This is Part Two of a two-part series. Read Part One here.

In Ourzazate, in the derelict movie sets on the outskirts of town, the carcasses of Hollywood blockbusters gleam like snow, their lacerations invisible in the sun-flecked mirage. It’s a punishment meted out to all residents of this desert. Where you can step from Tibet to Egypt to Westeros and back again in a matter of minutes, where the relics of Berber tribes, Arab conquistadores, and French colonists commingle in an alliance between modernity and the epoch-shaping forces of the past, there’s a sense of impending demise. This interplay between new and old, growth and decay, life and death is a juxtaposition that’s at once uneasy and yet simultaneously, quintessentially Moroccan.

The most liminal of Moroccan border cities, Ourzazate resembles a time machine, though an intensely peculiar one. In its center is an empty plaza anchored by a squat, ugly building of local stone, surrounded by a ring of cafes and overpriced tourist restaurants. Local touts are quick to approach and rattle off menus in a mix of languages, cascading from French to English to who-knows-what depending on their knowledge and your appearance. The poverty of the experience is only one-upped by the emptiness of the town, which contains nothing. Everything is on the outskirts.

To the west, the film studios take up large swaths of the desert. Old sets rot in the sun next to new plaster, and every one is retained for the pleasure of the tourist crowd. There are also (much-hoped-for) possibilities that some hapless client may wish to reuse the crumbling sites, an eventuality my tour guide intimated has happened once in a blue moon. To the east, the modern Avenue Mohammed V veers in one direction through the ancient kasbah of Ait Benhaddou, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, in another through the slums and tenements where the forgotten generation of Moroccan youth squat in their hope for a better tomorrow. To the north are the Atlas Mountains. To the south is the Sahara.

The city that’s known around the world as “Ouallywood” for its many film studios has gone through iteration after iteration to become the strange amalgam of East, West, and South that it is today. And, true to form, it’s about to go through another.

Inaugurated by the Moroccan government, the African Development Bank, and other foreign and domestic stakeholders in a partnership that spans North Africa and Southern Europe, the plant known as Noor 1 – “light,” in Arabic – promises to deliver a future of clean, green energy for the desert kingdom.

Three months ago, the Moroccan government unveiled the first stage of what will become the world’s largest concentrated solar power plant.

Spread out in 800 rows over multiple acres, Noor 1’s 500,000 crescent-shaped mirrors reflect the sun’s rays over 140,000 tons of salts which, when superheated to 739 degrees, vaporize a nearby cache of water. The steam is then used to turn a series of turbines. These convert the heat energy into mechanical energy and then electricity. When the sun goes down, the molten salt retains heat throughout the night and continues to power the turbines, allowing for three hours of additional energy delivery.

At full capacity, Noor 1 will produce 160 megawatts of energy per year. It’s enough to provide power to more than one million Moroccans, but the government’s plans do not end there: the addition of Noor 2 and Noor 3 in 2017 will increase its capacity to nearly 500 megawatts and turn this sprawling solar plant into a solar city the size of the capital, Rabat. Noor 4 will bring it up to the stated goal of 580 megawatts, as well as nearly continuous energy production. The amount of energy the unified plants will produce is likely to outstrip local demand, and a majority will be exported outside the country. King Mohammed VI has declared Mecca as the terminus of his project.

Such declarations are not mere hubris. “We are already involved in high-tension transportation lines to cover the full south of Morocco and Mauritania as a first step,” says Ahmed Baroudi, the manager of the national renewable energy firm Société d’Investissements Energétiques. Exportation to Mecca may take more time, but southern Europe may find itself a beneficiary of the new plant in the near future. A spokesman for the national energy corporation, Masen, said: “we believe that it’s possible to export energy to Europe, but first we would have to build the interconnectors which don’t yet exist.”

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The Noor 1 plant gleams in the sun. ©NPR

The series of Noor power plants represent the most ambitious renewable energy project ever attempted, and it has already received glowing reviews from investors, government ministers, and foreign observers. Donald Kaberuka, President of the African Development Bank, calls it “an important step in Morocco’s green and inclusive growth strategy.” Hakima el-Haite, the Moroccan environment minister, agreed in an interview with the Guardian. “[It] has big consequences for our state budget. We also used to subsidize fossil fuels which have a heavy cost, so when we heard about the potential of solar energy, we thought; why not?”

Morocco has quite compelling reasons for its energy gigantism. The North African country currently imports 97 percent of the energy it uses, raising concerns among officials that as global climate change continues and energy prices rise, the nation won’t be able to afford its energy expenses – and will experience again the pains of economic recession. According to reports from the makhzen, the metonym for the king and his court, the Ourzazate project will shift the energy balance towards renewables. A projected 42 percent of the kingdom’s energy will come from a combination of solar, wind, and hydroelectric sources.

The “green” component of the king’s project lies in its emission reductions. Noor 1 will reduce the emission of carbon dioxide by 240,000 tons per year, and when joined by Noor 2 and 3, by 730,000. This is in addition to the king’s plans to reduce total emissions by 3.8 million tons per year before 2020. His ambition is a boon to the economy, as his plans will also result in the creation of local industries for servicing the new plants.

That’s good news, not just for the young workers who will man the plant or fill the ranks of these new industries, but also for the homes they had once left behind. For with the arrival of the world’s greatest power plant – and the young workers coming home in its wake – there is hope for a renaissance not just in the economy, but also in the heritage and the history of the region.

Skipping across the tops of mountains like rams are the igoudar, the lowlands boast mighty adobe ksars, and the river valleys are strewn with picturesque villages equally at home in the Stone Age as they are in the Anti-Atlas. All are now near empty, their halls hosting more ghosts than men: for all of living memory, the number of people skilled enough to maintain them has continually dwindled. Until now.

Although all past trends have shown a net loss in population in Southern Morocco as the young have left and the old have died off, those figures were due to the lack of economic opportunities at home. Farming the family plot did not present a compelling career choice for young Moroccans raised on decadent, occidentalist visions of the West. Where glitz and glamor reign supreme, hard work falls on deaf ears.

Visions of a better life in one’s dreams are no substitute for cold, hard cash in one’s hands, however. The arrival of Noor 1 and the industries necessary to support it has meant an influx of workers ready to make their fortune in the King’s new green economy. The initial construction phase generated some 2,500 jobs for local workers, who were soon followed by a baggage train of construction workers (for their lodging), farmers (for their sustenance), security (for their labor), and yet more others (for all their other needs, licit or no).

Ouarzazate, already a center for regional immigration in the Anti-Atlas, has seen its population explode and developments arise in tandem with the new plant, which is only ten miles down the road from the desert city. Fueled in part by the promise of fresh dirhams, in part by the displacement of the villages in the plains outside the city, the movement of people has an air of optimism unseen in the region for some time.

The diversification of the economy is unlikely to reverse 50 years of demographic change immediately. The plant is the first stage of the makhzen’s economic investment, not the last, and the stream of young men and women returning to their homelands to follow in its wake is not likely to become a torrent anytime soon. But as the bridgehead of the south’s growing green economy, there are many who hope the cascading economic and demographic effect on local industries will spread to others as well.

Hopes are running high for heritage especially. “Upwards of 3,000 workers have returned to the Ouarzazate area to work on the plant, but they’re not going to be employed there forever,” says Nada Hosking, Director of Projects and Programs at Global Heritage Fund. “When the plants are finished they’ll need new work. Heritage sites are in dire need of support. So why not employ people who are already there in a culturally sensitive and economically viable way?”

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The ksar of Aït-Ben-Haddou in Ouarzazate, Morocco. ©Wikimedia

Tourism is one such possibility. Although the town of Ouarzazate is already well known, the inclusion of a “world’s greatest” on its marquee may draw more attention. According to a report commissioned by MASEN, “the operation of a large-scale solar power station will certainly generate media publicity at national and international levels, shedding positive light on the Ouarzazate region and placing it at the cutting edge of innovation and progress.” This attention could reinvigorate the many sites inside and outside of Ouarzazate which, despite their prominence in Berber culture and world heritage, have been sadly neglected.

Take the ksar of Aït-Ben-Haddou, a fortified adobe conurbation of six forts and 50 palaces on the outskirts of Ouarzazate. Sheltering hundreds of families in its heyday, Aït-Ben-Haddou now hosts only four within its walls. Its near-total abandonment gives the tall, red-mud buildings a ghostly tinge, and the absence of people is acutely felt: the yearly rains erode the soft mud structures, which must be reshaped, and the 2014 floods caused several structures to collapse, which were only reconstructed at the instigation of the United Nations. Without skilled craftsmen, or indeed any craftsmen, this site has become increasingly irrelevant. With renewed attention, this could be reversed.

Or consider the agadir, another tradition that’s been put at risk by the environment and neglect. At its simplest a fortified, communal granary, the agadir evolved “in response to the need for a secure place to store food and valuable possessions – everything from barley and oil to silver, jewels, and carpets.” From little more than rats’ warrens to large, elaborate kasbahs, igoudar are emblematic of the spirit and history of Berber Morocco – but as with the ksar of Aït-Ben-Haddou, no one remains to tend to them, and when several were damaged in the floods of 2014, it again took foreign intervention to repair them. It is not a stretch to see how the many carpenters, bricklayers, masons, and other architects who found employment at Noor may find new uses for their skills throughout the Anti-Atlas.

Structures are the most visible victims of the decay, but the intangible heritage of a thousand years has suffered without people willing to uphold it. The complex system of land management and water rights? That fell apart the moment industrial farming became dominant in Morocco. The desert plants endemic to the oasis? Replaced by wheat and other cash crops. And what of the transhumant pastoralists that move from plain to plain as the seasons will them? One of their grazing grounds was swallowed up by none other than the Noor plant.

“It is not possible to save every tradition.” Hosking says. “We can only save what has continued relevance to the people. We can argue for days about whether this should be or that should be. These buildings, however, are significant to the people and to the world. They have clear economic significance. We can do a lot to make them viable parts of the community again.”

Although there is no firm path forward for the heritage sites of the Anti-Atlas, the region has been given a hand-up for the first time in decades, and it is now, of all times, that advocates of the region and its history must stand up and seize the moment. Because as the Moroccan state and foreign investors wrap up this project, they will turn their attention elsewhere – and it is unlikely it will come back again.

Yet, despite its promises, there are grumblings that the plant may do more harm than good. More workers will return to the region, but they will not spend their days rebuilding their villages when they can instead fill their pocketbooks with the makhzen’s dirhams, goes one voice. More economic opportunity will not form a rising tide but a flooding torrent, drowning the locals with unwanted development as it uplifts foreign cities and alien workers, echoes another. All are united by a general ambivalence, and as the plant marches inexorably to completion, they’re only getting louder.

The first inklings of protest began in 2010 when MASEN, the Moroccan state-owned energy conglomerate, began buying land in the municipality of Ghessante outside the regional capital of Ouarzazate. According to Hamza Hamouchene, a writer for the Arab-focused web publication Jadaliyya, “ordinary people were unaware of what was taking place when the topographer arrived. As a result, they began to ask questions, which largely went unanswered.” Hamouchene might have added that the questions were also irrelevant.

When the villagers tried to gain access to the land negotiations, they found the negotiations – such as they were – had already been concluded. The plants would be built on 3,000 hectares of (formerly communal) land, which was bought for less than 10 percent of the going market rate, sold by a council of unaccountable eminences grises, paid out to a Ministry of the Interior bank account to which no tribesman has access, in meetings closed to everyone but foreign investors and the hand-picked apparatchiks of the makhzen.

Although the local people lack the vocabulary of the academy, what they’ve experienced is termed “green-grabbing.” According to researcher Karen Rignall, green-grabbing is a form of green economic development involving “exclusion from economic benefits or the energy production, top-down planning, land and other natural resource dispossession, [and] foreclosure of livelihood activities, among others.”

Hamouchene writes that the obfuscation of green-grabbing has created “a deeply erroneous assumption that any move toward renewable energy is to be welcomed. And that any shift from fossil fuels, regardless of how it is carried out, will help us to avert climate chaos.”

Erroneous indeed. While the development of this project will doubtlessly enhance the purse of the makhzen, it is dubious whether the 1.1 million Moroccan beneficiaries will truly benefit when the end market is Europe, Algeria, or Saudi Arabia. It is dubious when the project is envisioned not just as a market response to Europe’s green energy needs – what one Moroccan official called “almost a religion over there” – but also as a defensive strategy binding Morocco to Europe in an indispensable economic arrangement. It is dubious because locals continue to wonder why, if Morocco can supply the world with energy, it cannot build factories, improve agriculture, or eliminate poverty for its own people.

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A crumbling hill fort against the sky in the Anti-Atlas, Morocco. ©Global Heritage Fund/Amar Grover

The ideal of climate beneficence, so cynically exploited by the makhzen in the press surrounding the plant, instead appears to be a cover for stripping the property of the weak for the benefit of the strong. “Land in places such as Morocco’s expansive desert is constructed as empty or unproductive to pave the way for the renewable energy investments that will give it value,” Rignall says. The process creates “new opportunities for capital accumulation—not usually for local residents but rather at their cost.”

The adulatory tones of the media can thus be contextualized as a mask for the seizure of land and the disenfranchisement of people “there” for the benefit of the land and the people “here” – here being the stately halls of the king’s riad or the capitals of Europe – while the illegitimacy of the enterprise is effaced by its “greenness” in a process that could be called “green-washing.” The long-standing usage of the land is first marginalized and then erased in favor of the glittering, futuristic, chrome-infused and green-lined future of clean energy. Everyone wins but the people involved, it seems.

This is not at all surprising considering the long-standing policy, inherited from the French, of expropriating the land to pillage its resources. Traditional agricultural practices and land use arrangements are branded as inefficient and unproductive, the first (and in some cases only) step necessary in procuring the “underutilized” land for ulterior purposes. Regardless of what has happened in the rest of the country, southern Morocco remains forever Maroc inutile, that useless bastard child of the more prosperous north, that ugly rock ripe for exploitation. According to Rignall:

In southern Morocco, the land was imagined as alternately empty and misused by the extensive pastoralists and oasis farmers who had based their livelihoods here for centuries. In her definitive environmental history, Diana Davis details the French colonial origins of narratives that blamed nomadic pastoralists for degrading the rangelands, though overwhelming evidence indicates that anthropogenic degradation has been minimal, with the bulk of that degradation caused by French colonial policies (Davis, 2007). These narratives justified both outright expropriation and the development of an institutional infrastructure for natural resource management that politically contained mobile populations and undermined or destroyed their livelihoods. If the lands surrounding Ouarzazate appear unused, it is in part because extensive pastoralism has long been considered an unproductive land use to Moroccan policy makers.

As the African Development Bank’s social impact assessment notes dryly, taking 3,000 hectares of communal land – used as pasture for centuries if not millennia – “will not cause any displacement of the population or loss of economic activities.” An activist would beg to disagree: ‘‘The project people talk about this as a desert that is not used but to people here it is not desert; it is pasture. It is their territory. The future is in land. When you take my land, you take my oxygen.’’

The Noor project is true to its namesake: it is a light that illuminates the land at the same time as it burns the eyes. To its most uncharitable critics, it is a blatant case of green-grabbing, of the strong imposing their will and their vision for the future onto the backs of the weak. To its most adulatory sponsors, it is the future of clean energy, and any missteps along the way are justified by the overwhelming rightness of its design. Which of us, they might say, was perfect when our economies were developing?

Although the injustices seem starkest when they are brought close, a historical view renders the process in a more charitable light. The local communities were treated in a heavy-handed, neo-colonial manner. That is undeniable. And yet, the way of life they now weep for was dying long before the arrival of the makhzen’s surveyors. “Pastoralism had shifted… to an insupportable economic risk for many” Rignall notes, and “expanding urban centers were incrementally appropriating collective lands for city services and housing… [and] communal lands were treated as commodities for the first time.” What many decry as a fatal encroachment on local sovereignty in one light may be seen in another as one of many developments, warranted – despite how unwelcome they may seem – by the circumstances of the time.

Everything here comes down to a conflict over what sort of future should be built for the communities of the Anti-Atlas. Is it dictated from on high by government apparatchiks? Is it determined by the people themselves? Is it a mixture of both? In one sense, it has proven to be an unwelcome intrusion on the Berber tribes of the lowland plains, whose livelihoods – and the future profits that would have accrued from them – were replaced by the dubious benefits they may, or may not, reap from the Noor plant. In another, the direct injustice of the land grab may be ameliorated by the tangible benefits brought about through economic liberalization. No injustice can erase that.

In a sea of uncertainties, the only recourse is to inevitability: the injustice has been done, the project continues, and we, the spectators, must continue to watch the pageant unfold. We can, and should be cautiously optimistic for the success of the project. And we can, and must, be attuned to the possibility of its success – no matter the taint of its birth.