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Towards a just agricultural transition in North Africa

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The bleak reality of global climate change becomes clearer with each new report issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.1 North Africa is extremely vulnerable in the face of climatic and environmental crises, which are a daily occurrence in the lives of the millions of people living in the arid, semi-arid and desert areas of the region. Over the last few decades, drought rates and temperatures have risen continuously, leading to increasing desertification. The region also suffers from severe water scarcity2, land degradation and livestock depletion.3 The accelerated environmental crises directly and indirectly affect agriculture (including grazing) and fishing activities. They also intensify poverty and erode food sovereignty.4 Approximately 52 per cent of the total population in North Africa live in rural areas5 and this population, which includes small-scale farmers and farm workers, is among the poorest and most impacted by the stark effects of agroecological crises.

North Africa’s perilous situation in regard to climate change stands in contrast to the fact that the region accounts for a very small percentage of global greenhouse gas emissions. In 2017, the entire African continent produced approximately 4 per cent of global carbon dioxide emissions, while the average emissions per African person were the lowest in the world, at approximately 0.9 tonnes per annum.6 In the North Africa region, Egypt produced 0.6 per cent of global emissions, Algeria 0.5 per cent, Tunisia 0.1 per cent and Morocco 0.15 per cent.7 A recent study shows the global unevenness of greenhouse gas emissions: while the Global North’s rates stand at 90 per cent, the Global South produces only 10 per cent.8 However, countries in the Global South bear the brunt of the crises brought on by climate change, and are in dire need of a just transition – to help mitigate the harmful impacts of environmental change and to adapt to their long-term consequences.

Agriculture is both negatively impacted by climate change and a significant contributor to it. Due to the dominance of global capitalist food systems and industrial agricultural production, land use and forest management accounted for a total of 23 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions between 2007 and 2016.9 North African countries are no exception to this pattern, dominated as they are by a high-emissions corporate food regime.10 Against this background it is vital to assess the possibilities for, and obstacles to, a just transition in the North African agricultural sector.

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▻https://longreads.tni.org/towards-a-just-agricultural-transition-in-north-africa
#Afrique_du_Nord #transition_agricole #agriculture #climat #changement_climatique #désertification #eau #sécheresse #pêche #souveraineté_alimentaire #néolibéralisme #paysannerie #extractivisme #agriculture_régénérative #agro-écologie #agroécologie

Ten years into the Tunisian Revolution: The specificities and limitations of ‘exceptionalism’ - Longreads
▻https://longreads.tni.org/ten-years-into-the-tunisian-revolution

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Not only did the bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie ride the wave of the revolution that was led by the popular classes, they also opened the door wide to imperialist intervention and control over the ‘democratic transition’.

Such intervention has been clear almost since the very beginning: after influential imperialist powers in Tunisia (France and the US) were taken by surprise when the uprising erupted, they hastened to contain it.

One example of such tactics is the US Department of State’s statement on 9 January 2011, which called for respecting the will of the Tunisian people. Washington saw an opportune moment to experiment in the ‘New Middle East’5 and to ‘encourage’ a liberal ‘democracy’, as noted by Obama in his famous speech in Cairo in 2009, in order to preserve US hegemony in the region. It was therefore not surprising that Ghannouchi’s government rushed, two days later, to remove Ben Ali and appoint the neoliberal Mustapha Kamel Nabli, former Senior Adviser at the World Bank, as a new governor of the central bank. Right from the beginning, Nabli blocked leftist demands to audit Ben Ali’s odious debts and to refuse to pay them. It was equally unsurprising that the G8 would organize the Deauville Conference in France in May 2011. During this conference, major imperial powers sought to contain the ‘Arab Spring’ countries (Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, etc) by flooding their provisional governments with loans, false promises to return their looted money, and offers of aid and investments. They also sought to reassure other subordinate regimes, which had also started to witness social and political unrest, such as Morocco and Jordan.

Most alarmingly, the early embroiling of these countries in the ‘reform’ recipes that were proposed by global financial institutions, conditioned on austerity measures and loans,6 has resulted in the negative economic, social and political repercussions that we see today.

Neoextractivism and state violence: Defending the defenders in Latin America

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The commodities boom in the early 2000s extended the frontiers of extractivism and has relied on state violence, making Latin America one of the most dangerous and deadly places for indigenous peoples and frontline community defenders. Focused on Peru and Colombia, this essay explores dynamics of state violence and strategies for effective resistance.

▻https://longreads.tni.org/stateofpower/neoextractivism-and-state-violence-defending-the-defenders-in-latin-a

#extractivisme #néo-extractivisme #violence #Amérique_latine #violence_d'Etat #Pérou #Colombie #peuples_autochtones #résistance

ping @karine4