This event will be the launch of Dismantling Green Colonialism: Energy and Climate Justice in the Arab Region edited by Hamza Hamouchene and Katie Sandwell, published by Pluto Press.
The Arab region is a focus of world politics, with authoritarian regimes, significant fossil fuel reserves and histories of colonialism and imperialism. It is also the site of potentially immense green energy resources.
The writers in this collection explore a region ripe for energy transition, but held back by resource-grabbing and (neo)colonial agendas. They show the importance of fighting for a just energy transition and climate justice - exposing policies and practices that protect global and local political elites, multinational corporations and military regimes.
Covering a wide range of countries from Morocco, Western Sahara, Algeria and Tunisia to Egypt, Sudan, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Palestine, this book challenges Eurocentrism and highlights instead a class-conscious approach to climate justice that is necessary for our survival.
Copies of the book will be available to purchase at this event via Pluto Press.
Meet the speakers
Hamza Hamouchene is Programme Coordinator for North Africa at the Transnational Institute (TNI). He is a London-based Algerian researcher-activist, commentator and a founding member of Algeria Solidarity Campaign (ASC), and Environmental Justice North Africa (EJNA). He previously worked for War on Want, Global Justice Now and Platform London on issues of extractivism, resources, land and food sovereignty as well as climate, environmental, and trade justice. He is the author/editor of two books: The Struggle for Energy Democracy in the Maghreb (2017) and The Coming Revolution to North Africa: The Struggle for Climate Justice (2015). He also contributed book chapters to Voices of Liberation: Frantz Fanon (2014) and The Palgrave Encyclopaedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism (2016).
Katie Sandwell is Programme Coordinator at the Transnational Institute (TNI). She holds a Master of Environmental Studies degree from York University, Canada focusing on food sovereignty and local food movements, and has worked with and supported movements around the world. She coordinates and supports work at TNI on a range of issues related to climate, environmental and agrarian justice; public alternatives; energy democracy; land and territories; fair trade medicinal plants; agroecology and food sovereignty.
Michael Mason is Director of the Middle East Centre. At LSE, he is also Professor of Environmental Geography in the Department of Geography and Environment and an Associate of the Grantham Research Institute for Climate Change and the Environment. He is interested in ecological politics and governance as applied to questions of accountability, security and sovereignty. This research addresses both global environmental politics and regional environmental change in Western Asia/the Middle East.
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