Rabat: The Moroccan government has been accused of using the renewable energy and low emissions of the disputed region of Western Sahara to “greenwash” its climate statistics.
Western Sahara is a desert region which was annexed by Morocco after the Spanish colonisers left in 1975. Since then, the Moroccan government and the Polisario Front have fought for its control. Currently, the eastern “liberated territories” are governed by Polisario while the western “occupied territories” are controlled by Morocco.
The Polisario Front, which claims to represent the “colonised” people of Western Sahara, has worked with international experts to develop an unofficial national climate plan. As well as outlining the impacts of climate change and what they would do about it if they had the money and power, it criticises Morocco’s use of the area’s resources.
Polisario’s European representative Oubi Bachir presented the plan to Cop26 in Glasgow. Speaking from the Algerian city of Tindouf, where most of the Sahrawi people live as refugees, he told Climate Home News: “Morocco is trying to greenwash its occupation of our land by using those noble and clean mechanisms and tools to try and advance its position on Western Sahara.”
He continued: “Morocco is known to be one of the leading countries, especially in the third world countries, in terms of climate change. But unfortunately, it has been given this position as a leading country because of the illegal force that Morocco is doing inside the occupied territories of Western Sahara.”
The document accuses Morocco of “exploitation” of the Western Sahara’s wind and solar power to reach its goal to get 53% of its energy from renewables by 2030 and to power its phosphate, desalination and airport industries. Bachir said: “Almost 50% of all the energy generated for Morocco [by 2030] will be generated by Western Sahara in the context of occupation.”
The climate plan says: “The development of renewable energy in the Occupied Territory thus supports the personal financial interests of the Moroccan ruling elite, facilitates unsustainable and potentially maladaptive water intensive agriculture, and provides financial returns and potentially energy resources to foreign interests at the expense of the Sahrawi people, and without their consent, contrary to international law.”
The Moroccan environment ministry’s director of climate change, biodiversity and green economy Bouzekri Razi said that only UN members could submit nationally determined contributions, or NDCs, to the Paris Agreement. AFP
