All photos courtesy of Parsa Alirezaei.
Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg has drawn praise and criticism for her outspoken support for Palestinian liberation. Zionist media has decried her solidarity with Palestinians, describing her as a naive “environmentalist poster child,” who has “transformed her activism into a platform for vile Jew-hatred.”
But for Thunberg, the connection is clear: there can be “no climate justice on occupied land.”
The climate justice movement seeks to include in the climate action conversation those who have contributed the least to, yet overwhelmingly face, climate catastrophe. Vulnerable communities, such as those under colonial rule, need a just transition, not only a “green” one. They must not be left to drown while their colonizers build their own “lifeboat.”
Climate Activism in the Camps
In early 2025, Thunberg made a surprise visit to the Sahrawi refugee camps in Tindouf, Algeria, for the Sahrawi Solidarity Summit, joining activists and scholars to demand an end to Morocco’s occupation of Western Sahara. The move sparked backlash from Moroccan media, which accused her of being a pawn of Algeria, Morocco’s longtime regional adversary.
Climate justice is a key demand of the Sahrawi liberation struggle. In May of 2024, 15 kilometers north of Smara refugee camp, where the Summit took place, the FiSahara Film Festival in Auserd refugee camp hosted a roundtable on Western Sahara’s climate crisis.
“[Sahrawis] are impacted by climate change, so we should be part of the conversation,” said Asria Mohamed, Sahrawi journalist and climate activist during the roundtable discussion. Such a demand is supposedly met in the annual UNFCCC Conference of the Parties (COP), wherein civil society and national delegations meet to discuss and negotiate actions to tackle climate change. Asria was part of the first Sahrawi delegation to attend a COP. However, Asria and Sahrawi climate activist, Mahfud Bachri, gave a different account of their experience at COPs in Glasgow, UK, and Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt.
The two activists described an institution that was rotten to the core. Sahrawi delegates would find themselves being limited to the civil society section of the COP, regularly harassed by Moroccan officials, and consistently sidelined during proceedings.
To add insult to injury, Yaguta el Mohtar, a fellow Sahrawi climate activist and human rights defender, had her trip to COP 28 in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) suddenly cut short due to what she suspects was foul play and backdoor meddling by Moroccan officials. Despite having all the necessary paperwork and a valid visa, she was detained for hours and ultimately denied boarding. Had she made it to the UAE, she would have spoken out against Morocco’s occupation of Western Sahara before a global audience.
COPs have long been a stage for intrigue and backroom deals. Investigations have repeatedly exposed these gatherings—supposedly dedicated to strong climate action—as hotspots for fossil fuel lobbyists and big oil deals. Therefore, it is not surprising to see yet more evidence that a bazaar for a big oil business is not interested in platforming Sahrawis seriously, or at all.
Resisting Plunder
The activists described COP as a place where polluters and profiteers go to launder their ill-gotten gains, “greenwash” land theft, and “sell” military occupation to Western audiences and multinational corporations. Asria and Yaguta highlighted the hypocrisy of inviting corporations to invest in “sustainable” projects in occupied Western Sahara without the consent of Indigenous Sahrawi people.
The latter remains a key issue for Morocco. The only way the Makhzen, the country’s ruling elite, can maintain the occupation is to keep it profitable, mostly by capitalizing on the rich marine life in the coastal areas of Western Sahara for fisheries and expanding the enormous phosphate extraction operation in Bou Craa.
In a bid to secure its investments in the occupied area, appease Moroccan settlers, and curry favour with European administrators, Morocco is “powering the plunder” of Sahrawi resources with green energy projects. The Polisario Front has engaged in successful lawfare in EU courts, pushing back against attempts by Europe to avoid Sahrawi consent for the exploitation of their sovereign land and resources. These are real obstacles for normalization, something that the Makhzen has been pushing for among its allies in Europe.
Despite the ongoing assault on their sovereignty, Sahrawis continue to resist. Mahfud exemplifies this spirit through his work with “Western Sahara is not for sale,” a civil society campaign with striking similarities to the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, aiming to pressure Morocco by encouraging boycotts of plundered resources like phosphates, fisheries, and sand, all of which are crucial for the future of Sahrawi life and the ecosystem they are a part of.
Adapting to Climate Change in Exile
Ending the occupation is essential, but so is surviving exile. Sahrawi filmmaker Mohamed Sleiman Labat and agricultural engineer Taleb Brahim alluded to this reality, speaking of a history of nomadic pastoralism interrupted by colonialism, occupation, and forced displacement.
Taleb spoke about how, for centuries, Sahrawi communities used to traverse the Sahara, following the rainfall, without any colonial boundaries impeding them and their ability to sustain their own lives. They lived with less but still had more than enough for themselves, often trading their surplus with neighboring peoples.
However, Sahrawi communities are now forced to settle in one of the harshest climates known to mankind—one with especially rapidly worsening climate conditions—compelled to abandon their self-sufficient ways and rely on international aid. This way of living was not meant to be permanent, yet it persists. Meanwhile, the humanitarian food basket for Sahrawi families has been shrinking, driven by factors such as climate change. Aid was intended as a technology for short-term emergencies, but for Sahrawis in the Tindouf refugee camps, it has become a permanent reality. As a result, anemia and malnutrition are widespread, especially among women and children.
Sahrawi ingenuity and global solidarity has been one response to this situation. Taleb recalled that, in the 1980s, Cuban-educated Sahrawi agricultural engineers applied their newfound knowledge to teach Sahrawis how to engage in small-scale subsistence agriculture. Taleb has followed in their footsteps. On a mission to develop new methods for growing fresh food in the camps, he has adapted cutting edge methods—hydraulics for the production of green fodder to feed livestock, for example—to the harsh climate and ill-resourced conditions of the camps in the Hamada desert.
Taleb’s methods, which have gained international recognition, are now being used in displaced communities worldwide. He argued that the work they are doing in the camps is crucial to the whole world since many peoples will face rapid and inevitable desertification in the coming decades, if not years. “Our work is important for the future of humanity,” he said.
Mohamed has consistently argued that Sahrawi phosphate extraction harms not only local Sahrawis but also sensitive ecosystems elsewhere. “The food they are eating in Europe is coming at the cost of someone else,” he pointed out during the roundtable discussion.
Western Sahara’s resources are being plundered to line the pockets of the Moroccan elite and keep the settler economy viable. Rich in phosphates and fisheries, Sahrawi resources enrich their occupiers and feed the rest of the world, while Sahrawi communities themselves face food scarcity and poverty. Consequently, “greening” the Moroccan settler economy does not deal with the existential crisis that Sahrawis encounter on both sides of the Berm.
A Tale of Two Dakhlas
The Berm, a 2700-kilometer-long military wall surrounded by land mines, divides Western Sahara into two starkly different worlds. To the west lies Dakhla, a hub of “green” Gulf and European investment for renewable energy projects. To the east, across the Berm and the Algerian border, is the Dakhla Refugee Camp, where devastating floods in September 2024 underscored the vulnerability of displaced Sahrawis.
With more extreme temperatures and weather events inevitable, climate adaptation is not a conversation that can be postponed. Sahrawis, however, have encountered many hurdles when it comes to climate adaptation and dealing effectively with extreme weather events, mostly due to their displacement and precarious status.
The global adaptation system is deeply flawed. Most climate adaptation efforts are profit-driven, meaning private entities are unlikely to invest in adaptation infrastructure for refugee camps, especially since there is no financial incentive and the camps were meant to be temporary.
Studies show that the majority of climate adaptation funding flows to already “adapted” areas, bypassing the most vulnerable communities. And rarely does this funding address economic inequality. The system operates on four key principles: 1) Enclosure, where public assets are transferred to private entities, leading to profit-seeking behaviour; 2) Exclusion, where private entities prevent stakeholder input in adaptation projects; 3) Encroachment, where projects disrupt the healthy functioning of ecosystems; and 4) Entrenchment, where existing injustices and inequalities are worsened.
Sahrawis and Palestinians know this truth: the climate justice movement is the only way forward. For vulnerable communities to secure the support they desperately need to confront climate change and stay afloat, they must have more options than what the current profit-driven system—a system that shackles our survival to capitalist greed at COPs or the hollow goodwill of those complicit in the crisis—has to offer. Lives are on the line, and the stakes are probably high enough to threaten the hull of the colonizers’ lifeboat.
Edited by Osama Alshantti
