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Each year, the world’s heads of state meet at the Conference of Parties (COP) to discuss how to “stabiliz[e] greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system,” as the guiding United Nations Framework on Climate Change demands. Last year’s COP garnered international attention and praise. Le Monde’s verdict included a quote from the event’s president and Parti Socialiste foreign minister, Laurent Fabius (“a compromise guided by ‘climate justice’”). The Guardian called the meeting “a rare and heartening case of disparate peoples being led to a common conclusion by evidence and reason.” The New York Times declared that the negotiations ended with “a historic breakthrough.” But many climate justice activists and scientists disagree. Against the “People’s Test” — “a set of criteria that the Paris deal would need to meet in order to be effective and fair” created by social movements, unions, and environmental groups — the Paris agreements failed on every count. On Monday, COP22 began in Marrakech, Morocco. International attention will again focus on the political class’s negotiations. But if we’re serious about fighting climate change globally, we might be better off listening to the Moroccan activists currently fighting environmental ruination. This resistance comes out of the country’s imperialist environmental policy, which, to paraphrase William Faulkner, isn’t past: it isn’t even history.

Protectorate? From 1915 to 1955, le protectorat française — or, as it tends to be called, al-Isti‘amār, the colonization — expropriated the most fertile lands, created irrigation systems, and mechanized production, creating, as Adam Hanieh writes, a “bifurcated agricultural system.” The goal was straightforward: to create profitable exports for France. Agricultural production increased enormously in the formal colonial period: in 1930, there were 10,000 hectares of vineyard, by 1955, 55,000. Land devoted to citrus production grew tenfold in half a lifetime: 5,000 hectares in 1935, 52,000 in 1958. Rural, then urban, life turned upside down as a result. The theft of communal lands and devastating unemployment caused massive urbanization. The colonial regime did remake the cities, but for soldiers and tourists, not displaced peasants. Rabat-Salé, the administrative capital, was riven by urban apartheid. Casablanca and Marrakech fared little better. As elsewhere, colonialism created “a world cut in two.” This new world was increasingly urban — not despite, but because of, the regime’s rural imperatives: to steal, mechanize, and profit. Techno-ecological change remained violently antisocial in the counter-colonial phase as well. European ownership of lands decreased enormously after the French were expelled in the 1950s. Unlike in Egypt and Algeria, however, no substantial redistribution to the rural proletariat took place. Once the Moroccan monarchy — al-Makhzen, a word used to describe the country’s unelected power — found itself back in power, it had to compete with the urban, bourgeois nationalists. To bolster their power, the ruling class developed good relations with rural elites who, of course, opposed state expropriation of land. The disorganized peasantry could not mount a substantial counterforce as the royal state and rich landowners bought out the departing French. Then, as Diana K. Davis explains: Like the colonial government before him, the leader of independent Morocco for four decades (1961–1999), King Hassan II, chose to use the best and most developed agricultural land for the production of export crops such as citrus and vegetables. This decision accords with the whole apparatus of international finance — USAID, the World Bank, and, more recently, the European Investment Bank (EIB). They all reject collective land use (especially pastoralism) and support privatized, large-scale agricultural production — always with a view to export. To quote Adam Hanieh again, this meant “a reconstitution and intensification of the bifurcated agricultural system that existed under colonialism.” But the environmental basis of this industry is rapidly drying up. A 2012 study shows “a general tendency toward warmer and drier conditions” in western and northern Morocco over the past forty years. By 2040, rainfall may decrease by as much as 30 percent in the country’s south. The region’s REMO model “suggests a temperature rise in North Africa between two and three degrees Celsius by 2050.” Almost 40 percent of the Moroccan labor force works in agriculture. This sector also consumes 90 percent of the country’s water, most of which comes from precipitation. In an already environmentally vulnerable region, Morocco’s economic survival will largely depend on the coming climatic conditions.