Amid the election victory of the intensely pro-coal, global-warming denier Donald Trump, the United Nation’s annual Climate Change Conference is underway in Marrakech, Morocco and is aiming to build on last year’s Paris Agreement.
The conference began on Monday and will run until the end of next week.
Herculean task
Trump aside, getting any far-reaching climate deal done will be a herculean challenge involving unprecedented cooperation and goodwill between nations.
Specifically, it will require cooperation between developed economies, which account for most greenhouse gas emissions in per capita as well as historical terms, and developing ones, which have the most urgent need for an increase in carbon emissions and carbohydrates consumption.
Morocco, which is a developing, African, Muslim economy that shares the Pillars of Hercules with its developed, European, Christian neighbor Spain, could therefore be among the most fitting places to accomplish such an effort.
Food and fuel
Morocco exemplifies many of the greatest challenges as well as greatest opportunities of a world in which the use of fossil fuels is relegated to the back burner.
Using Morocco as a case study, one can explore in detail what the “day after tomorrow” could look like. Not the apocalyptic version of climate change that Hollywood has repeatedly shown us, but rather a more hopeful day after tomorrow: the lower-pollution world those at the conference in Marrakech are hoping to build.
On the challenge side of the ledger, Morocco is one of the poorer countries of the Arab world. While not an energy exporter itself, it does rely on business and investment with the oil-rich Gulf.
Moreover, it is one of the largest food importers in the world (relative to GDP size) and is part of both the Arab and Saharan worlds which are similarly beholden to food imports.
Given the energy-food-water nexus, which has many aspects, there is a far-reaching link between food and fuel prices. In any climate deal, countries like Morocco and regions like the Middle East must be supported in one way or another if they are to avoid economic crises due to food-price inflation and declining energy export revenues.
Conflict
There is also a geopolitical and humanitarian component to this.
Conflicts can be started in response to food prices: the current Syrian war may have been sparked or at least exacerbated by drought.
Morocco has its own dormant food-related conflict with its gas-rich neighbor Algeria over Western Sahara, the large Moroccan-controlled former Spanish colony which holds perhaps three-quarters of global reserves of phosphate fertilizer.
Morocco’s opportunities
In terms of opportunities in a lower-emissions world, Morocco has three factors working in its favor.
First, its location at the exact crossroads of the Atlantic and Mediterranean puts it in a strong position to engage in fuel-efficient maritime trade with large markets like Europe, the Americas and South Asia.
Second, Morocco has renewable energy to harness: the Saharan sun, seaside wind (Morocco’s coast is over 1800 kilometers long) and direct electricity-grid linkages via Spain to the hefty renewables output of Europe.
Indeed, Morocco built the largest solar plant in the world this year, while Spain is the world’s fourth largest producer of wind power and tenth largest of “renewables” in general.
Beyond Spain, Morroco’s largest trading partner France is by far the least dependent on fossil fuels of any of the world’s biggest economies.
Finally, Morocco is one of the few countries to speak three global languages pretty well: Arabic, French and Spanish. As such, it is well-placed to engage in emissions-free trading of services and media on the Internet. Morroco’s even getting decent at English now, because of tourists from the United Kingdom, the United States and the EU.
Outlier
Morocco has always been something of an outlier. Today, it is arguably the only country in the Middle East or North Africa that is not or does not border a failed or semi-failed state.
In recent years, Morocco has been one of the few places in the region where good news has not been too difficult to come by.
And with Trump’s victory on Tuesday, and the end of the climate conference approaching next week, we could all use some more good news out of Morocco right now.
This story first appeared at Future Economics, November 10, 2016.