Phosphates and the disputed corner of north-west Africa
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 31 December 2019
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Phosphate mining is crucial to global food production, given that phosphorus is an essential ingredient in commercial fertilisers. By far, the largest reserves of the world’s phosphates are in Morocco. And while Morocco is the third-largest miner of phosphates, a small percentage of its production comes from the disputed territory of Western Sahara. Morocco considers the territory as part of its country, something the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic and the Polisario Front vehemently disagree with.
Matt Davies travels to Morocco to speak to Nada Elmajdoub, an executive at the national phosphate company OCP. He also hears from Mohamed Kamal Fadel, a spokesperson for the Polisario Front, which is bringing legal challenges against Morocco's phosphate exports in its bid to win independence for Western Sahara.
Meanwhile Professor Stuart White of the University of Technology Sydney questions the sustainability of the planet's usage of mined phosphates to boost crop yields, plus Stephen Zunes, a professor of Middle East politics at the University of San Francisco, explains the history of the Western Sahara conflict and how Morocco gained the upper hand.
(Picture: Phosphate rock; Credit: prim91/Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Matthew Davis. Welcome to Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 0:06.0 | Coming up, the element that's essential for fertilizers, growing crops, and, well, basically life itself. |
| 0:14.2 | It's extremely important. It's an element that is necessary for life, and it's essential for growing of crops. |
| 0:20.0 | You cannot do without it. We're talking about of crops. You cannot do without it. |
| 0:21.1 | We're talking about phosphorus today. You can't make it and mostly it needs to be mined out |
| 0:27.0 | of the earth and one African country has by far the largest reserves of it, Morocco. But there's |
| 0:33.3 | a legal and geopolitical issue at play as well. Growing civil society movements have found that this legal question involving |
| 0:41.5 | phosphates is maybe a soft underbelly, and it will continue to be a matter of serious debate globally. |
| 0:49.5 | Find out more in Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 1:03.1 | There's something on the menu at every restaurant. |
| 1:07.1 | It's in every recipe and part of everything we eat. |
| 1:09.9 | It's fundamental to all living things. |
| 1:13.9 | Without it, there would be no DNA, no cell membranes, |
| 1:22.7 | no plants, no animals, and basically no us. It's the 11th most common element on earth. It's phosphorus. |
| 1:29.1 | It's extremely important. It's an element that is necessary for life, and it's essential for growing of crops. |
| 1:30.2 | You cannot do without it. |
| 1:37.8 | Professor Stuart White is the Director at the Institute of Sustainable Futures at the University of Technology in Sydney. |
| 1:42.6 | And it doesn't exist in a gaseous or liquid form in the same way that nitrogen does. |
| 1:45.9 | We can fix nitrogen from the air through legumes. |
| 1:48.4 | We can manufacture nitrogen through the harbour process, |
| 1:50.3 | but we cannot do that with phosphorus. |
| 1:51.7 | It's a fossil element. |
... |
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