EJOLT: The ‘Environmental Justice’ NGO Doing Separatism’s Bidding in Western Sahara

Rabat – In April this year, a new study titled “Reporting International Conflicts through the Environmental Discourse: The Moroccan Sahara Conflict as a Case Study” was published by Dr. Mohamed Mliless, an independent researcher in Ecolinguistics, and Dr. Mohammed Larouz, Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities in Meknes. The study has since been published in a recently issued collective book under the title “The Climate-Conflict- Displacement Nexus from a Human Security Perspective.”

The promotion of environmental justice (EJ) has been a central concern of international NGOs to reinforce environmental equity worldwide. But this does not seem to be the case with the Environmental Justice Organizations Liabilities and Trade (EJOLT), whose approach distorts the real picture in the Moroccan Sahara.

Being an EJ impact assessment tool, EJOLT is one of the most prominent mapping Atlas which identifies. Typically, Its work entails describing and assessing thousands of hazardous sites in the world, among which 18 are located in Morocco.

Disinvestment campaign masquerading as climate justice

In the Western Sahara region, however, EJOLT’s work goes beyond its self-description as an environmental justice crusader to actively embrace the Polisario Front’s Algeria-backed separatist discourse. As such, Mliless and Larouz’s study has shown, the NGO’s separatism-leaning political orientation in the region is the main reason why it has consistently been opposing industrial and energy projects in Morocco’s southern provinces.

The discourse used by EJOLT to describe EJ issues in the provinces is a pure harassment and an explicit disinvestment plan it pursues to implement a separatist and anarchist agenda in this particular region.

To argue for this position, the EJOLT prefers taking a pro-Polisario disinvestment stand in the region, which includes conflating environmental justice with the separatist Polisario Front’s quest to benefit from the southern provinces’ “disputed resources.” To demystify such a discourse, Mliless and Larouz’s study examines the EJOLT’s homepage and extracts its narratives.

The investigation revealed that there are six infrastructures targeted by the EJOLT. The analysis also revealed that the EJOLT uses a biased discourse – mostly distorted and defamatory – that failed to provide the real picture of the population in the region. Moreover, the EJOLT argues that the Polisario militia which lives on Algerian territory, NOT the Moroccan population living in the Moroccan Sahara provinces, must benefit from the existing resources.

Similarly, the rhetoric used in EJOLT’s campaigning has long failed to recognize that one million inhabitants inside the Moroccan Sahara have been directly benefiting from the many projects developed in the region. Equally important, the results of Mliless and Larouz’s study show that EJOLT’s discourse aims at triggering violence, insecurity, and instability in the region, thus serving potential interested agendas.

Furthermore, the research explains how EJOLT’s narratives promote insecurity and nourish violence given the fact that the forms of mobilization prescribed by the EJOLT to call for EJ activism are fueled

with hatred, defamation, and violence. Analyzing EJOLT’s online platform, the research located 18 mining, fishing, and energy locations in Moroccan among which six have been mapped in the Moroccan Sahara provinces.

Through its platform, EJOLT seems to provide an invaluable service to Algeria and the Polisario by launching a viral battle to reinforce boycotts of phosphate, fishery, and renewable energy products from being extracted and exported to foreign markets. Is this about environmental justice or disinvestment?

EJOLT’s identified infrastructures in Morocco. (Source: ejatlas.org)

In Morocco, EJOLT has identified 18 environmental conflicts and EJ projects, among which six infrastructures (mineral, energy, and fishery) are located in the Moroccan Sahara. To describe these plants, Mliless and Larouz argue that EJOLT relied on biased documents that were furnished by Algeria and international NGOs which support the separatist ideology in the region.

The main point here is that the EJOLT’s discourse has been developed based on non-reliable documents. This is clear in the narratives which fail to provide an adjacent and endangered population that complains from the environmental impacts and risks – such as intoxication and pollution – resulting from the assessed projects.

Bir-Anzarane and Cape Boujdour offshore. (Source: ejatlas.org)

Phosboucraa mine site. (Source: ejatlas.org) European Fishing Vessels (Source: ejatlas.org)

Tarfaya wind-farm. (Source: ejatlas.org)

Sustaining separatism and instability

Another main argument in the study is that the EJOLT’s discourse is not in line with the EJ objectives. The linguistic qualifications prove that the EJOLT’s discourse towards Morocco’s Sahara provinces is against the development of the region and the wellbeing of the communities living there. In other words, EJOLT’s discourse falls beyond the limits of EJ as it embraces a radical and violent stand whose ultimate aim is to serve the political agendas of both Algeria and the Polisario Front.

First, EJOLT’s rhetoric does not provide a locally affected community. Second, the NGO’s discourse is politically oriented since its allegations against Moroccan interests are built on inputs provided by the Polisario Front and pro-separatist international NGOs like the Western Sahara Resource Watch (WSRW) located in Belgium. Third, EJOLT’s narratives are supporting separatism, thus nourishing insecurity and instability in the Moroccan Sahara by prescribing radical and destructive forms of protestation.

As a result, EJOLT has unfortunately turned into a tool to execute a political agenda that Algeria and the Polisario Front have set to counter the development of the region and undermine the equal sharing of wealth among the local population in Morocco’s southern provinces. The radical forms of mobilization to block and ban products originating from Morocco’s Sahara provinces are perceived in this research as explicit instigations to violence and insecurity in the region.

On the mobilization front, Mliless and Larouz’s research also reveals two main categories of expressions that EJOLT uses to push the pro-Polisario activists — both inside the southern provinces and around the world — to undertake radical forms of mobilization to counter introspection, exploitation, and trade of products originating from Western Sahara. Determined to counter the development process of the Sahara territories, the Polisario Front has been offensively attacking Morocco on legal and judicial levels.

As well as these battlegrounds, the study concludes that the discourse of the EJOLT is inscribed within this process of undermining the territorial integrity of Morocco, propagating a disinvestment plan in the region, and creating an atmosphere of violence and instability by nourishing arson and chaos. For this aim, EJOLT recommends the following modus operandi in order to stop what it pretends to be “unequal exploitation of the natural resources in the region:”

• Arson

• Sabotage

• Property damage

• Self-immolation

• Hunger strikes

• Occupation of buildings/public spaces

• Land occupation

• Public campaigns

• Public strikes/campaigns/ marches

• Development of a network/collective action

• Media-based activism/alternative media

• Official complaint letters and petitions

• Shareholder/financial activism

• Boycotts of companies-products

• Lawsuits/ Court cases/ judicial activism

As such, the study points to a marked drift in the notion of EJ as claimed by EJOLT towards the projects in the Moroccan southern provinces. This drift — EJOLT’s instrumentalization of climate justice to benefit a political agenda — besmirches the NGO’s credibility as a tool that genuinely fights against environmental inequalities in the world. In fact, EJOLT has consistently drifted or failed its EJ ambitions when it comes to providing services to an immediate locally impacted population, a core principle of climate activism.

Interestingly, such a failure to commit to an essential tenet of environmental activism is strongly related to EJOLT’s inability to build on neutral and diversified resources. Instead, the obviously biased NGO’s narratives sound like a Polisario Front discourse that can hardly bring operational solutions to the issue of environmental quality and equity.