Edited by Hamza Hamouchene and Katie Sandwell
Pluto Press
10/20/2023, paperback
SKU: 9780745349213
The Arab region is a focus of world politics, with authoritarian regimes, significant fossil fuel reserves and histories of colonialism and imperialism. It is also the site of potentially immense green energy resources.
The writers in this collection explore a region ripe for energy transition, but held back by resource-grabbing and (neo)colonial agendas. They show the importance of fighting for a just energy transition and climate justice - exposing policies and practices that protect global and local political elites, multinational corporations and military regimes.
Covering a wide range of countries from Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia to Egypt, Sudan, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Palestine, this book challenges Eurocentrism and highlights instead a class-conscious approach to climate justice that is necessary for our survival.
Reviews:
"Demonstrates that the climate crisis - along with mainstream responses to it - is playing out along colonial lines. It's time to face up to this reality and build an anti-colonial struggle in response." -- Jason Hickel, economic anthropologist and author of Less is More
"This groundbreaking volume by scholars deeply embedded in the region's political and knowledge production milieus, offers a timely, indeed acute, analysis of what a just transition might mean for the region. The authors examine in theoretically and empirically rich essays contestations over the Sahara, greenwashing Israel's colonisation of Palestine, agricultural and mineral extractivism, green capitalism and finance and a range of other urgently pivotal subjects." -- Laleh Khalili, author of Sinews of War and Trade: Shipping and Capitalism in the Arabian Peninsula
About the Editors:
Dr Hamza Hamouchene is a London-based Algerian researcher and activist. He is the North Africa Programme Coordinator at the Transnational Institute (TNI), and a founding member of Algeria Solidarity Campaign (ASC), Environmental Justice North Africa (EJNA) and the North African Food Sovereignty Network (NAFSN). He has written and edited several books including The Arab Uprisings: A decade of struggles and The Struggle for Energy Democracy in the Maghreb. His writings have appeared in Africa Is A Country, Guardian, Huffington Post, Middle East Eye, New Internationalist, Jadaliyya, openDemocracy, ROAR and other places.
Katie Sandwell is a Programme Coordinator with the Transnational Institute. She has published on global food sovereignty movements, just transition and land struggles and is co-author of From Crisis to Transformation: What is Just Transition?