Page 13 - Apmor 2018

justice energy

there are many ways in which this
is simply not the case. Black and
brown populations in the global
south are the first and hardest hit.
Furthermore, this obscures the role
of neo-colonialism and imperialist
domination and hides the injustices
they represent, from land grabs
and displacements to a systematic
denial of people’s access to natural
resources and energy of their own
countries.
We should be very critical of such
mega-projects and their self-
proclaimed good intentions, which
often sugar-coat brutal exploitation
and sheer robbery. We must always
ask the relevant-as-ever questions:
who owns what? Who does what?
Who gets what? Who wins and
who loses? And whose interests
are being served?
Justice and sovereignty

Answering these questions through
a distributive justice lens, while
taking account of the colonial and
neo-colonial legacies alongside
issues of race, class and gender
reveals an array of parallels
between “green projects” and
the more obviously destructive
extractive industries they are
supposed to replace: they deny
local people control and access to
their land, rob them of resources
and concentrate the value created
division of labour. Interestingly, the map of the promise to address these problems without in the hands of domestic and foreign predatory
energy routes to Europe coincides with the fundamental change, maintaining the status elites and private companies.
same pathways for migration from the African quo and the contradictions of the global system
continent. Fortress Europe builds walls and that created these crises in the first place. The Arab uprisings that started in Tunisia in
fences to prevent human beings from reaching Big engineering-focused ‘solutions’ like 2010 were about bread, freedom, social justice
its shores for sanctuary but it accepts no Desertec, TuNur and Ouarzazate tend to and national dignity. Projects like TuNur stand
barriers to resource grabs. present climate change as a shared problem in stark contradiction with these demands. To
implement just and truly green projects, which
British and EU foreign policy aims to lock North with no political or socio-economic context. This provide for the future of people and planet, we
African energy resources (including renewable) perspective hides the historical responsibilities must take nature back from the clutches of big
into the European grid and is heavily influenced of the industrialised North, the problems of capital and recast the debate around justice,
by arms and corporate interests. The priority the capitalist energy model, and the different popular sovereignty and the collective good.
has been always EU “energy security” and vulnerabilities between countries of the North The priority must be energy autonomy for local
interests, usually in a blatant disregard for the and the South. North Africa is one of the communities and a radical democracy that
will of the people in the region. regions hardest hit by global warming, with takes precedence over the logic of a market
Plunder hidden beneath water supplies in the area being particularly that sees our land and our livelihoods as
affected. The spread of solar energy initiatives
“sustainability” promises that further plunder these increasingly-scarce commodities to be sold to the highest bidder.
(Courtesy of pambazuka.org)
Projects like TuNur are promoted as solutions water resources would be a great injustice. HAMZA HAMOUCHENE is a Senior Programme
to the ecological and climate crises but in truth It is often said that when it comes to the Officer North Africa and West Asia.
they are hollow, tokenistic techno-fixes. They climate crisis, “we are all in it together”, but

AFRICAN POWER Mining & Oil Review Vol 21, Issue 20, 2017 | 13