ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the processes that led to the development of ‘Noor Ouarzazate’, the largest solar project in the world built on the common land of an Amazigh-Berber group in Morocco. It focuses on the land acquisition process that includes the institutional change from common to state and semi-private property. The chapter draws on women’s options to negotiate depending on how their bargaining power changes after the arrival of the investment. It describes the way compensations and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) act as an anti-politics machine at the local level, as it masks losses by pointing at inaccessible benefits, especially for more marginal groups and women. CSR policies provide guidelines to create collective compensation mechanisms that we refer to as ‘new commons’ but the redistribution processes have resulted in a change in local people’s relationship to their natural environment and have created winners and losers.
