Energy Politics

The Middle East Report is a magazine by the Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP) that aims to offer critical coverage of the Middle East. Their new issue "Post-Fossil Politics" asks what a “green future” means for the Middle East and North Africa amid an accelerating climate crisis. Benjamin Schütze and Elia El-Khazen from the Emmy Noether Group contributed to this issue of the magazine.

The publisher on this issue:
“Post-Fossil Politics” traces how the region’s land, resources and communities are entangled with and impacted by the global shift toward decarbonization. Far from being a “desert wasteland,” in the region, renewable energies are being developed and harvested at multiple scales—from Morocco to the Gulf. Our contributors explore these developments, measuring the effects of the energy transition not in kilowatt hours but in their impact on precious landscapes and human lives. As they show, the harnessing of low carbon “clean” energy sources relies on extractive practices and exploitative relations, reinforcing rather than redistributing the existing balance of political, social and economic power. Taken together, the issue provides a sharp account of how power flows—through diesel generators, carbon credits, solar farms, value chains and submarine cables—and at what cost. 

Benjamin Schütze questions in "The Uneven Politics of Decarbonization in the Middle East and North Africa" the promise of a less hierarchical and more inclusive energy policy through renewable energies and sheds light on dependencies and the concentration of power in green energy initiatives.

Elia El-Khazen's and Charlotte Rose's "Routes to Disruption—Supply Chain Sabotage and Israel’s War on Gaza" sheds light on how Palestinian activists are strategically disrupting imperial fossil fuel supply chains by blocking oil shipments to Israel and mobilising for an energy embargo.