A Greener Future for Moroccan Phosphates? Global Competition, Metabolism, Territory

Objective

The GreenMorPhos project investigates the Moroccan segment of the phosphate industry, which is a cornerstone of the agri-food nexus while raising major ecological, social, and environmental concerns. Morocco holds two-thirds of the world's phosphate rock reserves, and the national company Office chérifien des phosphates (OCP) is a global leader in the sector. The project focuses on recent developments in the Moroccan industry, which align with the strategic orientations of the Kingdom: its commitment to the energy transition and, to a lesser extent, its expansion efforts across the African continent. By forging an original connection between the Global Production Networks approach and Political Industrial Ecology (the former from economic geography, the latter combining industrial and political ecology), it looks at the paradoxes of an industry striving simultaneously for growth and environmental sustainability. The research pursues three objectives. First, it aims to understand the strategic thinking behind OCP’s Green Investment Programme and the recent transformations of Morocco's phosphate sector within a highly competitive global environment. Second, it seeks to trace the flows of matter and energy that underpin Morocco’s phosphate sector, along with the associated socio-environmental impacts, in order to identify the contributions and the blind spots of the Green Investment Programme. Thirdly, it aims to analyse the transformations of labour regimes and the evolving relationships between the industry and its territories, as well as the ways in which the company seeks to mitigate social tensions. To this end, it adopts an integrated methodology that combines field visits, interviews, document analysis, GIS, and flow diagram modelling. This research will offer a substantial contribution to the analysis of the phosphate industry and to critical scholarship on state involvement and greening efforts in natural resource-based industries.