Issue Editors: Shana Marshall, Laleh Khalili, Kendra Kintzi and Deen Sharp. 

Amid an accelerating climate crisis, MER issue 311 asks what a “green future” means for the Middle East and North Africa. “Post-Fossil Politics” traces how the region’s land, resources and communities are entangled with and impacted by the global shift toward decarbonization. Far from being a “desert wasteland,” in the region, renewable energies are being developed and harvested at multiple scales—from Morocco to the Gulf. Our contributors explore these developments, measuring the effects of the energy transition not in kilowatt hours but in their impact on precious landscapes and human lives. As they show, the harnessing of low carbon “clean” energy sources relies on extractive practices and exploitative relations, reinforcing rather than redistributing the existing balance of political, social and economic power. Taken together, the issue provides a sharp account of how power flows—through diesel generators, carbon credits, solar farms, value chains and submarine cables—and at what cost. Yet contributors also call our attention to the world that might be, where popular mobilizations disrupt supply chains and catalyze embargos, care for human and planetary bodies displaces colonial dependencies and decolonial ecologies provide the basis for new forms of sovereignty.