Morocco’s Atalayer reports that Rabat will attempt to double sustainable energy generation in the Sahara by 2030.

What is so special about 2030? It is the soccer World Cup centenary, a World Cup for the ages. The first World Cup was held in Uruguay in 1930.

Spain, Portugal and Morocco jointly submitted the successful bid as hosts that year, with each country providing 6 or 7 stadiums. For Morocco, this success boosts its prestige in the Arab world and Africa. Countries fight tooth and nail over this honor. Qatar’s successful bid for the 2022 World Cup was one of the reasons Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates imposed an economic boycott on it 2017-2020. They were that jealous.

So Morocco wants literally to shine in 2030, by showing off its impressive progress toward greening its grid.

Morocco gets 44% of its electricity from renewables, up from 37% only 3 years ago. It has about 4.6 gigawatts of green energy.

About 1.3 GW of Morocco’s wind and solar plants are sited in the Western Sahara, a region Morocco absorbed in 1975-1979 when Spanish colonialism there ended. Some of the Amazigh tribes there had long ties with the Moroccan monarchy before the 1884 Spanish conquest. Some of the 600,000 people in Western Sahara, however, weren’t happy to become part of Morocco, and the POLISARIO party has long led a movement for independence.

But Morocco is a country of 38 million people, and its military is the 5th most powerful in Africa. So it has gradually made its claims stick, de facto. Moreover, most economists don’t consider the Western Sahara to have the makings of a viable independent country. What is important is that they have a democratic say in their own affairs.

Plus the Trump family helped the Moroccan government in this endeavor.

The Trump family?

Yes, Kushner persuaded Morocco to join the Abraham Accords recognizing Israel. In return, the United States recognized the Moroccan claim on the Western Sahara.

And now that it was the U.S. position, French President Emmanuel Macron swung around and also recognized the territory as Moroccan.

Billionaire Moroccan Prime Minister Aziz Akhannouch intends to install another 1.4 gigawatts of wind and solar capacity into the Sahara. Integrating the territory into the country’s green energy grid is one of the ways Rabat is weaving it into the fabric of the country’s economy.

Akhannouch will put $2.1 billion into these projects, and they will generate green energy jobs for the local population.

The entire episode demonstrates the ways in which renewable energy is increasingly intertwined with nation-building projects, with all their virtues and vices.

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Bonus video added by Informed Comment:

The World’s Largest Concentrated Solar Power Plant | A Brief History of the Future | PBS

Against opposing voices and detractors, to explain their new-found ties with Israel these nations provided the excuse of seeking peace and stability in the region and a peaceful way for securing a Palestinian state.

But the recent war on Gaza has reignited the importance of ‘the Palestinian question’ and reinvigorated Arabs’ passion for this cause leading to many protests and demonstrations against their countries and against normalisation with Israel.

Over 40 Moroccan cities, including Fez, Marrakesh, Agadir and Tangier, saw regular demonstrations in favor of Palestine this summer. In early August, the Israeli assassination of the head of the civilian Hamas politburo provoked large crowds to come into the streets. Earlier, in Tangier, Morocco, thousands of protesters had filled the streets chanting “Gaza is not alone” in protest at an Israeli ship docking in Tangier. The Israeli newspaper Globes revealed that “The new Israeli Navy landing ship INS Komemiyut docked at the port of Tangier, Morocco, for supplies while sailing from the United States to Israel,”

Not long after, this incident escalated into a full-on demonstration in Tangier where Moroccan anti-normalisation activists condemned the government’s silence and accused the country’s officials of being complicit in the genocide in Gaza.

The normalisation of diplomatic ties with Israel dates back to 2020 when Morocco officially established relations with Israel under the Abraham Accords. The biggest incentive for the Moroccan Kingdom to sign this deal was to gain official recognition from the US for Morocco’s sovereignty over the Western Sahara territory, a territory that’s been under dispute for a long time. While an economic and diplomatic gain for Morocco, no doubt, this deal was not without its difficulties. Morocco and other countries that established relations with Israel had to stifle their own citizens by harassing, censoring and undermining any voices opposing the deal.

However, after the 7th of October and the current state of war in Gaza, Morocco alongside other Arab countries, had to show solidarity with Palestinians despite their involvement with Israel. In the case of Morocco, Rabat officially denounced the war and called Israeli actions “flagrant violations of the provisions of international law”. Yet, the absence of any talk about reversing the Abraham Accords revealed the truth that the leaders of Morocco are walking a tightrope trying to please both their enraged citizens and salvaging relations with The US and Israel. Despite the government’s attempts to play both sides, the streets haven’t been quiet. Since the war on Gaza started, dozens of demonstrations in Morocco erupted in support of Palestine.

The Moroccan government has not been happy about these demonstrations. For instance, on May 15th during Nakba day Rabat local authorities stopped a Pro-Palestinian march from happening over ‘logistical issues.’ Mr. Saied Hannaoui, a leading figure of the Moroccan opposition to normalisation, spoke out about this ban, calling it “a backward authoritarian decision. It reflects the continued tyranny that imposes normalisation on the Moroccan people,”

Video: A Moroccan doctor gives hope to 100 lives in Gaza

The crackdown on pro-Palestinian protests is nothing new to Morocco or the region. According to Amnesty International, in recent years, countries like Morocco with close ties to Israel have been wary of any dissent towards their deals with Israel. This led these countries to practice censorship, make arrests and institute a ban demonstrations and any anti-normalisation voices.

However, despite the government’s attempts to restrain its people, Moroccans have expressed their dissatisfaction with the government’s policies and their support for Palestine throughout the war in Gaza.

The major demonstration in Tangier earlier this summer provides an excellent case study of how volatile the situation is in Morocco and other Arab nations. The demonstration, which was organised by the Moroccan Front, saw leftist parties and Islamist movements come together in support of Gaza’s Palestinians and against the continuation of Morocco’s ties with Israel. The choice of the coastal city of Tangier is relevant as reports claim that an Israeli ship coming from the US had docked at Tangier in June to restock. The fact that Morocco had agreed to have an Israeli ship dock at one of its ports escalated tensions between the people and the government. “Allowing the Israeli warship to dock is, unfortunately, a participation in the genocide of the Palestinian people, and support to the Israeli aggression on Gaza,” said Mohamed El-Ghafry, coordinator of the Moroccan Front Against Normalisation.

In a press release, the Front saw that “turning a blind eye to the passage of such ships” as a “violation of the International Court of Justice’s decision following South Africa’s lawsuit against Israel” and “a compromise of our national sovereignty.”

Despite the people’s attempts to sway the government’s opinion on its diplomatic ties with Israel, Morocco seems to see benefits in having these ties with Israel. One anonymous source from the Moroccan foreign ministry insisted in March to Reuters that these ties hold benefits for furthering the cause of the Palestinian people. Whether these claims have merit or not, the people of Morocco do not seem to be swayed by this rhetoric and instead are pushing more and more for Morocco to cancel the Abraham Accords.

The Moroccan government, alongside other Arab countries, is attempting to be supportive of the Palestinian cause while at the same time remaining cordial or even more than cordial with Israel. In light of these recent developments in the country’s streets, is the government’s way of handling this very delicate situation any  longer sustainable?

The local Jewish communities in Arab and Muslim countries significantly dwindled during the 1948 War and drastically declined following the Suez War. This tendency’s trajectory has been clearly manifested in Morocco and Egypt, which are the two countries where about one-third of all Jews living in Arab countries reside. For a long time, the narratives on the causes for the emptying of the Jewish communities in the two countries were exclusively based on nationalistic narratives, both Arab and Zionist. This, in turn, distorted the past image of Jews as an integral part of Moroccan and Egyptian societies.

This framing of the local Jewish past also assumes that synagogues, cemeteries, and Judaica items left in these countries are silent relics of the past. In contrast, I have found a sort of “living archive,” which is a unique collection that includes Jewish monuments, Judaica artifacts, and a wealth of textual and visual records spanning various periods. Since the turn of the 21^st century, this archive has been continually enriched by diverse documentation focusing on the Jewish presence in both its historical context and present-day heritage. These once-taboo topics are now widely discussed across multiple platforms, including popular entertainment, media, and social networks.

Millions of Egyptians were exposed to revisionist representations through the silver screen and TV, especially the TV series Harat Al-Yahud (Neighborhood of the Jews, 2015) and the films Salata Baladi by Nadia Kamel (Country Salad, 2007) and ʿAn Yahud Misr (Jews of Egypt, 2012) by Amir Ramses. Diverse and complex representations of Egyptian Jews were provided by Kamal Ruhayyim in a trilogy centered on the life of Galal and his quest to find his identity in Egypt during the second half of the 20^th century.

In Egypt, the government sponsored a costly and impressive restoration of the Eliyahu Hanavi synagogue in Alexandria. After decades of neglect, several synagogues were cleaned in Cairo, the ancient Jewish cemetery in Bassatin was cleared of tons of rubbish, and part of the surrounding cemetery wall was rebuilt. The Karaite Menasha burial plot was remarkably restored.

Yoram Meital, Sacred Places Tell Tales: Jewish Life and Heritage in Modern Cairo
(University of Pennsylvania Press, 2024). Click here to buy.

In Morocco, an unprecedented number of projects have been carried out to preserve Jewish heritage sites, including the cleaning and restoration of many cemeteries and a number of synagogues. Impressive displays of the Jewish past are now presented at the Jewish Museum in Casablanca and at the Bayt Dhakira, or House of Memory, in Essaouira. A new curriculum is being written with a sympathetic chapter on Jewry as an integral part of Moroccan society and culture. The preamble of the 2011 constitution states that the identity of Moroccan society and its unity “is forged by the convergence of its Arab-Islamic, Berber [Amazigh], and Saharan-Hassanic components, nourished and enriched by its African, Andalusian, Hebrew [Jewish] and Mediterranean influences.”

Significance should also be attributed to the innovative projects for preserving Jewish heritage promoted by nongovernmental organizations, primarily the Moroccan Mimouna Association and the Egyptian Drop of Milk Association. The Egyptians and Moroccans who are safeguarding Jewish heritage see their commitment as an expression of a patriotic stance. They usually recast the heritage of the local Jewish community as an Egyptian and Moroccan story of past and present. The fact that it is mainly non-Jewish Egyptians and Moroccans who preserve Jewish heritage in their respective countries allows us to consider the future of Jewish heritage independently of the number of Jews in these countries.

Equally vital is the role that has been played by the authorities and the local tiny Jewish communities in providing formal legitimacy, determining the scope of heritage preservation efforts, and mobilizing the requisite resources. This renewed engagement with the Jewish past is reflected in concurrent bottom-up and top-down initiatives, signaling a multifaceted approach to heritage preservation and historical reinterpretation.

The unprecedented Moroccan and Egyptian engagement with the local Jewish past and present heritage is enriching the Living Archive. Yet, the significance of these unique materials stems from their reuse, preservation, and reference to local cultural practices and public discourses. In other words, the existence of Jewish sites and artifacts is a precondition for the preservation of local Jewish heritage, but it is not a sufficient one. It is the reinterpretation given to synagogues, cemeteries, and Judaica items that replants them into the local social and cultural contexts, thus giving them renewed meaning and relevance in reshaping the image of both the past and present. Hence, the emergence of new and positive representations of Jewish sites and heritage in popular cultural artifacts is of great significance.

Why has all of this happened in recent years? The timing is significant, driven by recent developments in Egypt and Morocco. I contend that the unprecedented revisionism and the varied opinions about the Jewish past and heritage are inseparable from the social and political struggles that have culminated in, and ensued from, the 2011 popular uprising, commonly known as the Arab Spring. Despite the differences between these two societies, both have become entangled in a political debate concerning governance, political pluralism, cultural and social identities, and the attitude toward local minorities. For a long time, silence over the minorities and their heritages was maintained by nationalistic narratives that distorted the past images of Copts, Greeks, and Jews in Egypt, and Amazigh and Jews in Morocco. In this context, a vigorous debate has developed over the Jewish community’s history and the future of its assets, particularly its synagogues, cemeteries, archives, Torah scrolls, rare manuscripts, and books.

The re-engagement with minorities, past and present, is also highly politically contested. The assortment of oppositional opinions raised regarding the possible “reinstatement” of the Jewish past into Egyptian and Moroccan history reflects a fierce debate about social and cultural identities and the deep political rifts dividing these societies regarding their present regimes and policies.

An artificial political line has been drawn between the opponents. Generally, the proponents of preserving Jewish heritage support the current regime or find it a reasonable compromise. The fierce opponents of the regime stand on the opposite side. In other words, these two political camps deal with communities of Jews or other minorities as a means of dealing with the issues of contemporary Muslim-majority society, which are identity, culture, and the nature of governance in the present.

Finally, one of the more meaningful expressions of revisionism in Egyptian public discourse about Jews is the call to distinguish between “Jewish” and “Judaism” on the one hand, and “Israel” and “Zionism” on the other. Yet, this trend has only begun. The distinction between “Jew” and “Zionist” is still blurred, as if all Jews are Zionists or are working to advance Israeli policy. The prevalence of Jewish stereotyping in public debates regarding their “nature” and their political and national commitments is now even more challenging. Against the backdrop of the horrendous war at the heart of the Middle East, the scope of erroneous and anti-Jewish sentiments and positions throughout MENA has significantly increased among all classes and ranks.

* The concept of the Living Archive is thoroughly explored in the author’s newly published book, Sacred Places Tell Tales: Jewish Life and

What struck me in their report is how unhappy the Middle East is. The only Middle Eastern country in the top twenty is Kuwait (for the first time in this cycle). Kuwait has oil wealth and is a compact country with lots of social interaction. The high score may reflect Kuwait’s lively labor movement. That sort of movement isn’t allowed in the other Gulf States. The United Arab Emirates came in at 22, and Saudi Arabia at 28.

These countries are all very wealthy and their people are very social and connected to clans and other group identities, including religious congregations.

But everyone else in the Middle East is way down the list.

As usual, Gallup found that the very happiest countries were Scandinavian lands shaped by social democratic policies. It turns out that a government safety net of the sort the Republican Party wants to get rid of actually is key to making people happy.

Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Sweden take the top four spots. Israel, which also has a Labor socialist founding framework, is fifth. The Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland and Luxembourg fill out the top nine.

The Gallup researchers believe that a few major considerations affect well-being or happiness. They note, “Social interactions of all kinds … add to happiness, in addition to their effects flowing through increases in social support and reductions in loneliness.” My brief experience of being in Australia suggests to me that they are indeed very social and likely not very lonely on the whole. Positive emotions also equate to well-being and are much more important in determining it than negative emotions. The positive emotions include joy, gratitude, serenity, hope, pride, amusement, inspiration, awe, and altruism, among others.

Benevolence, doing good to others, also adds to well-being. Interestingly, the Gallup researchers find that benevolence increased in COVID and its aftermath across the board.

They also factor in GDP per capita, that is, how poor or wealthy people are.

Gallup Video: “2024 World Happiness Report; Gallup CEO Jon Clifton”

Bahrain comes in at 62, which shows that oil wealth isn’t everything. It is deeply divided between a Sunni elite and a Shiite majority population, and that sectarian tension likely explains why it isn’t as happy as Kuwait. Kuwait is between a sixth and a third Shiite and also has a Sunni elite, but the Shiites are relatively well treated and the Emir depends on them to offset the power of Sunni fundamentalists. So it isn’t just sectarian difference that affects happiness but the way in which the rulers deal with it.

Libya, which is more or less a failed state after the people rose up to overthrow dictator Moammar Gaddafi, nevertheless comes in at 66. There is some oil wealth when the militias allow its export, and despite the east-west political divide, people are able to live full lives in cities like Benghazi and Tripoli. Maybe the overhang of getting rid of a hated dictator is still a source of happiness for them.

Algeria, a dictatorship and oil state, is 85. The petroleum wealth is not as great as in the Gulf by any means, and is monopolized by the country’s elite.

Iraq, an oil state, is 92. Like Bahrain, it suffers from ethnic and sectarian divides. It is something of a failed state after the American overthrow of its government.

Iran, another oil state, is 100. Its petroleum sales are interfered with by the US except with regard to China, so its income is much more limited than other Gulf oil states. The government is dictatorial and young people seem impatient with its attempt to regiment their lives, as witnessed in the recent anti-veiling protests.

The State of Palestine is 103, which is actually not bad given that they are deeply unhappy with being occupied by Israel. This ranking certainly plummeted after the current Israeli total war on Gaza began.

Morocco is 107. It is relatively poor, in fact poorer than some countries that rank themselves much lower on the happiness scale.

Tunisia is one of the wealthier countries in Africa and much better off than Morocco, but it comes in at 115. In the past few years all the democratic gains made during and after the Arab Spring have been reversed by horrid dictator Qais Saied. People seem to be pretty unhappy at now living in a seedy police state.

Jordan is both poor and undemocratic, and is ranked 125.

Egypt is desperately poor and its government since 2014 has been a military junta in business suits that brooks not the slightest dissent. It is 127. The hopes of the Arab Spring are now ashes.

Yemen is 133. One of the poorest countries in the world, it suffered from being attacked by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates from 2015 until 2021. So it is war torn and poverty-stricken.

Lebanon ranks almost at the bottom at 142. Its economy is better than Yemen’s but its government is hopelessly corrupt and its negligence caused the country’s major port to be blown up, plunging the country into economic crisis. It is wracked by sectarianism. If hope is a major positive emotion that leads to feelings of happiness, it is in short supply there.

Some countries are too much of a basket case to be included, like Syria, where I expect people are pretty miserable after the civil war. Likewise Sudan, which is now in civil strife and where hundreds of thousands may starve.

Poverty, dictatorship, disappointment in political setbacks, and sectarianism all seem to play a part in making the Middle East miserable. The role of the United States in supporting the dictatorships in Egypt and elsewhere, or in supporting wars, has been sinister and certainly has added significantly to the misery. For no group in the region is this more true than for the Palestinians.

No substantial damage to a modern wind turbine by an earthquake has been recorded since 1986.

Ouarzazate, Morocco, on the edge of the Sahara, is the site of the world’s largest concentrated solar power plant, which has a capacity of 580 megawatts, the equivalent of a small nuclear plant. The massive 6.8 earthquake that shook Marrakech, Ouarzazate, and the Atlas Mountain region on September 8, killing nearly 3,000 people, did only minor damage to the solar complex and so the lights stayed on.

The Moroccan Ministry of Energy “clarified that the damage was confined to certain equipment at the Noor plant, emphasizing that these issues were swiftly repaired, and confirmed that all energy installations are operating normally.”

Moreover, donated portable solar power stations along with 400-watt solar panels helped keep essential services such as hospitals and clinics in operation in the Atlas Mountain villages hit by the quake. The Red Cross is encouraging such donations, seeing solar panels and power stations as much safer than trying to cook with portable natural gas cannisters.

Morocco gets about 38% of its electricity from renewables, and hopes get the percentage to 52% by 2030. It is probably the Middle Eastern country that has so far done the most to adopt wind and solar. It is considered on track in its energy transformation to do its part in keeping global warming to under 1.5C, which is necessary to avoid the risk of the planet’s climate systems going chaotic.

Morocco has few fossil fuels of its own and must import them at a relatively high cost. However, planners do continue to depend on coal and natural gas and some of the earlier green momentum has been lost.

There have been delays with some planned major solar farms, but the government hopes these will come on line by 2025.

There are also plans to produce green, i.e., low-carbon hydrogen.

Because of its abundant sunshine, Morocco is an obvious site for producing solar power, and its wind resources are also extensive. There is even now a plan to bring renewable energy generated in Morocco to the UK by underwater cable, at a cost of $21 billion.

A powerful earthquake that hit close to the medieval city of Marrakech in Morocco on Sept. 8, 2023, has killed thousands and injured many more. It has also put at risk buildings and monuments of major historic importance, among them the minaret of the Kutubiyya mosque, a 12th-century structure that is an icon of the city.

The Medina, the medieval walled portion of the city, is now littered with rubble. The cultural significance of the Medina extends far beyond the antiques and trinkets sold to tourists.

It is the location of numerous artisan workshops that make the ceramic tiles, carved plaster and intricate woodwork that decorate the city. Many of these workshops have maintained traditional methods for centuries, transmitting skill sets down through the generations.

Part of Morocco’s bid for Marrakech’s UNESCO status was based on these craft traditions being “intangible cultural heritage,” which the U.N. describes as knowledge or skills that are passed down orally rather than in written form.

I’ve been working in Marrakech since 2014, living there on and off as I completed research on a book about the development of Marrakech as a medieval metropolis. Although my work focused on the 12th century, the more I learned about the city, the more I realized that most of the urban fabric and architectural sites I was looking at were thanks to the conservation efforts of local workshops.

The UNESCO designation was a historical acknowledgment of the traditions of poor and rural communities that can often get left out of larger conversations about art history. It is precisely these communities that have maintained Marrakech’s architectural heritage for generations, but the earthquake has destroyed the workshops and residences of many in the Medina.

These poor and rural communities are at their most vulnerable just when their skills will be needed the most to help rebuild the city after this disaster.

Oral origins

Marrakech was founded in 1070 by the Almoravid dynasty, which derived from a tribe that was part of a larger non-Arab confederation of peoples now referred to as Berbers.

It was one of the first major cities in the wider Islamic west, known as the Maghrib – now comprising Morocco, Algeria and parts of Tunisia – to be founded by a group indigenous to the region.

The majority of the community spoke a dialect of Tamazight, an Afro-Asiatic language distinct from Arabic. It was primarily an oral language, meaning that knowledge was more commonly handed down via poetic stories rather than written texts.

Some Arabic sources described the Almoravids as “unsophisticated” and “illiterate,” yet the evidence of their architectural and artistic heritage suggests otherwise. In Marrakech, they built an elegantly proportioned dome known as the Qubba al-Barudiyyin and commissioned the elaborate wooden minbar (pulpit) that now sits in the Badiʿ Palace Museum.

They were followed by the Almohad dynasty, another largely indigenous group, that faced similar accusations in historical accounts despite building the Kutubiyya minaret, Marrakech’s signature monument.

Site of independence movements

The city’s origins as a Berber capital contributed to making Marrakech the epicenter of contemporary Moroccan national identity, rooted in a pride and independence centuries old. Whereas other North African cities had roots in Arab or Roman tradition, Marrakech could claim to be distinctly Moroccan.

In the face of Ottoman expansion in the 16th century, the kingdom of Morocco, based out of Marrakech, was the sole region of the Arabic-speaking world to maintain their autonomy from Turkish control.

Although the French and the Spanish would compete for colonial rule of the country, the Moroccan independence movements of the 20th century were largely based out of Marrakech. The city was so prone to revolt that the French administration moved the colonial capital further north to Rabat.

Even the word “Morocco” is derived from an etymological transmutation of “Marrakech.”

A hidden history

And yet, recovering the city’s significant past is an exercise in reading between the lines.

The oral traditions of the city’s founders were rarely faithfully transcribed. Written sources are often scattered and unpublished, and those that do exist are often written by outsiders or visitors to the city.

The Ottomans were excellent record-keepers, enabling scholars to explore extensive centralized archives on every part of the Arabic world – except Morocco, whose archives remain dispersed and underfunded. Historians have had to work obliquely to uncover concrete details, relying on archaeological and anthropological research to supplement oral traditions.

Integral to these efforts was the role of craft traditions in and around Marrakech. Craft was a key point of France’s colonial efforts in Marrakech, where they established “artisan schools” in the Medina to ostensibly document and preserve their methods. In doing so, the French Protectorate – which ruled the country from 1912 to 1956 – created a kind of living nostalgia within the Medina, conflating the people who actually lived there with the city’s medieval past.

This effectively created a form of economic and social segregation in which craftsmen and their families were siloed into the old town, while the wealthier expatriates and tourists occupied the Ville Nouvelle outside the medieval walls.

Preserving the past through craft

At the same time, these craft traditions are also what made it possible to preserve and restore many of the sites in and around Marrakech that now draw thousands of tourists each year.

The Qasba Mosque, the city’s “second” major mosque after the Kutubiyya and originally built between 1185 and 1189, underwent successive restorations in both the 17th and 21st centuries after political instability led to their decline. In both cases, local artisans were employed to renovate the mosque’s stucco walls and the mosaic tile work known as zellij.

The 11th-century Almoravid pulpit required a team of Moroccan craftsmen to successfully restore the minbar’s intricate marquetry.

Artisans have also been important ambassadors for Morocco’s place in the larger canon of Islamic art, building a courtyard as part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s 2011 renovation of their Islamic galleries using 14th-century techniques and materials.

With the Marrakech Medina partially destroyed, many of these artisans and workshops will face tough choices regarding their future. Gentrification over the last decade has priced many residents out of their ancestral homes, and many of these workshops operate on thin margins – too thin to both pay for damages and retain control over their property.

Rebuilding intangible heritage

Parts of the city walls cracked in the earthquake, and an 18th-century mosque in the main square lost its minaret. The historic 12th-century site of Tinmal, not far from Marrakech and nestled in the Atlas Mountains, has also collapsed.

The human toll of the earthquake is still being tallied, and the material damage is likely to be extensive. Nothing can replace the loss of life. Yet the history and resilience of a place are instrumental in any recovery.

It will be the role of Marrakech’s intangible heritage – its artists and artisans – to rebuild after this disaster. In the midst of narratives about caliphs and sultans, philosophers and poets, it can be easy to forget that the people who built these places often went unnamed in the historical texts.

But these artists will need support to maintain Marrakech’s history, to preserve the past for future historians to discover.

Abbey Stockstill, Assistant Professor of Art History, Southern Methodist University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

( Waging Nonviolence) – On June 27, Nahel Merzouk, a 17-year-old French boy of North African descent was murdered by a white police officer in a Parisian suburb. Since then, anger has erupted almost everywhere in the country, especially in poor neighborhoods. Young people are taking to the streets to protest against police violence and state racism. Their anger is eruptive. 

Recently, I helped organize support and solidarity for another uprising in France: Soulèvements de la terre, or Earth’s uprising. This movement, created in 2021, is fighting against large and useless infrastructure (like highways, giant tunnels under the Alps, etc.), transnational corporations and other sources of pollution and environmental destruction. At one recent action against a giant water-reservoir designed to support industrial farming, two protesters ended up in comas — the result of explosions from police grenades banned in most European countries, but not France. 

Since then, several spokespersons and coordinators of Soulèvements de la terre have been arrested and interrogated by the counter-terrorism service. A couple of weeks ago, the government decided to outlaw the group. Now, anyone claiming to be a member of the movement is committing a criminal offense. 

The near simultaneous occurrence of these two uprisings is more than a coincidence. It begs the question: Are these not actually two sides of the same coin, two moments in one larger uprising? 

As an activist trained in nonviolent direct action, I’m obviously partly unsettled by the eruptive protests following Nahel’s murder. Burning public libraries, crashing a car into a mayor’s house and trying to set it on fire, looting shops, and destroying buses and tramways doesn’t belong to the action repertoire I follow. If someone would mention these as potential tactics for a protest I would organize, I would vehemently counter-argue or simply not take part in such a protest. I feel more comfortable pushing through police lines to block a coal mine or disrupt a meeting of executives from the fossil fuel industry.

But my preferences don’t matter at all here, for several reasons.

First, alliances are not built upon tactical discussions. Debates and disputes over tactics tend to steal the whole conversation when we’re strategically lost. There’s always plenty of time later to agree to disagree. Alliances emerge from something else: a shared experience (or a shared anger); a set of demands that can be articulated in a way that makes them stronger; a common horizon; or a shared political project.

As for the second, and most important, reason why arguing over tactics is a bad idea: Just like Soulèvements de la terre, the ongoing uprising is about habitability and land.

French activist Fatima Ouassak explains that people living in poor neighborhoods are “landless.” People who originally migrated from Africa to France are, according to her, “deprived of land.” Henceforth, what is at stake when they organize is to claim the right to land. Interestingly enough, the French language offers only one word for both land and Earth: “terre.” The Earth’s Uprising would as well be the Land’s Uprising. 

At a protest to support the Soulèvements de la terre, feminist, anti-racist and anti-colonial activist Françoise Verges explained that the system that the Earth’s uprising is fighting against (a vision of nature as a bottomless pit of resources one can indefinitely extract) started in the colonies, under the slavery-plantation system. Indeed, the “system” change that we’ve been demanding for many years is, first and foremost, about achieving full decolonization. Those facing, on a day-to-day basis, state racism and police brutality are therefore on the frontline of this fight.

The fact that I feel unsettled when I see people burn a library or a public transport infrastructure is as much a disagreement over tactics as it is a manifestation of my own background: I had the privilege to be trained in nonviolent direct action. I was taught how to channel my anger into a strategic plan, whose horizon shall remain the famous Gandhian “constructive program.” I feel privileged to experience the current state of the world without erupting and bursting out in rage — and to instead think about strategies, alliances and campaign goals. 

This is precisely why the current manifestation of anger shouldn’t be dismissed as illegitimate, or as something not smart or disciplined enough for a good campaign. After all, the climate movement is currently debating whether or not we should “blow up pipelines.” We would therefore be hypocrites to criticize those setting fire to the very French institutions oppressing them.

Ultimately, we are not facing two consecutive uprisings, but rather one, two-sided uprising. One side is about the habitability of the Earth, the other is about the habitability of France for Black, Indigenous and people of color. With this understanding comes quite a few strategic consequences. 

For starters, we should demand full amnesty for anyone who has recently been (or will be) arrested, whether they were taking part in the popular neighborhood uprising or in a protest organized by the Soulèvements de la terre. This is key: Since this is about dismantling the existing colonial matrix of power, we won’t return to an appeased situation without breaking with the cycle of violence. It has to begin where the cycle of violence has started: police brutality and repression. 

Yes, there’s a lot of anger and rage, and some of it is expressed in ways that are, to say the least, challenging. This is precisely why the cycle of violence has to stop — and it won’t stop in a sustainable and fair way unless the state does its part. It would be unfair and short-sighted to put the responsibility of breaking with the current cycle of violence on those who are protesting, expressing their anger and desire to not be victims of state racism any more.

People are rising up to defend a habitable world — some from the countryside, on the frontline of the extraction of natural resources, and others in dense urban areas, on the frontline of the extraction of the lives of oppressed and colonized people. 

We should then try and seek inspiration from movements that have tried to connect similar dynamics. One obvious example is the Breathe Act, developed by the Movement for Black Lives. This visionary bill aims to defund the police, develop community-owned ways of ensuring safety, and promote environmental and climate justice. In the words of one of its creators, Gina Clayton Johnson, “We know the solution has to be as big as the 400-year-old problem itself.” 

This visionary proposal combines the necessity of dismantling the institutions that are making the world inhabitable and the vision of what needs to be done in order to restore the conditions for justice. In other words, it seeks to preserve the habitability of the world. This could be a way for the French left to finally address the issue of structural racism and break with its color-blindness. Opening eyes to the reasons behind this side of the ongoing uprising is a first step toward supporting the fight for a habitable world for everyone.

Nicolas Haeringer is working at 350.org, where he coordinates partners engagement and works on global mobilizations. Based in France, he’s been involved in the global and climate justice movements for the last 20 years and has written on strategies for social transformation for two decades.

Morocco has a large fertiliser industry with huge production capacity and international reach. It is one of the world’s top four fertiliser exporters following Russia, China and Canada.

Fertilisers tend to divide into three main categories; nitrogen fertilisers, phosphorus fertilisers, potassium fertilisers. In 2020 the fertiliser market size was about US$190 billion.

Morocco has distinct advantage in the production of phosphorus fertilisers. It possesses over 70% of the world’s phosphate rock reserves, from which the phosphorus used in fertilisers is derived. And this makes Morocco a gatekeeper of global food supply chains because all food crops require the element phosphorus to grow. Indeed, so does all plant life. Unlike other finite resources, such as fossil fuels, there is no alternative to phosphorus.

In 2021, the global phosphorus fertiliser market amounted to about US$59 billion. In Morocco, the sector’s 2020 revenues amounted to US$5.94 billion. Office Chérifien des Phosphates, the producer owned by the Moroccan state, accounted for about 20% of the kingdom’s export revenues. It is also the country’s largest employer, providing jobs for 21,000 people.

Morocco plans to produce an additional 8.2 million tonnes of phosphorus fertiliser by 2026. Currently production is at about 12 million tonnes.

The state company recently announced that it would increase its fertiliser production for the year by 10%. This would put an additional 1.2 million tonnes on the global market by the end of the year. This will significantly help markets.

But, as I argue in a new report, Morocco faces new challenges. Its production of fertiliser is threatened by increasingly daunting environmental and economic challenges. They include the COVID pandemic and the severe supply chain disruptions that have followed.

The timing to address these is crucial.

Russia is currently the world’s largest fertiliser exporter – 15.1% of total exported fertilisers. And fertiliser represents one of the greatest vulnerabilities for both Europe and Africa. For instance, the EU27 (all of the 27 member state of the European Union) as a whole depends on Russia for 30% of its fertiliser supply. Russia’s advantageous position is amplified by its status as the world’s second-largest natural gas producer. Gas is a main component of all phosphorus fertilisers as well as nitrogen fertilisers.

Because of this, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has serious implications for global food security. Both in terms of supply, and also because fertiliser can be used a economic weapon or tool.

Morocco could therefore become central to the global fertiliser market and a gatekeeper of the world’s food supply that could offset the attempt to use fertiliser as a weapon.

The journey

Morocco started to mine phosphorous in 1921. During the 1980s and 1990s it began to produce its own fertiliser. Office Chérifien des Phosphates built the world’s largest fertiliser production hub in Jorf Lasfar on Morocco’s Atlantic coast.

Before the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine war, the company had over 350 clients on five continents. About 54% of phosphate fertilisers bought in Africa come from Morocco. Moroccan fertilisers also account for major domestic market shares in India (50%), Brazil (40%) and Europe (41%). India and Brazil have reached out to Morocco to fill additional supply gaps.

Morocco’s economy has reaped the benefits of the transformation into an international fertiliser exporting giant. And in sub-Saharan Africa in particular, the combination of joint venture partnerships in local fertiliser production and direct outreach to farmers has resulted in a remarkable boost to African agricultural yields.

It’s also expanded Morocco’s soft power influence across the continent. For instance, Morocco supplies over 90% of Nigeria’s annual fertiliser demand.

But, how well Morocco manages challenges to the industry will affect both its own economic development and the stability of food supplies across the world.

The challenges

Water and energy constraints

Phosphate extraction and fertiliser production uses a lot of energy and water. Morocco’s phosphate and fertiliser industry consumes about 7% of its annual energy output and 1% of its water.

But Morocco is among the countries suffering the most from water scarcity. This is due to a dry climate, high water demand, climate change and reservoir contamination and siltation.

Morocco is trying to address this through a National Water Plan 2020-2050. It envisages building new dams and desalination plants and expanding irrigation networks, among other measures, to sustain agriculture and ecosystems. It’s estimated to cost about US$40 billion.

Natural gas costs

Nitrogen is the other basic fertiliser element that plants need. Diammonium phosphate, the most popular type of phosphorus fertiliser worldwide (and which Morocco makes along with monoammonium), is composed of 46% phosphorus and 18% nitrogen. Natural gas accounts for at least 80% of the variable cost of nitrogen fertiliser.

This means the price of natural gas massively affects production costs. But Morocco has scant natural gas resources. And natural gas prices have been soaring.

How well Morocco manages the food-water-energy nexus will affect both its own economic development and the stability of food supplies across the world.

Some answers

The key is to expand its renewable energy sector. Morocco holds considerable solar and wind resources. Fertiliser manufacturing could become powered by renewable energy, and renewable energy could be used within the fertiliser itself.

In 2020, the state’s fertiliser company covered 89% of its energy needs by co-generation (producing two or more forms of energy from a single fuel source) and renewable energy sources. Its aim is to eventually cover 100% of its energy needs in this way.

Renewable energy could also be used within the fertiliser itself. Instead of importing ammonia derived from natural gas, Morocco could produce its own using hydrogen produced from its domestic renewable energy resources.

According to the state company, 31% of its water needs are met with “unconventional” water resources, including treated wastewater and desalinated seawater.

Morocco’s growing reliance on desalination plants to satisfy industrial, agricultural and residential needs will require sizeable new investments in power generation from renewable energy sources. Desalination plants require 10 times the amount of energy to produce the same volume of water as conventional surface water treatment.

To sustain operations and expand green ammonia production, Morocco will have to strike a careful balance between its fertiliser exports, its drive to expand its high-value agricultural exports and the provision of drinking water to its population.

Using its large solar energy resources to power green hydrogen and green ammonia production, along with desalination, Morocco could escape the vicious cycle of the upward spiralling of prices in the food-energy-water nexus.

Michaël Tanchum, Associate Senior Policy Fellow, European Council on Foreign Relations and Professor , Universidad de Navarra

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

“”Here in the Kingdom of Morocco, Masdar, in partnership with the National Office of Electricity and Drinking Water, has implemented a landmark solar home systems project to provide power to nearly 20,000 homes in more than 1,000 rural towns across Morocco.”

In the global south, people outside big cities are often underserved regarding electricity, and these projects have the double benefit of providing clean electricity and of further electrifying the countryside. Electricity can be important not only to the ease of life in villages but also to agricultural productivity.

Al Jaber added, “We also want to develop the Noor Midelt solar power plant, which has a total installed capacity of 800 MW.”

That is nearly a gigawatt, the name plate capacity of a small nuclear plant. With energy storage such as battery or molten salt or pumped hydro, a facility like that could actually come close to the name plate capacity.

Nour Mdelt will only be the newest addition to Morocco’s already impressive solar arrays. Morocco has the largest solar concentrating plant in the world, the Noor Ouarzazate. It powers a million homes on the edge of the Sahara, and has a molten salt battery that goes on generating electricity for hours after the sun sets.

Morocco is the Middle Eastern country that has made the most strides toward renewable energy, through a combination of need and foresight. The North African kingdom does not have much in the way of fossil fuels itself, and so must import its energy. Plus, most Middle Eastern governments provide energy subsidies to consumers as part of the bargain governments make with the people, to take care of them if they avoid too much politics. Between paying for the imported coal, oil and methane gas and then subsidizing their cost for consumers, the government faced big bills every year. So over a decade ago, Rabat decided to try to get two gigawatts each of solar, wind and new hydro, in which by now it has largely succeeded.

Aida Alami at the BBC writes that Morocco reached 37% renewable electricity by 2020. She adds, “the country has come a long way. Morocco has since pledged to increase the renewables in its electricity mix to 52% by 2030, made up of 20% solar, 20% wind and 12% hydro.”

The new Noor Midelt solar park is a hybrid project with concentrated solar and photovoltaic solar. It is expected to be commissioned in 2022. Mixing the two forms of solar energy has been shown to reduce costs, and such plants produce electricity more cheaply than natural gas. The Noor Midelt plant will go on working for five hours after sunset.

I would just like to point out that the US only gets 20% of its electricity from renewables, and that the lion’s share of that is hydroelectricity, so Morocco is way ahead of the United States in the proportion of solar and wind in its electricity grid.