers, without whom this book would not exist. Special thanks go to Thomas Claes from the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung - MENA office, who believed in this project from the start and has supported it generously. We are also immensely thankful to Ashley Inglis, who has been a brilliant and meticulous copyeditor and who made improvements to the text and its flow beyond what we expected. We owe a deep debt of gratitude, too, to Ouafa Haddioui, for her help in bringing the manuscript to its present shape.

Finally, thanks to our editor at Pluto Press, David Shulman, who has put up with all sorts of delays, and who supported the idea of the book from the very beginning.

This book draws, and we hope builds, on the rich body of ongoing discussions and debates around the just and sustainable transitions we would like to see in the Arab region and beyond. We dedicate it to the countless inspiring comrades with whom our paths have crossed, from environmental defenders, trade unionists and activists to researchers, journalists and scholars, who continue to struggle in different ways to build a more just world. A special thought goes to Mohad Gasmi, an inspiring environmental defender and a tireless social justice activist, who is currently a political xii e DISMANTLING GREEN COLONIALISM prisoner in Algeria. We dedicate this book to him and to the many others in the region who never cease fighting for justice and against oppression in all its forms.

Abbreviations

ADNOC: Abu Dhabi National Oil Company

AFD: Agence Française de Développement (French Agency for Development)

AfDB: African Development Bank

ANCC: National Agency for Climate Change

ANME: National Agency for Energy Management

APMM: Association pour la Promotion de la Médiation au Maroc

BNC: Palestinian National Committee of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement

BOT: build-operate-transfer

BRI: Belt and Road Initiative

CDER: Centre for the Development of Renewable Energy

CEGCO: Central Electricity Generation Company

CEO: Corporate Europe Observatory

CO: carbon dioxide

COP: United Nation Climate Conference of the Parties

CSP: concentrated solar power

CSPRON: Committee for the Protection of Natural Resources in Western Sahara

CSR: corporate social responsibility

DCFTA: Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement

DIC: Dubai International Capital

Dii: Desertec Industrial Initiative

DRC: Democratic Republic of Congo

ECT: Energy Charter Treaty

EDCO: Electricity Distribution Company

EEHC: Egyptian Electricity Holding Company

EEM: Energie Electrique du Maroc

EETC: Egyptian Electricity Transmission Company

EgyptERA: Egyptian Electric Utility and Consumer Protection Regulatory Agency

EIB: European Investment Bank

EMRC: Energy and Minerals Regulatory Commission

XIV e DISMANTLING GREEN COLONIALISM

Enefit: Estonian National Energy Company

EPC-F: Engineering, Procurement, Construction and Finance ESC: Economic and Social Council

ESMAP: Energy Sector Management Assistance Programme ETAP: Tunisian Enterprise of Petroleum Activities EU: European Union

FAO: Food and Agriculture Organization

FPI: food price index

FGEG: General Federation of Electricity and Gas GDP: gross domestic product

GHG: greenhouse gas

GIZ: German Agency for International Cooperation GW: gigawatt

IFIs: international financial institutions

ILO: International Labour Organization

IMF: International Monetary Fund

IPCC: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change IPO: initial public offering

IPPs: independent power producers

IRENA: International Renewable Energy Agency ISDS: Investor-State Dispute Settlement

JNF: Jewish National Fund

JREEEF: Jordan Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Fund JV: joint venture

KEC: Kingdom for Energy Investments Company KfW: Kreditanstalt fiir Wiederaufbau

kWh: kilowatt hour

LNG: liquefied natural gas

Lydec: Lyonnaise des Eaux Casablanca

Masen: Moroccan Agency for Sustainable Energy MENA: Middle East and North Africa

MW: Megawatt

NATO: North Atlantic Treaty Organization

NDC: nationally determined contribution

NEPCO: National Electric Power Company

NGOs: non-governmental organizations

NMGBP: Nigeria- Morocco Gas Pipeline

NOCs: national oil companies

OCP: Office Chérifien des Phosphates

ABBREVIATIONS ¢ XV

ONE: Office National de l'Électricité

OPEC: Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries

PAM: Authenticity and Modernity Party

PMA: Petroleum and Mines Authority

PNEREE: the National Programme for the Development of Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency

POLISARIO: Popular Front for the Liberation of Saguia El Hamra and Rio de Oro

PPA: power purchase agreements

PPPs: public-private partnerships

PST: Plan Solaire Tunisien

PV: photovoltaic

SACE: Italian Export Credit Agency

SADR: Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic

SAMIR: Société Anonyme Marocaine de l'Industrie du Raffinage

SAP: Structural Adjustment Programme

SHAEMS: Société Algérienne des Energies Renouvelables

SMD: Société Marocaine de Distribution deau, de gaz et délectricité

Sodea: Société de développement agricole

SOEs: state owned enterprises

Sogeta: Société de gestion des terres agricoles

STEG: Tunisian Company of Electricity and Gas

TWh: terawatt hours

UAE: United Arab Emirates

UGTT: General Union of Tunisian Workers

UMT: Union Marocaine des Travailleurs

UNFCCC: United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change

UNFP: Union Nationale des Forces Populaires

USAID: United States Agency for International Development

VAT: value-added tax

Introduction

Just in Time - The Urgent Need for a Just Transition in the Arab Region

Hamza Hamouchene and Katie Sandwell

The reality of climate breakdown is already visible in the Arab region,’ undermining the ecological and socioeconomic basis of life. Countries such as Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Jordan and Egypt are experiencing recurrent severe heat waves and prolonged droughts, with catastrophic impacts on agriculture and small-scale farmers.* Ranked as one of the world’s five most vulnerable nations to climate change and desertification, Iraq was hit in 2022 by many sandstorms that shut down much of the country, with thousands of people admitted to hospital because of respiratory problems. The country’s environment ministry has warned that over the next two decades Iraq could endure an average of 272 days of sandstorms a year, rising to above 300 by 2050.° In the summer of 2021, Algeria was struck by unprecedented and devastating wildfires; Kuwait experienced a suffocating heat wave, registering the highest temperature on Earth that year, at well over 50°C; and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Yemen, Oman, Syria, Iraq and Egypt all experienced devastating floods, while southern Morocco struggled with terrible droughts for the third year in a row. In the years ahead, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projects that the Mediterranean and Gulf regions will see an intensification of extreme weather events, such as wildfires and flooding, and further increases in aridity and droughts.*

“Its now or never, if we want to limit global warming to 1.5°C? That's the warning from the IPCC working group behind the 2022 comprehensive review of climate science. The review warns that world temperature is set to rise by 1.5°C within the next two decades and that only the most drastic cuts in carbon emissions, starting immeditately, can prevent an environmental and climatic disaster. Since these reviews are conducted every six to seven years, this can be seen as the last warning from the IPCC before the world is set irrevocably on a path to climate breakdown, with terrifying consequences. As United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres declared when the report was released: “In concrete terms, [this level of global heating] means major cities under water, unprecedented heatwaves, terrifying storms, widespread water shortages, and the extinction of one million species of plants and animals.”

The impacts of these changes are felt disproportionately by marginalized people, including small-scale farmers, agro-pastoralists, agricultural labourers and fisherfolk. Already, people in the Arab world are being forced off their lands by stronger and more frequent droughts and winter storms, expanding deserts and rising sea levels.’ Crops are failing and water supplies are dwindling, deeply impacting food production in a region that is chronically dependent on food imports.° As the effects of climate change are increasingly felt, there is a huge pressure on already scarce water supplies due to changes in rainfall and seawater intrusion into groundwater reserves, as well as groundwater overuse. According to an article in the Lancet, this will place most Arab countries under the absolute water-poverty level of 500 m° per person per year by 2050.”

Climate scientists are predicting that the climate in large parts of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) could change in such a manner that the very survival of its inhabitants will be in jeopardy.* In North Africa, for example, those whose lives will be changed the most by climate change include small-scale farmers in the Nile Delta and rural areas in Morocco and Tunisia, the fisherfolk of Jerba and Kerkennah in Tunisia, the inhabitants of In Salah in Algeria, the Saharawi refugees in the Tindouf camps in Algeria, and the millions living in informal settlements in Cairo, Khartoum, Tunis and Casablanca. Elsewhere in the Arab region, small-scale farmers and fisherfolk in occupied Palestine, internally displaced people and refugees in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and Jordan, and hyper-exploited migrant workers in the UAE and Qatar will face the violence of the climate crisis with little protection as they are frequently housed in squalid conditions, denied routine medical care and face malnutrition.

The climate crisis was not an inevitable fact: it has been, and continues to be, driven by the choice to keep burning fossil fuels - a choice made predominantly by corporations and governments in the northern hemisphere, together with national ruling classes, including in the Arab region. Energy and climate plans in that part of the world are shaped by authoritarian regimes and their backers in Riyadh, Brussels and Washington, DC. Rich local elites collaborate with multinational corporations and international financial institutions, such as the World Bank, the International Monetary

Fund (IMF) and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). Despite all of their promises, the actions of these institutions show that they are enemies of climate justice and of humanity's very survival.

Every year, the world’s political leaders, advisers, media and corporate lobbyists gather for another United Nations Conference of the Parties (COP) on the issue of climate change. But despite the threat facing the planet, governments continue to allow carbon emissions to rise and the crisis to escalate. After three decades of what the Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg has called “blah blah blah’, it has become evident that these climate talks are bankrupt and are failing. They have been hijacked by corporate power and private interests that promote profit-making false solutions, like carbon trading, so-called “net-zero” and “nature-based solutions’, instead of forcing industrialized nations and multinationals to reduce carbon emissions and leave fossil fuels in the ground.’

With COP28 being held in Dubai, UAE, in 2023, the Arab region will have hosted the climate talks five times since their inception in 1995: COP7 (2001) and COP22 (2016) in Marrakech, Morocco; COP18 (2012) in Doha, Qatar; and COP27 (2022) in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. In recent years, and especially since the 2015 Paris Agreement walked back from the (already grossly inadequate) binding targets established in the Kyoto Accord to allow countries to independently determine their own emission-reduction targets, scepticism about the ability of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to tackle the most urgent challenge facing humanity has grown. COPs attract massive media attention but tend not to achieve major breakthroughs. COP27, held in Sharm el-Sheikh in 2022, achieved an agreement on Payment for Loss and Damage that has been lauded by some as an important step in making richer countries accountable for the damage caused by climate change in the global South.’® However, as the agreement lacks clear funding and enforcement mechanisms, critics worry it will meet with the same fate as the broken promise (first made in COP15 in Copenhagen in 2009) to provide $100 billion in climate finance per year by 2020. That promise was never fully realised, with assistance often taking the form of interest-bearing loans instead."* As for COP28, the UAE’s appointment of Sultan al-Jaber, Chief Executive Officer of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, to preside over the talks seems to many activists and observers to symbolize the deep commitment to continued oil extraction, regardless of the cost, which has characterized negotiations to date.

Middle Eastern and North African states, with their national oil and gas companies, alongside the big oil majors, are doing their best to maintain their operations, and even expand and profit from the remaining fossil fuels they possess. President Abdelfattah al-Sisis Egypt is aspiring to become a major energy hub in the region, exporting its surplus electricity and mobilizing various energy sources, such as offshore gas, oil, renewable energies and hydrogen, to satisfy the European Unions (EU’s) energy needs. This is, of course, inextricable from the ongoing efforts at political and economic normalization with the colonial state of Israel. The Algerian regime, for its part, is also benefiting from the oil price bonanza and taking advantage of the EU’s scramble for alternatives to Russian gas in order to expand its fossil fuel operations and plans. The Gulf countries, such as Saudi Arabia, UAE and Qatar, are no different. The ruling classes across the region have been talking about the “after oil” era for decades, and successive governments have paid lip service to the transition to renewable energies for years without taking concrete action, apart from some grandiose and unrealistic plans and projects, such as the proposed, and controversial, futuristic megacity of Neom in Saudi Arabia. For these ruling classes, the iterations of the COP process represent a golden opportunity to advance their greenwashing agenda, as well as their efforts to attract and capture funds and finances for various energy projects and purportedly “green” plans.

Egypts hosting of the 2022 COP was controversial in view of its governments record of repression and its efforts to prevent access to the summit by environmental groups and climate activists. In fact, the Sharm el-Sheikh COP27 was one of the most exclusionary conferences in history, with a substantially diminished space for the activism, dissidence, discussions, debates, new connections, networking, collective strategies and mobilizations needed to generate pressure on global decision-makers to deliver on their promises and promote real solutions to the unfolding climate emergency. The choice of Egypt as the host in 2022, and of UAE as the host for 2023 is not innocent and is a clear indication that the COP process as a whole is becoming more undemocratic and exclusionary. Moreover, the context of the intensification of geopolitical rivalries unleashed by the war in Ukraine is not amenable to cooperation between major powers and provides yet another pretext for continuing the global addiction to fossil fuels. Indeed, it could be the final nail in the coffin of global climate talks.

Humanity’s survival depends on both leaving fossil fuels in the ground and adapting to the already changing climate, while moving towards renewable energies, sustainable levels of energy use and other social transformations. Billions will be spent on trying to adapt - finding new water sources, restructuring agriculture and changing the crops that are grown, building sea walls to keep the saltwater out, changing the shape and style of cities - and on trying to shift to green sources of energy by building the required infrastructure and investing in green jobs and technology. But whose interest will this adaptation and energy transition serve, and who will be expected to bear the heaviest costs of the climate crisis and of the responses to it?

The same greedy and authoritarian power structures that have contributed to climate change are now shaping the response to it. Their main goal is to protect private interests and to make even greater profits. While the international financial institutions, such as the World Bank and the IMF, and governments in the northern hemisphere and their agencies, such as the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the EU and the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ), are all now articulating the need for a climate transition, their vision is of a capitalist, and often corporate-led transition, not one led by and for working people. While the voices of civil society organizations and social movements in the Arab region are largely not heard when it comes to the implications of this transition and the need for just and democratic alternatives, the aforementioned institutions and governments speak loudly, organizing events and publishing reports in all the countries of the Arab region. These actors dont shy away from highlighting the dangers of a warmer world, and even argue for urgent action, including using more renewable energy and developing adaptation plans. However, their analysis of climate change and the necessary transition remains limited - and even dangerous, as it threatens to reproduce the patterns of dispossession and resource plunder that characterize the prevailing fossil fuel regime.

The vision of the future that is pushed by these powerful actors is one where economies are subjugated to private profit, including through further privatization of water, land, resources, energy - and even the atmosphere. The latest stage in this development includes the public-private partnerships (PPPs) now being implemented in every sector in the Arab region, including in renewable energies. The drive towards the privatization of energy and corporate control of the energy transition is global and is not unique to the region, but the dynamic is quite advanced here and has so far been met with only limited resistance. Morocco is already advancing along this path, and so is Tunisia. In Tunisia, a major push is underway to expand the privatization of the country’s renewable energy sector and to give huge incentives to foreign investors to produce green energy in the country, including for export. Tunisian law - modified in 2019 — even allows for the use of agricultural land for renewable projects in a country that suffers from acute food dependency,’* a dependency that was starkly revealed during the COVID-19 pandemic and that is evident once again at the time of writing, as war rages in Ukraine.

As developments like this take place across the region, they highlight the importance of asking: “Energy for what and for whom?” and “Who is the energy transition intended to serve?” The supposedly “green economy” and the broader mainstream vision of so-called “sustainable development” are being presented by international financial institutions, corporations and governments as a new paradigm. But in reality they are merely an extension of the existing logics of capital accumulation, commodification and financialization, including of the natural world.

NORTH AFRICA AND WEST ASIA AS A KEY NODE IN GLOBAL FOSSIL CAPITALISM

North Africa and West Asia/the MENA region must be understood within the context of the larger capitalist world market, which is characterized by the concurrent rise of new zones of accumulation and growth in some parts of the world and the relative decline of long-established centres of power in North America and Europe. Not only does the region today play a major role in mediating new global networks of trade, logistics, infrastructure and finance, * but it is also a key nodal point in the global fossil fuel regime and plays an integral role in keeping fossil capitalism intact through its oil and gas supplies. In fact, the region remains the central axis of world hydrocarbon markets, with a total share of global oil production standing at around 35 percent in 2021."* Historically, these supplies fuelled a major shift in the global energy regime during the mid-twentieth century, with oil and gas replacing coal as the primary fuel for global transportation, manufacturing and industrial production." More recently, the resources of the Middle East have been essential in regard to meeting the increased demand for oil and gas fuelled by the rise of China, heralding a key structural shift in the global political economy over the last two decades based on closer ties between the Middle East and East Asia. All of this has positioned Middle East oil producers as indisputable protagonists in climate change debates and any future transition away from fossil fuels.'

The historical, political and geophysical realities of the Arab region mean that both the effects of, and the solutions to, the climate crisis there will be distinct from those in other contexts. From the mid-nineteenth century to the second half of the twentieth century, the region was forcibly

INTRODUCTION + 7 integrated into the global capitalist economy in a subordinate position: colonial/imperial powers influenced or forced the countries of the region to structure their economies around the extraction and export of resources - usually provided cheaply and in raw form - coupled with the import of high-value industrial goods. The result was a large-scale transfer of wealth to the imperial centres at the expense of local development and ecosystems.’” The persistence till today of such unequal and asymmetric relations (which some call unequal economic/ecological exchange, or ecological imperialism)** preserves the role of Arab countries as exporters of natural resources, such as oil and gas, and primary commodities that are heavily dependent on water and land, such as monoculture cash crops. This entrenches an outward-looking extractivist economy, thereby exacerbating food dependency and the ecological crisis, and it also maintains relations of imperialist domination and neocolonial hierarchies.'? However, it is important to avoid the tendency to see the region as an undifferentiated whole, but rather to be aware of its inherent unevenness and deep inequalities. A closer look reveals the underlying role of the Gulf states” in this configuration, as a semi-periphery — or even as a sub-imperialist - force.** Not only are the Gulf states significantly richer than their other Arab neighbours, but they also participate in the capture and syphoning off of surplus value at the regional level, reproducing core-periphery-like relations of extraction, marginalization and accumulation by dispossession. In this regard, the work of Adam Hanieh (one of the contributors to this book) is enlightening in terms of how economic liberalization in the Middle East over recent decades (through various structural adjustment packages in the 1990s and 2000s) has been closely bound up with the internationalization of Gulf capital throughout the wider region.” Gulf capitalists now dominate key economic sectors of many neighbouring countries, including real estate and urban development, agribusiness, telecommunications, retail, logistics, and banking and finance.