{"paper_id":"09c2cfc5-8986-4d0e-baeb-53936fde6936","body_text":"Between economic failure and success: a corpus-assisted eco-critical analysis of climate change framing in Moroccan news | Research Square window.SnipcartSettings = { analytics: { enabled: false } }; (function() { var accessVector = localStorage.getItem('access_vector') || ''; window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; if (accessVector) { window.dataLayer.push({ user: { profile: { profileInfo: { snid: accessVector } } } }); } })(); (function(w,d,s,l,i){w[l]=w[l]||[];w[l].push({'gtm.start':new Date().getTime(),event:'gtm.js'});var f=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],j=d.createElement(s),dl=l!='dataLayer'?'&l='+l:'';j.async=true;j.src='https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js?id='+i+dl;f.parentNode.insertBefore(j,f);})(window,document,'script','dataLayer','GTM-K279D39R'); Browse Preprints In Review Journals COVID-19 Preprints AJE Video Bytes Research Tools Research Promotion AJE Professional Editing AJE Rubriq About Preprint Platform In Review Editorial Policies Our Team Advisory Board Help Center Sign In Submit a Preprint Cite Share Download PDF Research Article Between economic failure and success: a corpus-assisted eco-critical analysis of climate change framing in Moroccan news Abdelhakim El Moene This is a preprint; it has not been peer reviewed by a journal. https://doi.org/ 10.21203/rs.3.rs-7704015/v1 This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License Status: Published Journal Publication published 29 Dec, 2025 Read the published version in Corpus Pragmatics → Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Abstract This study adopts an ecolinguistic approach to critical discourse analysis to examine how Moroccan online news outlets frame climate change. Drawing on a corpus of 195 articles (2011–2022), the analysis combines corpus linguistics with cognitive and ecolinguistic frameworks to uncover dominant linguistic patterns. Quantitative mapping of salient lexis and collocations highlights the prevalence of economic vocabulary, while qualitative interpretation traces how these linguistic triggers activate specific frames. Findings reveal four recurring framings: CLIMATE CHANGE IS AN ECONOMIC PROBLEM, CLIMATE CHANGE COSTS MONEY, CLIMATE ACTION SAVES MONEY, and CLIMATE ACTION IS AN ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY which collectively constitute a dominant economics-based frame. This frame foregrounds agri-business, green energy, and investment as central to Morocco’s climate response, thus aligning with broader narratives of ecological modernization and green growth. While these framings legitimize large-scale projects and policy agendas by emphasizing the cost–benefit logic, they simultaneously risk subordinating ecological and social concerns to the ideology of perpetual growth and the myth of decoupling economic growth from environmental pressures. The paper argues that the Moroccan case illustrates how climate discourse reproduces neoliberal economic priorities under the guise of sustainability, which reinforces the need for more critical examination of the ideological implications of climate framing in media communication in the Global South. climate change communication ideology of growth ecolinguistics framing 1. Introduction This paper adopts an ecolinguistic approach to critical discourse analysis in order to investigate how Moroccan online news outlets construct discourse about climate change. The choice of this framework rests on the recognition that language is not a neutral medium but a constitutive force that can either sustain or threaten ecological well-being. As Stibbe ( 2015 ) argues, discursive practices embody socio-cognitive structures that both reflect and reproduce “stories” shaping human perception and behavior. By focusing on a corpus of 195 online articles, the analysis operationalizes this insight through a combination of ecolinguistics, cognitive linguistics, and corpus linguistics. Corpus-based techniques are first employed to identify salient lexico-grammatical features—particularly vocabulary items and collocational patterns—that reveal recurring linguistic structures. This quantitative mapping provides the necessary scale for understanding linguistic prominence across the dataset. The subsequent qualitative stage interprets these prominent patterns to uncover the underlying ecological “stories” embedded in discourse. In this way, the methodology aligns with ecolinguistic principles by linking micro-scale textual analysis to broader ethical and ecological concerns, thus ensuring that the linguistic examination is both empirically rigorous and ecologically oriented. The study of frames and framings provides a solid starting point for examining how climate change is discursively constructed in the corpus. Lakoff ( 2014 ), in Don’t Think of an Elephant , illustrates how the very act of negating a concept evokes its mental representation, since the word elephant activates a pre-existing frame; a structured packet of knowledge in which the concept is defined. As Lakoff ( 2010 ) argues, framing is inevitable as it constitutes the cognitive process through which meaning is shaped. Frames impose one story from a familiar domain onto another, thereby structuring perception and interpretation (Stibbe, 2015 , p. 48). They allow individuals “to locate, perceive, identify, and label” events and experiences (Goffman, 1974 , p. 21). For new information to be understood, it must connect with what is already embedded in the brain’s neural circuitry; the neutrally instantiated conceptual systems that both enable and constrain how the world is comprehended and acted upon (Lakoff, 2014 , p. 16). This makes the study of message framing in climate change discourse particularly significant, since the ways in which climate issues are linguistically framed affect public engagement and shape support for mitigation policies and practices. From an ecolinguistic perspective, the framing of climate action must be anchored in an ethics that moves beyond anthropocentrism toward a deeper responsiveness to the ecological crisis at cognitive and cultural levels. Since frame analysis has the potential to reveal underlying patterns of thinking, or “stories” (Stibbe, 2015 ), it provides access to the broader systems of meaning that shape public communication about climate change. Moreover, as Lakoff ( 2010 ) emphasizes, “it matters how we frame the environment” because the framing of climate discourse is never neutral. A critical evaluation of climate action frames must therefore consider whether the power relations embedded in discourse serve to perpetuate ecologically destructive ideologies or foster more sustainable orientations. In this light, the present study seeks to identify the dominant frames employed in Moroccan online news coverage of climate change, to assess their potential effects on public perceptions, and to evaluate their broader ecological implications. The most straightforward method for identifying frames is to search for trigger words. Lakoff ( 2010 , p. 73) observes that “words can be chosen to activate desired frames.” Similarly, Entman ( 1993 , p. 52) explains that frames “are manifested by the presence or absence of certain keywords, stock phrases, stereotyped images, sources of information, and sentences that provide thematically reinforcing clusters of facts or judgments.” To stress the importance of grounding the analysis in quantitative linguistic data, it is worth reiterating Lakoff’s central claim at length: Since political ideologies are, of course, characterized by systems of frames, ideological language will activate that ideological system. Since the synapses in neural circuits are made stronger the more they are activated, the repetition of ideological language will strengthen the circuits for that ideology in a hearer’s brain [emphasis added]. And since language that is repeated very often becomes ‘‘normally used’’ language, ideological language repeated often enough can become ‘‘normal language’’ but still activate that ideology unconsciously in the brains of citizens—and journalists. (Lakoff, 2010 , p. 72) Entman ( 1993 ) defines framing as the selection of certain aspects of perceived reality and their amplification within a text so as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation (p. 52). Central to this process is salience , which he describes as “making a piece of information more noticeable, meaningful, or memorable to audiences” (p. 53). Building on this framework, the analysis examines the lexical profile of the corpus to identify patterns of salience. The most frequent lexical items are observed in their immediate contexts as trigger words, which signal the activation of particular frames. Cross-referenced with relevant literature, the discussion traces how frames establish a problem definition of climate change and how this shapes the debate around proposed climate action in the local context. Statistical and linguistic evidence from the corpus indicates the salience and persistence of economics-based frames thereby reinforcing broader observations in discourse studies about the dominant influence of economic discourses (Stibbe, 2015 ). Within the Moroccan context, these frames highlight the impacts of climate change and water deficit on economic development, with particular emphasis on agriculture, the principal driver of the national economy. The frame also emphasizes policy decisions that prioritize financing the acquisition and development of technological resources aimed at sustaining agro-businesses and supporting the emerging green energy sector in the face of climatic shocks. At the same time, such measures are framed not merely as protective strategies but as opportunities to enhance productivity and stimulate growth within the policy vision of a green economy . Overall, the challenges of adapting to climate change receive sustained attention from an economic perspective. Within this discourse, four recurring framings are identified: CLIMATE CHANGE IS AN ECONOMIC PROBLEM, CLIMATE ACTION IS AN ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY, CLIMATE CHANGE COSTS MONEY, and CLIMATE ACTION SAVES MONEY. Together, these framings constitute the dominant economics frame through which debates on climate change and climate policy are constructed. They emerge from the interaction of elements associated with “ecological modernization” and the more recent “green growth/green economy” discourses, both of which rest on the highly contested premise that economic growth can be decoupled from environmental harm. The analysis highlights how mainstream framings of climate action often present it as a pathway to investment and profit, thereby legitimizing particular courses of policy and practice. Sections 2 and 3 elaborate on the identified framings in detail. Section 4 then situates these framings within the broader ideological assumption that “growth is good,” a principle widely critiqued in the literature (Stibbe, 2012, 2015 ; Ferguson, 2015 ; Halliday, 2001; Victor, 2008 ; Jackson, 2009 ). The final section provides a synthesis of the discussion of frames and framings. 2. Method and materials The dataset for this study consists of a small corpus of 195 news articles (99,507 words) drawn from three Moroccan online news outlets: Morocco World News (MWN) ( https://www.moroccoworldnews.com ), Hespress ( https://en.hespress.com ), and Maghreb Agence Presse (MAP) ( https://www.mapnews.ma ). MWN is an independent e-newspaper headquartered in Washington D.C. and Rabat, reporting on a wide range of topics related to Morocco and the MENA region. Hespress, also an independent digital platform, is based in Morocco and, according to Statista Research Department (2023), was the country’s most visited online news site in 2022. MAP, by contrast, serves as Morocco’s official state-owned news agency. Articles were collected using the keywords climate change and global warming , covering an eleven-year span from 2011 to 2022. To identify frames within the corpus, a corpus-assisted discourse analysis approach was employed. Keywords and recurrent lexical patterns were extracted using concordance and frequency tools, which enabled the systematic tracing of linguistic choices that signal underlying frames. Following Entman’s ( 1993 ) observation that frames are manifested through keywords, stock phrases, and thematically reinforcing clusters of facts or judgments, the analysis focused on the occurrence and distribution of terms and collocations associated with climate change and climate action. Frequency counts highlighted salient lexical items, while concordance lines provided the contextual detail necessary to evaluate how these items activated particular frames in line with Lakoff’s ( 2010 ) emphasis on the framing power of repeated language. This quantitative evidence was then combined with qualitative interpretation to determine whether the identified linguistic patterns reproduced dominant economic framings, reinforced ideological positions, or pointed toward alternative discursive orientations. 3. Climate change costs money The economics frame in the corpus is primarily activated by lexical items belonging to the semantic field of economics and finance. Here, the semantic field is understood as a set of lexemes that pertain to a shared conceptual domain (e.g., economics, medicine, music) and that are semantically related. Table 1 presents the raw frequencies and distribution ranges of the most prominent lexical items identified. Raw frequencies indicate the number of word tokens within the corpus, which consists of 97,660 words drawn from 195 news reports. A simple comparison between water scarcity (f = 269, R = 169) and economic (f = 164, R = 74) illustrates the relative prominence of the latter. This comparative criterion is justified by the thematic consistency of the specialized corpus: because water scarcity constitutes one of the key terms in Moroccan climate discourse, its frequency serves as a benchmark against which the salience of other lexical items can be measured. Table 1 Frequency & Range of the Most Salient Lexical Units from the Semantic Field of Economics Word Frequency Range economic economy bank investment investments invest investing investors production growth business budget 164 58 105 42 35 15 19 3 101 53 40 36 74 37 43 31 24 13 16 2 55 36 21 21 Word Frequency Range productivity GDP market produce funding fund funds finance financed finances cost costs 36 29 61 28 18 14 12 19 2 2 44 17 24 22 36 17 15 11 8 12 2 2 30 14 The token economic ranks among the most frequent words in the corpus (f = 164, RF = 1.6 citations per thousand words). In terms of distribution, it appears in 74 of the 195 texts, with individual frequencies ranging from one to ten occurrences per text. Table 2 displays the eleven most frequent collocates of economic within a collocational span of L0, R1—that is, words occurring immediately to the right of economic . Less frequent collocations (f = 1) include economic expansion , economic profitability , and economic prosperity , which nonetheless carry meanings equivalent to the more common collocates. Functionally, the adjective economic serves as an attributive modifier of nouns that fall into two broad categories: occurs more often with process nouns than with state nouns. This suggests that in the corpus, the adjective economic tends to foreground processes typically associated with positive or neutral connotations rather than states, which are more often negatively evaluated. From an ecolinguistic perspective, this preference for process-oriented collocates reflects a discourse orientation toward continual growth and activity, implicitly aligning with the ideology that “growth is good”. Table 2 Top 11 Most Frequent Collocates of Economic (L0, R1) Collocation Frequency Range economic development economic growth economic consequences economic, social economic crisis economic sectors economic activities economic recovery economic stability economic activity economic opportunities 10 8 6 6 6 5 4 4 4 3 3 10 6 6 6 5 5 4 4 4 3 2 Table 3 presents the fifteen most frequent collocates of economic within a broader collocational span (L5, R5). Notably, the item social appears 12 times in the left position and 23 times in the right position of the node economic , thus highlighting its frequent association with socio-economic framings. At first glance, the corpus evidence displayed in Tables 2 and 3 suggests the prevalence of an economic orientation in the discourse. More specifically, it indicates that economics-based framings serve as an organizing framework through which issues of water scarcity and climate action policy are constructed and debated in the texts. Table 3 Top 15 Most Frequent Collocates of Economic (L5, R5) Collocate FreqL FreqR FreqLR Range social socio development crisis growth political water environmental consequences instability activities worldwide recovery stagnation 12 21 3 6 3 4 2 1 0 2 0 0 0 2 23 1 17 7 10 5 6 7 8 4 6 6 6 2 35 22 20 13 13 9 8 8 8 6 6 6 6 4 27 15 19 7 11 5 8 8 7 3 6 4 6 2 One of the most salient issues in climate change communication is the discourse of economic costs and benefits associated with both climate change and climate mitigation policies (Stecula & Merkley, 2019; Shaw & Nerlich, 2015; Mildenberger & Leiserowitz, 2017; Bertolotti et al., 2021; Garth & Roberts, 2022). The centrality of this debate to climate policy discussions was firmly established with the publication of the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change in 2007 (Hampicke, 2011). The review asserted that “the world does not need to choose between averting climate change and promoting growth and development. Changes in energy technologies and in the structure of economies have created opportunities to decouple growth from greenhouse gas emissions. Indeed, ignoring climate change will eventually damage economic growth” (p. 27). This framing was subsequently reinforced by the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate in its New Climate Economy report, which declared: “The growth story of the 21st century will unlock unprecedented opportunities and deliver a strong, sustainable, inclusive global economy. The benefits of climate action are greater than ever before, while the costs of inaction continue to mount. It is time for a decisive shift to a new climate economy.” Such cost–benefit framings are reproduced in the Moroccan news articles examined in this study. In the sections that follow, I expand on how this economic framing is deployed in the corpus through a detailed analysis of selected extracts. The following excerpt illustrates a direct articulation of the view that the current ecological predicament is most effectively communicated through an economic lens. While environmental concerns are acknowledged, the emphasis falls primarily on economic considerations as the principal driver of public engagement with climate issues and support for mitigation policies. In this framing, climate change is constructed less as an ecological crisis in its own right and more as a source of economic loss and declining growth rates. Climate change affects not only the environment, but the economy as well, points out the Arab Barometer, as the majority of MENA publics consider the economy to be “the greatest challenge facing their country.” Therefore, clarifying the effects of climate change on the economy is crucial for increasing climate engagement among ordinary citizens in the region, estimates the report, citing the World Bank’s projections that “MENA will be one of the regions hit hardest by economic losses from climate-related water scarcity as growth rates decline by as much as 6% of GDP by 2050.” [Text 173] The following headline and accompanying drop-head foreground an economic framing of climate change by presenting an estimated financial cost and projecting the future impacts of inaction on Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Such headlines operate rhetorically to prioritize economic consequences as the primary lens through which the climate crisis is communicated, and position financial risk as a more compelling driver of concern than ecological degradation itself. World Bank: Climate Disasters Cost Morocco More than $500 Million Annually Unless the government swiftly moves to adopt climate mitigation policies, Morocco is on the path to losing 3% of its GDP by 2050. [Text 146] Similarly, the following excerpt employs high modality to establish a negative correlation between rising global temperatures and GDP. Here, the impact of climate change is framed explicitly in terms of economic loss and as an impediment to growth. This framing reduces climate change to its projected economic consequences. This reinforces the cost–benefit discourse in which ecological disruption is translated into financial metrics and growth-related concerns. A 1°C rise in global temperatures will cost Mediterranean countries an average of 1.1 point reduction in Gross Domestic Production (GDP), predicts the report. In Morocco, climate change can trigger up to a 3% loss in GDP by 2050, hindering Morocco’s economic growth prospects, data indicates. [Text 116] In the headline below, a simile is used to reframe water management as a form of ‘money management’. Abdelghani Chehbouni: Managing Water Is Like Managing Your Bank Account Similarly, the metaphor “water is money” in the excerpt that follows reinforces this economic framing by constructing water scarcity as a financial problem. “Water is money. We need energy to pump water. So, if we save water, we save money.” [Text 148] Both the simile and the metaphor exemplify how linguistic choices foreground economic value as the dominant lens for understanding natural resources and for naturalizing the reduction of ecological issues to monetary concerns. From an ecolinguistic perspective, such framings risk erasing the intrinsic ecological, cultural, and social significance of water by subordinating it to financial logic, which in turn reinforces the ideology that environmental engagement is valuable primarily when it produces economic benefits. Overall, in these extracts, as in many others across the corpus, the dominant framings can be described as CLIMATE CHANGE COSTS MONEY and CLIMATE ACTION SAVES MONEY. The first highlights the measurable economic consequences of climate change and portrays inaction as a direct financial burden. The second emphasizes the potential for financial savings through the adoption of mitigation policies. Both framings construct climate issues through a cost–benefit lens, often articulated in terms of temporal projections of economic impact. Particularly salient are short-term scenarios that forecast a decline in agriculture-driven economic growth alongside rising unemployment and migration rates. By invoking these future-oriented projections, both framings seek to foreground risk and danger and position climate change as an urgent economic threat that demands policy response. Notably, these framings rely not on subtle rhetorical strategies but on direct and straightforward linguistic elements—explicit references to costs, savings, and growth—that leave little ambiguity about the economic priorities being advanced. In line with Lakoff’s (2010) observation that words can be deliberately chosen to activate desired frames, and with Entman’s (1993) account of how frames are manifested through recurring keywords and stock phrases, these cost-based framings demonstrate how simple lexical triggers can shape public understandings of climate change in economic terms. Another framing within the economic cost–benefit discourse centers on the cost of climate mitigation policy itself. Here, the financial burden of integrating renewable energy technologies is highlighted as a challenge to mitigation efforts. Nevertheless, these costs are ultimately framed as justifiable, since future projections of potential economic benefits are presented as outweighing the initial expenditures. This framing reinforces the broader cost–benefit logic and simultaneously positions climate action as an investment whose value lies in long-term economic returns. Consider the following extracts from the corpus: In its report, BAM said that Morocco has significant potentials in terms of non-conventional water resources, such as in the desalination of sea water. However, the production capacity of mechanisms for this purpose remain weak and limited, not to mention the high cost of such alternatives. [Text 189] the high cost of electrolysis technology - used to create green hydrogen from water with renewable energy - remains a major burden for the adoption of the relatively new technology . [Text 133] Morocco is expected to have the third lowest green hydrogen production cost in 2050 ranging between roughly $0.7/ kgH2 and $1.4/kgH2, the International and Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) said in its latest report . [Text 133] the high prices of large-scale electrolyzers hinder Morocco’s plans to deliver affordable and carbon-free energy for its domestic market and Europe in upcoming years. [Text 139] Despite the presence of frames that highlight the financial pressures associated with addressing climate change, these do not function as oppositional arguments against mitigation policies. Instead, they emphasize the importance of attracting investment in alternative projects designed to reduce the cost of sustainable energy production. In doing so, they provide both legitimacy and an economic rationale for the mobilization of substantial financial resources into large-scale initiatives such as climate-adaptive agriculture, solar and wind energy development, green hydrogen production, and desalination plants. The extracts below exemplify this pattern. “We need further piloting and scaling-up of early action programmes, we need to bring together finance and investment opportunities and make them available for developing countries. Agriculture and climate finance need to be addressed together ” [Text 1] Highlighting the need to increase investments in global solar and wind energy, Germany’s Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Action Robert Habeck noted that, “The high world market prices for fossil energies as a result of the Russian war of aggression are having an impact not only in Germany and Europe, but also in developing and emerging countries, where they encounter significantly lower incomes.” [Text 139] Morocco To Benefit from Germany’s €126 million Climate Initiative The German funding is expected to serve Morocco’s green hydrogen and energy efficiency programs. [Text 139] Moroccan investment in desalination technology is a no-brainer according to Minister Baraka. Morocco’s investment in green energy over the past decades should allow the country to run desalination plants at a competitive cost to produce much-needed potable water. [Text 104] OCP Group “believes that achieving sustainable agriculture and food security involves investment in innovation and new technologies,” Charradi noted . [Text 107] With climate changes and water scarcity as among the factors that are derailing the continent’s quest for inclusive and sustainable growth, Bouraqqadi said it is important to increase investment in scientific research to position agriculture as a capital for sustainable economic and social development and as a solution to certain challenges like decarbonization, biodiversity and hidden hunger .[Text 128] It thus appears that cost-framed messages signaling conservative resistance to climate mitigation or overt climate skepticism are absent from the corpus. Instead, the cost frame is mobilized to emphasize the challenges posed by water scarcity for projects such as green hydrogen production, and to present effective interventions including solar and wind energy initiatives and desalination plants as viable solutions. These are exemplified in large-scale ventures such as the Total Eren Guelmim Oued-Noun hydrogen project and the Noor Ouarzazate concentrated solar power plant, the latter established by the Moroccan Agency for Sustainable Energy through a public–private partnership. Another framing mechanism highlighted in the discourse emphasizes local development initiatives associated with the solar project. These initiatives are situated within the broader national policy agenda of addressing rural development and are linked to positively framed narratives of modern technological and societal transition, including gender equality, participation, and decentralization. The promise of local “development” through job creation and gendered programs aimed at empowering women serves to construct the project as inclusive, suggesting that all stakeholders will share in its benefits. Consider the following extract. The High Atlas Foundation (HAF) is doing important work to empower women in the agricultural sector, including through the USAID Farmer-to-Farmer Program, to tackle climate change in Morocco. HAF engages women in rural communities to plant organic fruit trees that build food security and reduce carbon emissions. Through a participatory development approach, HAF also works to improve women’s project management, decision-making, and leadership capacities, empowering them to initiate changes in their communities that promote the well-being of both people and the planet. Ultimately, empowering women empowers societies to tackle climate change, and we must engage women if we want to protect the planet and humanity . [Text 48] Altogether, the benefit-framed argument that supports the implementation of green energy projects such as the ones mentioned here constitutes an important part of the Moroccan climate action narrative, which has resonated considerably with global and European climate change and energy transition debates (Haddad et al., 2022). Consideration of the historical and political contexts in which climate projects are framed by their promoters may shed further light on the predominance of the economic cost–benefit frame in Moroccan climate action policy and its discursive legitimation. Ryser (2019) observes that the Noor projects, which entailed extensive communal land appropriation and intensive water use, were discursively framed as a “win–win–win” scenario for all stakeholders. This framing was reinforced by an official discourse strategically deployed to legitimize large-scale expropriations despite their serious social and ecological consequences, including the loss of access to land, water, and native plants for local communities (Rignall, 2016). Central to this legitimizing discourse was the framing of communal land as “wasteland” suitable for the sustainable production of green energy. Such framing is not ideologically neutral; rather, it reproduces a historical logic that divides Morocco into “valuable” and “worthless” spaces, a spatial and legal categorization inherited from the French protectorate’s centralized governance structures (Rignall, 2016; Cantoni & Rignall, 2019). The discourse underlying the cost-benefit framing of climate action in the corpus of news reports can be situated within the larger and dominant discourse of ecological modernization, one which is “used to describe a technology-based and innovation-oriented approach to environmental policy” (Jänicke, 2008, p. 557) and which “offers storylines in which economic and environmental goals are no longer pitted against each other” (Machin, 2019, p. 208). Following several structural changes in governance and institutional arrangements in Morocco (Mathez and Loftus, 2022), this discourse laid ground for the emergence of various policies and large-scale projects such as the Green Morocco Plan aimed at promoting agricultural modernization and orienting agricultural production towards international markets under the economic imperative of maximizing yield and profit and neoliberal governance. This model of agricultural development is firmly embedded within Morocco’s climate action policy. The modernist transformation of agriculture, promoted as a pathway to resilience, is framed not merely as a driver of economic growth but also as an essential response to climate change adaptation and water scarcity. Central to the dissemination of this eco-modernist discourse is the OCP Group, Morocco’s state-owned phosphate and fertilizer giant. The token OCP occurs 87 times across 11 texts in the corpus which shows the company’s prominence as both an economic and environmental actor. Following the Nigeria–Morocco Gas Pipeline mega-project, OCP articulated its commitment to producing green energy, emphasizing that Nigerian gas could lower production costs. Implicit in this framing is the fact that the same gas is indispensable for fertilizer production, OCP’s core commercial output. Thus, the parallel pursuit of green energy, fertilizer production, and the adoption of digital technologies in smallholder farming is positioned as a model of sustainable development in which resilience is equated with profit maximization and investment attraction. Interviews with OCP leaders present increasing agricultural productivity and protecting the environment as complementary goals. The discourse implies that economic growth through higher output is also a means of addressing climate change. This reinforces an eco-modernist vision that legitimizes industrial intensification as both a developmental and ecological necessity. “A lot is being done already to increase agricultural productivity and protect the environment . What has become important is that there is an increasing awareness regarding the emerging threats. OCP Africa, alongside its partners, are mobilized to boost the economic growth of agriculture in the continent,” he added. [Text 128] “To increase farmers’ yield and profitability, OCP Africa also relies on leveraging supply chain maturity models and data science analytics to optimize fertilizers flow and improve the production inputs,” Bouraqqadi added. [Text 134] This global trend also coincides with a call for south-south or triangular cooperation to support sustainable development across the Global South in the face of regional and international rises in food insecurity, rising energy prices, climate change, and political instability. In such a context, the Moroccan fertilizer giant OCP Group has pushed for a modern, climate-resilient African agriculture. It has notably benefitted from record-breaking revenues in the first months of 2022 . [Text 132] According to Jamali, sustainable food systems can be built “by putting the smallholder farmer in a virtual loop through the sustainable increase of his/her productivity, facilitating access to quality products and services, and developing his market linkage.” [Text 90] “Farmers have no incentive to produce more , we need to address this,” pointed out El Fali, Advisor to OCP’s Chairman. [Text 111] “Africa needs increased productivity in its agriculture and higher incomes in its rural areas, and rural communities and the agro-ecosystems on which they depend have to adapt to climate change and become more resilient to its impacts,” said Alexander Mueller, FAO’s Assistant-Director General for Natural Resources. [Text 1] 4. Climate action is an economic opportunity On the other side of the cost–benefit dichotomy, climate mitigation policy is frequently presented in terms of potential economic gains. As Lakoff (2014) argues, frames “shape the goals we seek, the plans we make, the way we act, and what counts as a good or bad outcome of our actions” (p. 11). As the discussion indicates so far, clearly what counts as a good outcome of climate action is not only avoiding losses but also creating profitable business opportunities. The corresponding framing could be formulated as CLIMATE ACTION IS AN ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY. This is expressed explicitly in the excerpts below: “We need to turn climate change challenges into business opportunities instead of going about business as usual,” he said. “We need to accelerate the rate of the digital and green transition.” Of the importance of supporting green-oriented business initiatives, the Moroccan entrepreneur noted: “Morocco is taking a step in the right direction, but we need to move faster. This is where green initiatives like ClimateLaunchpad Morocco come in. ”Morocco’s forward-looking solutions for water scarcity, and food security are relevant now more than ever, Ouhlisse concluded. [Text 121] \"Today, these sciences and technologies are helping to increase the production of small and medium farmers,” Hilale emphasized during the meeting. The diplomat also explained the crucial role that AI plays in “helping to produce more food with less water and energy.\"… Hilale also stated that a paradigm change toward development is required to transform this worldwide crisis into \"an opportunity for sustainability.\" [Text 93] Beyond the classical discourse of ecological modernization, the framing of environmental challenges as business opportunities aligns with the progressive narrative of the “green economy” or “green modernization,” advanced primarily by international institutions such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the World Trade Organization, and the United Nations Environment Programme (Ferguson, 2015). This paradigm conceives environmental crises as opportunities and promotes economic activity as a means to achieve a “triple-bottom line – people, planet, and profit – and support sustainable development” (Bergius and Buseth, 2019, p. 58). Yet, these conceptions remain rooted in a Cartesian legacy that separated humans from nature and reduced the ecological costs of capitalist modernization to mere “externalities” (p. 64). In the next section, I argue against this persistent separation of economy from ecology and the subordination of nature within dominant development discourses. The green economy agenda has been criticized for relying on the ‘myth’ of (Jackson, 2009) decoupling economic growth from environmental degradation (Wanner, 2015; Ferguson, 2015). While this narrative calls for an absolute decoupling, the reality suggests a relative one since evidence for the reduction of biophysical throughput relative to economic growth is ‘scant’ (Ferguson, 2015). Wanner (2015, p.31) argues that the notion of absolute decoupling functions as an ideological instrument of a passive revolution in which the priority of economic growth is preserved and ecological realities obscured. This revolution is ‘passive’ because the greening of economies is embedded in neoliberal capitalism which continues to commodify and privatize nature. Consequently, the green economy/growth discourse constitutes an extension to the broader sustainable development paradigm (Ferguson, 2015; Wanner, 2015; Bergius and Buseth, 2019), and as such, continues to sustain capitalist hegemony and economic growth (Wanner, 2015), and what Blühdorn and Welsh (2007, pp. 186–187) call a “techno-economic hegemony” and the dominance of eco-economic “win–win” thinking. Bergius and Buseth (2019) state that the green modernization discourse in Africa “extends an unshaken belief in technological fixes to alleviate poverty, feed the world and protect the environment” (p. 76). Consider the following extract. To achieve this, HM the King went on, \"we must promote innovation, encourage scientific research and state-of-the-art technology, and improve the match between the training we provide and the needs of the job market.\" Such policies should \"withstand global changes and upheavals, and help us address the key issues of poverty, vulnerability, food security, water scarcity and climate change, as well as problems pertaining to the liberalisation of world trade and the disruption of global financial markets [Text 3] In light of these ideas, it is reasonable to raise concern about whether climate action is regarded necessary only insomuch as its costs are justified by corresponding benefits, or whether mitigation is primarily driven by the investment opportunities it generates, as Nerlich and Koteyko (2010) observed in their analysis of United Kingdom press coverage. Such a framing warrants critique for subordinating intrinsic values to extrinsic values of monetary gain (Stibbe, 2015). Because what counts as a bad outcome of climate change is primarily financial loss, climate action is reframed as a way of generating profit. Without dismissing environmental limits outright, this framing seeks to reconcile ecological concerns with the pursuit of economic growth, which from an ecological perspective are often in tension. Shaw and Nerlich (2015) similarly observe that “there is a very strong sense that climate change mitigation is no longer in opposition to the imperative of economic growth, but instead is becoming a driver of growth and a source of competitive advantage” (p. 38). Furthermore, because of what Chawla (2001) calls the “habit of counting” in economics, the economic frame emphasizes solutions in terms of quantifiable measures. This tendency, as Chawla notes, “makes it easy to put one's faith in material progress” (p. 119). The cost–benefit frame thus operates as a “conscious political act” (Shaw and Nerlich, 2015), defining climate change primarily as an economic problem that can be both remedied and transformed into a business opportunity. For Shaw and Nerlich (2015), this represents a key dichotomy in climate discourse, as it sidelines alternative frames rooted in justice, ethics, or democratic decision-making. As they argue, “suggesting that climate change is primarily an economic problem reduces the policy space for these alternative framings, and the resultant marginalisation of these less expert, technical frames undermines efforts being made elsewhere to build strong positive public engagement” (Machin, 2013; Carvalho and Peterson, 2012, cited in Shaw and Nerlich, 2015, p. 34). Stibbe (2015, p. 51) identifies the more general framing CLIMATE CHANGE IS A PROBLEM, which establishes a relationship between two elements, a problem and a solution: “once the solution has been applied the problem no longer exists”. This framing is problematic because it runs counter the resilience principle: “If climate change can be ‘solved’ then there is no need to create resilient societies that can adapt to the harmful impacts that climate change has already started having”. 5. Growth is good? Discursive practices have been widely acknowledged to exert ideological effects (Fairclough & Wodak, 1997; Fairclough, 2013), particularly through their capacity to produce or reproduce hegemonic power relations. Since “ideology endeavors to cover its own traces” (Fairclough, 2013, p. 46), identifying its presence is not a straightforward task. Within ecolinguistics, the central concern is whether ideologies influence people in ways that sustain or undermine the ecological conditions upon which life depends (Stibbe, 2013, 2015). Among the most strongly criticized ideologies in this field is the ideology of growth (Victor, 2008; Jackson, 2009; Stibbe, 2015; Haapanen & Tapio, 2016). Halliday (2001), for example, critiques the pervasive assumption that “growth is good,” warning that “growthism and classism are our two major ideological menaces; and ideologies are constructed in language” (p. 198). I argue that the ideological evaluation “economic growth is good” is diffused throughout climate discourse in order to legitimize the opportunistic framing of the ecological crisis. Such discursive strategies legitimate neoliberal economic interests and sustain the logic of profit-driven growth. This evaluative positioning can be understood through appraisal theory (Martin & White, 2005), which foregrounds the role of language in constructing attitudes, judgments, and values. Within this framework, the recurrent positive appraisal of economic growth operates as a mechanism of ideological legitimation (van Leeuwen, 2008), rendering growthist logic not only desirable but also morally and pragmatically necessary. In this section, I therefore examine the linguistic mechanisms that build a positive valuation of economic growth, with particular attention to evaluative lexis that align climate action with economic gain. At the same time, I highlight the disputatious aspects of the growthist ideology embedded in the corpus, including tensions between ecological sustainability and perpetual expansion, and contradictions between discourses of environmental responsibility and discourses of profit maximization. The two most significantly frequent collocates of growth are economic and population as shown in table 4 . This distribution indicates that the discourse predominantly orients towards economic growth and population growth as the primary referents of the concept. Table 4 Top 5 most frequent collocates of ‘growth’ (L5, R5) collocate Freq. (L) Freq. (R) Range economic population urbanization stability stages 10 12 3 1 1 3 0 0 2 1 11 11 3 3 2 The term growth itself occurs 56 times across 36 texts, and it is often directly associated with GDP estimates ( f = 29, Range = 22). This collocational behavior confirms the centrality of growthist economic discourse , where growth is primarily framed in quantitative terms of national productivity. Table 5 further illustrates this by displaying the nineteen most frequent two-word clusters containing the token growth in the right-hand position. It shows that population growth and economic growth dominate the two-word clusters, followed by a small number of collocations that qualify growth in either temporal (e.g., pre-pandemic growth , projected growth ) or evaluative terms (e.g., sustainable growth , positive growth ). This distribution highlights how growth is primarily framed in quantitative and economic terms, with occasional modifiers that attribute normative value. Table 5 The Top 19 Most Frequent Two-Word Clusters of ‘Growth’ Cluster Freq. Range population growth economic growth expected growth pre-pandemic growth production growth sustainable growth agriculture growth demographic growth different growth green growth 12 8 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 11 6 2 1 2 2 1 1 1 1 Cluster Freq. Range old growth plant growth plants growth positive growth projected growth rapid growth spurring growth long-term growth industrial growth 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 In contexts where climate change and other factors are represented as impacting national economic growth, this growth is implicitly evaluated in a positive light. In the passage below, for instance, the clustering of qualifying lexical items (highlighted in bold) constructs a pattern of positive appraisal of economic growth. These reforms include pricing scarcer water resources at an appropriate level, developing efficient water allocation mechanisms, such as a tradable quota system, and producing and publishing accurate and detailed data on water resources and their use, the World Bank said in the report, which identifies resilience as a key element for Morocco’s growth and economic stability [Text 186]. The positive connotations borne by these appraising items (Martin & White, 2005) collectively trigger a favorable evaluation of economic growth. The clustering of lexical items appropriate , efficient , accurate , detailed , and resilience produces what Alexander (2009, p. 140) terms a “positive cumulative effect.” Although none of these words functions as a direct modifier of growth , their association with it generates an evaluative environment in which economic growth is positioned as desirable. These lexical items cognitively evoke images and emotions associated with order, precision, resilience, and stability; all values mapped onto the concept of economic growth. In Halliday’s (2001) terms, these items carry “positive affective loadings” that reinforce the cultural assumption that growth is inherently beneficial. A similar evaluative mechanism is evident in the following passage. Here, the conjunction or implies that economic growth is synonymous with or an alternative to economic recovery . Furthermore, the correlative conjunction not only … but also establishes grammatical parallelism between the prosperity of the agricultural sector and the livelihood of citizens. Both syntactic structures function as appraisal resources: the sector is construed as prosperous, and this prosperity is directly linked to the welfare of society. As agriculture represents a key sector in Morocco’s economic growth or recovery , the water shortage does not only threaten the prosperity of the sector but also the livelihood of citizens [Text 105]. This example reinforces the pattern whereby growth is imbued with positive value, positioned as both synonymous with recovery and instrumental to national well-being. Such constructions further entrench the ideological assumption that growth is inherently desirable and indispensable. Building on the previous discussion of cost–benefit framings, the prioritization of economic growth further illustrates the logic of growth in mainstream decision-making. In the extract above, for example, economic growth is equated with welfare, a central feature of what Haapanen and Tapio (2016) describe as “growth as an ideology.” This assumption has been widely critiqued (Victor, 2008; Jackson, 2009; Stibbe, 2015). Stibbe (2015) draws on several authors to challenge the reliance on GDP as a measure of national progress, emphasizing how it can be misleading. Such reliance fosters the cultural evaluation economic growth is good , which, as Stibbe (2015, p. 89) notes: becomes a standard way of evaluating an area of life, the original reasons for why it was established may be forgotten. An increase in GDP could be considered positive automatically because of the cultural evaluation rather than from consideration of what the increase actually represents in terms of improved wellbeing, equity and the preservation of the systems that support life. In addition, the ideology of growth is frequently criticized for positioning economic growth as a prerequisite for addressing contemporary challenges, including environmental ones (Victor, 2008; Wanner, 2015). As discussed earlier, climate change is often framed as an economic problem with foreseeable short-term outcomes. This leads to climate action being represented less as an ecological imperative than as a series of economic measures designed primarily to sustain growth. This framing reflects a broader segregation of the economy from social and ecological realities, a central criticism of growth ideology (Victor, 2008). The assumption that the ecological crisis can be resolved by the very growth-oriented strategies that contributed to it has been described as “pathological” (Jackson, 2009). Such reasoning ignores the fundamental dependence of the economy on social and ecological systems Conclusion Different frames foreground different actors (Stibbe, 2015 ). Within the mainstream economy-based frame, investment forces and financial service providers emerge as central actors in mitigation narratives. As Hulme ( 2009 ) observes, “Framing climate change as a failure of markets, for example, implies that it is market entrepreneurs, economists and businesses that need to take the lead in ‘correcting’ the failure” (p. 277). This perspective is exemplified in the Stern Report (2007), which characterizes climate change as “the greatest market failure the world has ever seen.” Building on this, the analysis identified the framings CLIMATE CHANGE COSTS MONEY, CLIMATE ACTION SAVES MONEY, and CLIMATE ACTION IS AN ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY. These framings operationalize the market-failure perspective by emphasizing the economic dimensions of climate change, particularly the costs and benefits of action versus inaction. Market-based solutions are thereby cast not only as corrective measures but also as business opportunities, which reflects the dominance of the neoliberal growth paradigm in both policy and public communication. In this way, the cost-benefit frame reinforces the idea that the economic imperative, minimizing loss and maximizing growth, constitutes a primary rationale for climate action. It was noted that, when the broader socio-ecological implications of such climate policies are considered (see Mathez & Loftus, 2022 ; Haddad et al., 2022 ; Ryser, 2019 ; Cantoni & Rignall, 2019 ; Rignall, 2016 ), the mainstream modernist discourse reproduced in Morocco appears to reinforce the ideology of reconciling economic growth with environmental policy. Within this discourse, “protection of natural resources and social justice are subordinated to an increase in yields and profits” (Methez & Loftus, 2022, p. 18), while existing power relations are extended into new energy and climate governance structures. By considering the political and social implications of major projects that form a key part of Morocco’s climate mitigation policy, I sought to highlight the importance of situating the economics-based framing within its geopolitical context. Much of the climate policy debate in Morocco reproduces globally diffused paradigms such as green growth , green economy , and sustainable development , around which a wide range of contemporary social, political, and economic issues are organized. Issues of rural development, women’s empowerment, participatory governance, and migration are embedded within the dominant green discourse, which provides audiences with interpretive frameworks aligned with the interests of prevailing power structures. In this sense, the power dynamics of this discourse are not neutral. They interact with existing hierarchies in ways that consolidate them and simultaneously offer promissory policy proposals that claim to address climate-related challenges through the “green” approach. The rationale behind economic framings is that economic arguments are more accessible to the public than complex climate science and thus more effective at generating concern (Mildenberger & Leiserowitz, 2017 ; Bertolotti el, 2021). However, research “suggests that the public’s climate concerns are largely insensitive to economic conditions” (Mildenberger & Leiserowitz, 2017 , p. 18). In general, evidence on the effects of topical frames (Schäfer and O’Neill, 2017 ) such as the economic frame on individuals’ concern and engagement is largely inconsistent (Bernauer & McGrath, 2016 ; Li and Su, 2018 ). The effects of communicating the economic consequences of climate change and related policies on environmental concern has been the subject of an increasing number of studies (Kahn and Kotchen, 2011 ; Mildenberger and Leiserowitz, 2017 ; Bertolotti et al., 2021 ; Scruggs and Benegal, 2012 ). Kahn and Kotchen ( 2011 ) for instance found that increase in unemployment rates is associated with increases in skepticism and denial of climate change during the 2008 recession. This was observed in the decrease of internet searches for ‘global warming’. Higher unemployment rates are also associated with low support for climate mitigation policies and decrease in climate beliefs (Scruggs and Benegal, 2012 ). The authors speculate that the mechanism underlying their results relate to how people are more likely to focus on day-to-day short-term “threats” such as losing one’s job than the more abstract uncertain threats of climate change. This behavior, they argue, is consistent with Maslow’s theory of hierarchy of needs (1954). It is also consistent with the argument from political science that support for more liberal policies and the prioritization of environmental policymaking increases during favorable economic conditions (Durr, 1993 in Kahn and Kotchen, 2011 ; Mildenberger and Leiserowitz, 2017 ). Finally, this paper argues that the Moroccan case illustrates how climate discourse reproduces neoliberal economic priorities under the guise of sustainability, which reinforces the need for more critical examination of the ideological implications of climate framing in media communication in the Global South. Declarations Author Contribution A.E. conceived the study, collected and compiled the corpus, conducted the analysis, and wrote the manuscript. All aspects of the work were completed by A.E. Data Availability The author confirms that the data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article and its supplementary materials which can be accessed through this [hyperlink](https:/drive.google.com/drive/folders/1X1gnblAk0_-NV3pEDcKp1D8CP0R2CLXf) . Ethics declaration Not applicable References Alexander, R. (2009). Framing discourse on the environment: A critical discourse approach. New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203890615 Bernauer, T., McGrath, L. Simple reframing unlikely to boost public support for climate policy. Nature Clim Change 6 , 680–683 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2948 Bertolotti, M., Catellani, P., & Nelson, T. (2021). Framing Messages on the Economic Impact of Climate Change Policies: Effects on Climate Believers and Climate Skeptics. Environmental Communication , 15 (6), 715–730. https://doi.org/10.1080/17524032.2021.1890175 Blühdorn, I., & Welsh, I. (2007). 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New Political Economy , 20 (1), 21–41. https://doi.org/10.1080/13563467.2013.866081 Additional Declarations No competing interests reported. Cite Share Download PDF Status: Published Journal Publication published 29 Dec, 2025 Read the published version in Corpus Pragmatics → Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Research Square lets you share your work early, gain feedback from the community, and start making changes to your manuscript prior to peer review in a journal. As a division of Research Square Company, we’re committed to making research communication faster, fairer, and more useful. We do this by developing innovative software and high quality services for the global research community. Our growing team is made up of researchers and industry professionals working together to solve the most critical problems facing scientific publishing. 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13:29:41\",\"extension\":\"html\",\"order_by\":9,\"title\":\"\",\"display\":\"\",\"copyAsset\":false,\"role\":\"acdc-reference\",\"size\":141644,\"visible\":true,\"origin\":\"\",\"legend\":\"\",\"description\":\"\",\"filename\":\"earlyproof.html\",\"url\":\"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7704015/v1/923570d09bb81e6df98666be.html\"},{\"id\":99545237,\"identity\":\"5ce9e5c4-727c-42e7-bed9-3223be88fb01\",\"added_by\":\"auto\",\"created_at\":\"2026-01-05 16:03:41\",\"extension\":\"pdf\",\"order_by\":0,\"title\":\"\",\"display\":\"\",\"copyAsset\":false,\"role\":\"manuscript-pdf\",\"size\":1066546,\"visible\":true,\"origin\":\"\",\"legend\":\"\",\"description\":\"\",\"filename\":\"manuscript.pdf\",\"url\":\"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7704015/v1/031e4048-cd45-4bf6-b412-cef44d94633c.pdf\"}],\"financialInterests\":\"No competing interests reported.\",\"formattedTitle\":\"Between economic failure and success: a corpus-assisted eco-critical analysis of climate change framing in Moroccan news\",\"fulltext\":[{\"header\":\"1. Introduction\",\"content\":\"\\u003cp\\u003eThis paper adopts an ecolinguistic approach to critical discourse analysis in order to investigate how Moroccan online news outlets construct discourse about climate change. The choice of this framework rests on the recognition that language is not a neutral medium but a constitutive force that can either sustain or threaten ecological well-being. As Stibbe (\\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR36\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e2015\\u003c/span\\u003e) argues, discursive practices embody socio-cognitive structures that both reflect and reproduce \\u0026ldquo;stories\\u0026rdquo; shaping human perception and behavior. By focusing on a corpus of 195 online articles, the analysis operationalizes this insight through a combination of ecolinguistics, cognitive linguistics, and corpus linguistics. Corpus-based techniques are first employed to identify salient lexico-grammatical features\\u0026mdash;particularly vocabulary items and collocational patterns\\u0026mdash;that reveal recurring linguistic structures. This quantitative mapping provides the necessary scale for understanding linguistic prominence across the dataset. The subsequent qualitative stage interprets these prominent patterns to uncover the underlying ecological \\u0026ldquo;stories\\u0026rdquo; embedded in discourse. In this way, the methodology aligns with ecolinguistic principles by linking micro-scale textual analysis to broader ethical and ecological concerns, thus ensuring that the linguistic examination is both empirically rigorous and ecologically oriented.\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003eThe study of frames and framings provides a solid starting point for examining how climate change is discursively constructed in the corpus. Lakoff (\\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR21\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e2014\\u003c/span\\u003e), in \\u003cem\\u003eDon\\u0026rsquo;t Think of an Elephant\\u003c/em\\u003e, illustrates how the very act of negating a concept evokes its mental representation, since the word \\u003cem\\u003eelephant\\u003c/em\\u003e activates a pre-existing frame; a structured packet of knowledge in which the concept is defined. As Lakoff (\\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR20\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e2010\\u003c/span\\u003e) argues, framing is inevitable as it constitutes the cognitive process through which meaning is shaped. Frames impose one story from a familiar domain onto another, thereby structuring perception and interpretation (Stibbe, \\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR36\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e2015\\u003c/span\\u003e, p. 48). They allow individuals \\u0026ldquo;to locate, perceive, identify, and label\\u0026rdquo; events and experiences (Goffman, \\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR11\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e1974\\u003c/span\\u003e, p. 21). For new information to be understood, it must connect with what is already embedded in the brain\\u0026rsquo;s neural circuitry; the neutrally instantiated conceptual systems that both enable and constrain how the world is comprehended and acted upon (Lakoff, \\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR21\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e2014\\u003c/span\\u003e, p. 16). This makes the study of message framing in climate change discourse particularly significant, since the ways in which climate issues are linguistically framed affect public engagement and shape support for mitigation policies and practices.\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003eFrom an ecolinguistic perspective, the framing of climate action must be anchored in an ethics that moves beyond anthropocentrism toward a deeper responsiveness to the ecological crisis at cognitive and cultural levels. Since frame analysis has the potential to reveal underlying patterns of thinking, or \\u0026ldquo;stories\\u0026rdquo; (Stibbe, \\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR36\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e2015\\u003c/span\\u003e), it provides access to the broader systems of meaning that shape public communication about climate change. Moreover, as Lakoff (\\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR20\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e2010\\u003c/span\\u003e) emphasizes, \\u0026ldquo;it matters how we frame the environment\\u0026rdquo; because the framing of climate discourse is never neutral. A critical evaluation of climate action frames must therefore consider whether the power relations embedded in discourse serve to perpetuate ecologically destructive ideologies or foster more sustainable orientations. In this light, the present study seeks to identify the dominant frames employed in Moroccan online news coverage of climate change, to assess their potential effects on public perceptions, and to evaluate their broader ecological implications.\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003eThe most straightforward method for identifying frames is to search for \\u003cem\\u003etrigger\\u003c/em\\u003e words. Lakoff (\\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR20\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e2010\\u003c/span\\u003e, p. 73) observes that \\u0026ldquo;words can be chosen to activate desired frames.\\u0026rdquo; Similarly, Entman (\\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR7\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e1993\\u003c/span\\u003e, p. 52) explains that frames \\u0026ldquo;are manifested by the presence or absence of certain keywords, stock phrases, stereotyped images, sources of information, and sentences that provide thematically reinforcing clusters of facts or judgments.\\u0026rdquo; To stress the importance of grounding the analysis in quantitative linguistic data, it is worth reiterating Lakoff\\u0026rsquo;s central claim at length:\\u003cdiv class=\\\"BlockQuote\\\"\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003eSince political ideologies are, of course, characterized by systems of frames, ideological language will activate that ideological system. Since the synapses in neural circuits are made stronger the more they are activated, the \\u003cem\\u003erepetition\\u003c/em\\u003e of ideological language will strengthen the circuits for that ideology in a hearer\\u0026rsquo;s brain [emphasis added]. And since language that is repeated very often becomes \\u0026lsquo;\\u0026lsquo;normally used\\u0026rsquo;\\u0026rsquo; language, ideological language repeated often enough can become \\u0026lsquo;\\u0026lsquo;normal language\\u0026rsquo;\\u0026rsquo; but still activate that ideology unconsciously in the brains of citizens\\u0026mdash;and journalists. (Lakoff, \\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR20\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e2010\\u003c/span\\u003e, p. 72)\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003c/div\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003eEntman (\\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR7\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e1993\\u003c/span\\u003e) defines framing as the selection of certain aspects of perceived reality and their amplification within a text so as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation (p. 52). Central to this process is \\u003cem\\u003esalience\\u003c/em\\u003e, which he describes as \\u0026ldquo;making a piece of information more noticeable, meaningful, or memorable to audiences\\u0026rdquo; (p. 53). Building on this framework, the analysis examines the lexical profile of the corpus to identify patterns of salience. The most frequent lexical items are observed in their immediate contexts as trigger words, which signal the activation of particular frames. Cross-referenced with relevant literature, the discussion traces how frames establish a problem definition of climate change and how this shapes the debate around proposed climate action in the local context.\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003eStatistical and linguistic evidence from the corpus indicates the salience and persistence of economics-based frames thereby reinforcing broader observations in discourse studies about the dominant influence of economic discourses (Stibbe, \\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR36\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e2015\\u003c/span\\u003e). Within the Moroccan context, these frames highlight the impacts of climate change and water deficit on economic development, with particular emphasis on agriculture, the principal driver of the national economy. The frame also emphasizes policy decisions that prioritize financing the acquisition and development of technological resources aimed at sustaining agro-businesses and supporting the emerging green energy sector in the face of climatic shocks. At the same time, such measures are framed not merely as protective strategies but as opportunities to enhance productivity and stimulate growth within the policy vision of a \\u003cem\\u003egreen economy\\u003c/em\\u003e.\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003eOverall, the challenges of adapting to climate change receive sustained attention from an economic perspective. Within this discourse, four recurring framings are identified: CLIMATE CHANGE IS AN ECONOMIC PROBLEM, CLIMATE ACTION IS AN ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY, CLIMATE CHANGE COSTS MONEY, and CLIMATE ACTION SAVES MONEY. Together, these framings constitute the dominant economics frame through which debates on climate change and climate policy are constructed. They emerge from the interaction of elements associated with \\u0026ldquo;ecological modernization\\u0026rdquo; and the more recent \\u0026ldquo;green growth/green economy\\u0026rdquo; discourses, both of which rest on the highly contested premise that economic growth can be decoupled from environmental harm. The analysis highlights how mainstream framings of climate action often present it as a pathway to investment and profit, thereby legitimizing particular courses of policy and practice. Sections 2 and 3 elaborate on the identified framings in detail. Section 4 then situates these framings within the broader ideological assumption that \\u0026ldquo;growth is good,\\u0026rdquo; a principle widely critiqued in the literature (Stibbe, 2012, \\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR36\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e2015\\u003c/span\\u003e; Ferguson, \\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR10\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e2015\\u003c/span\\u003e; Halliday, 2001; Victor, \\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR38\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e2008\\u003c/span\\u003e; Jackson, \\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR17\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e2009\\u003c/span\\u003e). The final section provides a synthesis of the discussion of frames and framings.\\u003c/p\\u003e\"},{\"header\":\"2. Method and materials\",\"content\":\"\\u003cp\\u003eThe dataset for this study consists of a small corpus of 195 news articles (99,507 words) drawn from three Moroccan online news outlets: \\u003cem\\u003eMorocco World News\\u003c/em\\u003e (MWN) (\\u003cspan class=\\\"ExternalRef\\\"\\u003e\\u003cspan class=\\\"RefSource\\\"\\u003ehttps://www.moroccoworldnews.com\\u003c/span\\u003e\\u003cspan address=\\\"https://www.moroccoworldnews.com\\\" targettype=\\\"URL\\\" class=\\\"RefTarget\\\"\\u003e\\u003c/span\\u003e\\u003c/span\\u003e), \\u003cem\\u003eHespress\\u003c/em\\u003e (\\u003cspan class=\\\"ExternalRef\\\"\\u003e\\u003cspan class=\\\"RefSource\\\"\\u003ehttps://en.hespress.com\\u003c/span\\u003e\\u003cspan address=\\\"https://en.hespress.com\\\" targettype=\\\"URL\\\" class=\\\"RefTarget\\\"\\u003e\\u003c/span\\u003e\\u003c/span\\u003e), and \\u003cem\\u003eMaghreb Agence Presse\\u003c/em\\u003e (MAP) (\\u003cspan class=\\\"ExternalRef\\\"\\u003e\\u003cspan class=\\\"RefSource\\\"\\u003ehttps://www.mapnews.ma\\u003c/span\\u003e\\u003cspan address=\\\"https://www.mapnews.ma\\\" targettype=\\\"URL\\\" class=\\\"RefTarget\\\"\\u003e\\u003c/span\\u003e\\u003c/span\\u003e). MWN is an independent e-newspaper headquartered in Washington D.C. and Rabat, reporting on a wide range of topics related to Morocco and the MENA region. Hespress, also an independent digital platform, is based in Morocco and, according to Statista Research Department (2023), was the country\\u0026rsquo;s most visited online news site in 2022. MAP, by contrast, serves as Morocco\\u0026rsquo;s official state-owned news agency. Articles were collected using the keywords \\u003cem\\u003eclimate change\\u003c/em\\u003e and \\u003cem\\u003eglobal warming\\u003c/em\\u003e, covering an eleven-year span from 2011 to 2022.\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003eTo identify frames within the corpus, a corpus-assisted discourse analysis approach was employed. Keywords and recurrent lexical patterns were extracted using concordance and frequency tools, which enabled the systematic tracing of linguistic choices that signal underlying frames. Following Entman\\u0026rsquo;s (\\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR7\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e1993\\u003c/span\\u003e) observation that frames are manifested through keywords, stock phrases, and thematically reinforcing clusters of facts or judgments, the analysis focused on the occurrence and distribution of terms and collocations associated with climate change and climate action. Frequency counts highlighted salient lexical items, while concordance lines provided the contextual detail necessary to evaluate how these items activated particular frames in line with Lakoff\\u0026rsquo;s (\\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR20\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e2010\\u003c/span\\u003e) emphasis on the framing power of repeated language. This quantitative evidence was then combined with qualitative interpretation to determine whether the identified linguistic patterns reproduced dominant economic framings, reinforced ideological positions, or pointed toward alternative discursive orientations.\\u003c/p\\u003e\"},{\"header\":\"3. Climate change costs money\",\"content\":\"\\u003cp\\u003eThe economics frame in the corpus is primarily activated by lexical items belonging to the semantic field of economics and finance. Here, the semantic field is understood as a set of lexemes that pertain to a shared conceptual domain (e.g., economics, medicine, music) and that are semantically related. Table 1 presents the raw frequencies and distribution ranges of the most prominent lexical items identified. Raw frequencies indicate the number of word tokens within the corpus, which consists of 97,660 words drawn from 195 news reports. A simple comparison between \\u003cem\\u003ewater scarcity\\u003c/em\\u003e (f = 269, R = 169) and \\u003cem\\u003eeconomic\\u003c/em\\u003e (f = 164, R = 74) illustrates the relative prominence of the latter. This comparative criterion is justified by the thematic consistency of the specialized corpus: because \\u003cem\\u003ewater scarcity\\u003c/em\\u003e constitutes one of the key terms in Moroccan climate discourse, its frequency serves as a benchmark against which the salience of other lexical items can be measured.\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cstrong\\u003eTable\\u003c/strong\\u003e \\u003cstrong\\u003e1 \\u003cem\\u003eFrequency \\u0026amp; Range of the Most Salient Lexical Units from the Semantic Field of Economics\\u003c/em\\u003e\\u003c/strong\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003ctable border=\\\"1\\\" cellspacing=\\\"0\\\" cellpadding=\\\"0\\\" align=\\\"\\\" width=\\\"100%\\\"\\u003e\\n \\u003ctbody\\u003e\\n \\u003ctr\\u003e\\n \\u003ctd\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cstrong\\u003eWord\\u003c/strong\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003c/td\\u003e\\n \\u003ctd\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cstrong\\u003eFrequency\\u003c/strong\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003c/td\\u003e\\n 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\\u003cp\\u003e29\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e61\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e28\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e18\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e14\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e12\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e19\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e2\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e2\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e44\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e17\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003c/td\\u003e\\n \\u003ctd style=\\\"width: 78px;\\\"\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e24\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e22\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e36\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e17\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e15\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e11\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e8\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e12\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e2\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e2\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e30\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e14\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003c/td\\u003e\\n \\u003c/tr\\u003e\\n \\u003c/tbody\\u003e\\n\\u003c/table\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003eThe token \\u003cem\\u003eeconomic\\u003c/em\\u003e ranks among the most frequent words in the corpus (f = 164, RF = 1.6 citations per thousand words). In terms of distribution, it appears in 74 of the 195 texts, with individual frequencies ranging from one to ten occurrences per text.\\u0026nbsp;\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003eTable 2 displays the eleven most frequent collocates of \\u003cem\\u003eeconomic\\u003c/em\\u003e within a collocational span of L0, R1\\u0026mdash;that is, words occurring immediately to the right of \\u003cem\\u003eeconomic\\u003c/em\\u003e. Less frequent collocations (f = 1) include \\u003cem\\u003eeconomic expansion\\u003c/em\\u003e, \\u003cem\\u003eeconomic profitability\\u003c/em\\u003e, and \\u003cem\\u003eeconomic prosperity\\u003c/em\\u003e, which nonetheless carry meanings equivalent to the more common collocates. Functionally, the adjective \\u003cem\\u003eeconomic\\u003c/em\\u003e serves as an attributive modifier of nouns that fall into two broad categories: occurs more often with process nouns than with state nouns. This suggests that in the corpus, the adjective \\u003cem\\u003eeconomic\\u003c/em\\u003e tends to foreground processes typically associated with positive or neutral connotations rather than states, which are more often negatively evaluated. From an ecolinguistic perspective, this preference for process-oriented collocates reflects a discourse orientation toward continual growth and activity, implicitly aligning with the ideology that \\u0026ldquo;growth is good\\u0026rdquo;.\\u0026nbsp;\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cstrong\\u003eTable 2\\u0026nbsp;\\u003c/strong\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003eTop 11 Most Frequent Collocates of Economic\\u0026nbsp;\\u003c/em\\u003e(L0, R1)\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003ctable border=\\\"1\\\" cellspacing=\\\"0\\\" cellpadding=\\\"0\\\" width=\\\"100%\\\"\\u003e\\n \\u003ctbody\\u003e\\n \\u003ctr\\u003e\\n \\u003ctd valign=\\\"top\\\" style=\\\"width: 174px;\\\"\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cstrong\\u003eCollocation\\u003c/strong\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003c/td\\u003e\\n \\u003ctd valign=\\\"top\\\" style=\\\"width: 87px;\\\"\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cstrong\\u003eFrequency\\u003c/strong\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003c/td\\u003e\\n \\u003ctd valign=\\\"top\\\" style=\\\"width: 60px;\\\"\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cstrong\\u003eRange\\u003c/strong\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003c/td\\u003e\\n \\u003c/tr\\u003e\\n \\u003ctr\\u003e\\n \\u003ctd valign=\\\"top\\\" style=\\\"width: 174px;\\\"\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003eeconomic development\\u003c/em\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003eeconomic growth\\u003c/em\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003eeconomic consequences\\u003c/em\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003eeconomic, social\\u003c/em\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003eeconomic crisis\\u003c/em\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003eeconomic sectors\\u003c/em\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003eeconomic activities\\u003c/em\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003eeconomic recovery\\u003c/em\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003eeconomic stability\\u003c/em\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003eeconomic activity\\u003c/em\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003eeconomic opportunities\\u003c/em\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003c/td\\u003e\\n \\u003ctd valign=\\\"top\\\" style=\\\"width: 87px;\\\"\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e10\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e8\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e6\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e6\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e6\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e5\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e4\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e4\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e4\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e3\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e3\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003c/td\\u003e\\n \\u003ctd valign=\\\"top\\\" style=\\\"width: 60px;\\\"\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e10\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e6\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e6\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e6\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e5\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e5\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e4\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e4\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e4\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e3\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e2\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003c/td\\u003e\\n \\u003c/tr\\u003e\\n \\u003c/tbody\\u003e\\n\\u003c/table\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003eTable 3 presents the fifteen most frequent collocates of \\u003cem\\u003eeconomic\\u003c/em\\u003e within a broader collocational span (L5, R5). Notably, the item \\u003cem\\u003esocial\\u003c/em\\u003e appears 12 times in the left position and 23 times in the right position of the node \\u003cem\\u003eeconomic\\u003c/em\\u003e, thus highlighting its frequent association with socio-economic framings. At first glance, the corpus evidence displayed in Tables 2 and 3 suggests the prevalence of an economic orientation in the discourse. More specifically, it indicates that economics-based framings serve as an organizing framework through which issues of water scarcity and climate action policy are constructed and debated in the texts.\\u0026nbsp;\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cstrong\\u003eTable 3\\u0026nbsp;\\u003c/strong\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003eTop 15 Most Frequent Collocates of Economic\\u0026nbsp;\\u003c/em\\u003e(L5, R5)\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003ctable border=\\\"1\\\" cellspacing=\\\"0\\\" cellpadding=\\\"0\\\" align=\\\"\\\" width=\\\"100%\\\"\\u003e\\n \\u003ctbody\\u003e\\n \\u003ctr\\u003e\\n \\u003ctd style=\\\"width: 107px;\\\"\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cstrong\\u003eCollocate\\u003c/strong\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003c/td\\u003e\\n \\u003ctd style=\\\"width: 80px;\\\"\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cstrong\\u003eFreqL\\u003c/strong\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003c/td\\u003e\\n \\u003ctd style=\\\"width: 90px;\\\"\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cstrong\\u003eFreqR\\u003c/strong\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003c/td\\u003e\\n \\u003ctd style=\\\"width: 90px;\\\"\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cstrong\\u003eFreqLR\\u003c/strong\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003c/td\\u003e\\n \\u003ctd style=\\\"width: 66px;\\\"\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cstrong\\u003eRange\\u003c/strong\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003c/td\\u003e\\n \\u003c/tr\\u003e\\n \\u003ctr\\u003e\\n \\u003ctd style=\\\"width: 107px;\\\"\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003esocial\\u003c/em\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003esocio\\u003c/em\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003edevelopment\\u003c/em\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003ecrisis\\u003c/em\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003egrowth\\u003c/em\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003epolitical\\u003c/em\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003ewater\\u003c/em\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003eenvironmental\\u003c/em\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003econsequences\\u003c/em\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003einstability\\u003c/em\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003eactivities\\u003c/em\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003eworldwide\\u003c/em\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003erecovery\\u003c/em\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003estagnation\\u003c/em\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003c/td\\u003e\\n \\u003ctd style=\\\"width: 80px;\\\"\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e12\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e21\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e3\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e6\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e3\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e4\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e2\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e1\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e0\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e2\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e0\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e0\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e0\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e2\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003c/td\\u003e\\n \\u003ctd style=\\\"width: 90px;\\\"\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e23\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e1\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e17\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e7\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e10\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e5\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e6\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e7\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e8\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e4\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e6\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e6\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e6\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e2\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003c/td\\u003e\\n \\u003ctd style=\\\"width: 90px;\\\"\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e35\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e22\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e20\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e13\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e13\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e9\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e8\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e8\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e8\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e6\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e6\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e6\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e6\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e4\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003c/td\\u003e\\n \\u003ctd style=\\\"width: 66px;\\\"\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u0026nbsp;\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e27\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e15\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e19\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e7\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e11\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e5\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e8\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e8\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e7\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e3\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e6\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e4\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e6\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e2\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u0026nbsp;\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003c/td\\u003e\\n \\u003c/tr\\u003e\\n \\u003c/tbody\\u003e\\n\\u003c/table\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003eOne of the most salient issues in climate change communication is the discourse of economic costs and benefits associated with both climate change and climate mitigation policies (Stecula \\u0026amp; Merkley, 2019; Shaw \\u0026amp; Nerlich, 2015; Mildenberger \\u0026amp; Leiserowitz, 2017; Bertolotti et al., 2021; Garth \\u0026amp; Roberts, 2022). The centrality of this debate to climate policy discussions was firmly established with the publication of the \\u003cem\\u003eStern Review on the Economics of Climate Change\\u003c/em\\u003e in 2007 (Hampicke, 2011). The review asserted that \\u0026ldquo;the world does not need to choose between averting climate change and promoting growth and development. Changes in energy technologies and in the structure of economies have created opportunities to decouple growth from greenhouse gas emissions. Indeed, ignoring climate change will eventually damage economic growth\\u0026rdquo; (p. 27). This framing was subsequently reinforced by the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate in its \\u003cem\\u003eNew Climate Economy\\u003c/em\\u003e report, which declared: \\u0026ldquo;The growth story of the 21st century will unlock unprecedented opportunities and deliver a strong, sustainable, inclusive global economy. The benefits of climate action are greater than ever before, while the costs of inaction continue to mount. It is time for a decisive shift to a new climate economy.\\u0026rdquo; Such cost\\u0026ndash;benefit framings are reproduced in the Moroccan news articles examined in this study. In the sections that follow, I expand on how this economic framing is deployed in the corpus through a detailed analysis of selected extracts.\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003eThe following excerpt illustrates a direct articulation of the view that the current ecological predicament is most effectively communicated through an economic lens. While environmental concerns are acknowledged, the emphasis falls primarily on economic considerations as the principal driver of public engagement with climate issues and support for mitigation policies. In this framing, climate change is constructed less as an ecological crisis in its own right and more as a source of economic loss and declining growth rates.\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003eClimate change affects not only the environment, but the economy as well, points out the \\u0026nbsp;Arab Barometer, as the majority of MENA publics consider the economy to be \\u0026ldquo;the \\u0026nbsp; \\u0026nbsp; \\u0026nbsp; greatest challenge facing their country.\\u0026rdquo; Therefore, \\u003cstrong\\u003eclarifying the effects of climate \\u0026nbsp;change on the economy is crucial for increasing climate engagement among ordinary \\u0026nbsp; \\u0026nbsp; \\u0026nbsp; \\u0026nbsp; \\u0026nbsp; citizens\\u003c/strong\\u003e in the region, estimates the report, citing the World Bank\\u0026rsquo;s projections that \\u0026nbsp; \\u0026nbsp; \\u0026nbsp; \\u0026nbsp; \\u0026nbsp; \\u0026ldquo;MENA will be one of the regions hit hardest by economic losses from climate-related \\u0026nbsp; \\u0026nbsp; \\u0026nbsp; \\u0026nbsp; \\u0026nbsp; \\u0026nbsp; water scarcity as \\u003cstrong\\u003egrowth\\u003c/strong\\u003e rates decline by as much as 6% of \\u003cstrong\\u003eGDP\\u003c/strong\\u003e by 2050.\\u0026rdquo;\\u003c/em\\u003e [Text 173]\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003eThe following headline and accompanying drop-head foreground an economic framing of climate change by presenting an estimated financial cost and projecting the future impacts of inaction on Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Such headlines operate rhetorically to prioritize economic consequences as the primary lens through which the climate crisis is communicated, and position financial risk as a more compelling driver of concern than ecological degradation itself.\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003eWorld Bank: Climate Disasters \\u003cstrong\\u003eCost\\u003c/strong\\u003e Morocco More than $500 Million Annually\\u003c/em\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003eUnless the government swiftly moves to adopt climate mitigation policies, \\u0026nbsp;Morocco is on \\u0026nbsp; \\u0026nbsp; \\u0026nbsp; \\u0026nbsp; \\u0026nbsp; \\u0026nbsp; the path to \\u003cstrong\\u003elosing\\u003c/strong\\u003e 3% of its \\u003cstrong\\u003eGDP\\u003c/strong\\u003e by 2050.\\u0026nbsp;\\u003c/em\\u003e[Text 146]\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003eSimilarly, the following excerpt employs high modality to establish a negative correlation between rising global temperatures and GDP. Here, the impact of climate change is framed explicitly in terms of economic loss and as an impediment to growth. This framing reduces climate change to its projected economic consequences. This reinforces the cost\\u0026ndash;benefit discourse in which ecological disruption is translated into financial metrics and growth-related concerns.\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003eA 1\\u0026deg;C rise in global temperatures will \\u003cstrong\\u003ecost\\u003c/strong\\u003e Mediterranean countries an average of 1.1 point \\u003cstrong\\u003ereduction\\u003c/strong\\u003e in Gross Domestic Production (GDP), predicts the report. In Morocco, climate change can trigger up to a 3% loss in GDP by 2050, \\u003cstrong\\u003ehindering\\u003c/strong\\u003e Morocco\\u0026rsquo;s \\u003cstrong\\u003eeconomic growth\\u003c/strong\\u003e prospects, data indicates.\\u0026nbsp;\\u003c/em\\u003e[Text 116]\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003eIn the headline below, a simile is used to \\u003cem\\u003ereframe\\u0026nbsp;\\u003c/em\\u003ewater management as a form of \\u0026lsquo;money management\\u0026rsquo;.\\u0026nbsp;\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003eAbdelghani Chehbouni: Managing Water Is Like Managing Your Bank Account\\u003c/em\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003eSimilarly, the metaphor \\u003cem\\u003e\\u0026ldquo;water is money\\u0026rdquo;\\u003c/em\\u003e in the excerpt that follows reinforces this economic framing by constructing water scarcity as a financial problem.\\u003cem\\u003e\\u0026nbsp;\\u003c/em\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003e\\u0026ldquo;Water is money. We need energy to pump water. So, if we save water, we save money.\\u0026rdquo;\\u003c/em\\u003e [Text 148]\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003eBoth the simile and the metaphor exemplify how linguistic choices foreground economic value as the dominant lens for understanding natural resources and for naturalizing the reduction of ecological issues to monetary concerns. From an ecolinguistic perspective, such framings risk erasing the intrinsic ecological, cultural, and social significance of water by subordinating it to financial logic, which in turn reinforces the ideology that environmental engagement is valuable primarily when it produces economic benefits.\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003eOverall, in these extracts, as in many others across the corpus, the dominant framings can be described as\\u0026nbsp;CLIMATE CHANGE COSTS MONEY\\u0026nbsp;and\\u0026nbsp;CLIMATE ACTION SAVES MONEY. The first highlights the measurable economic consequences of climate change and portrays inaction as a direct financial burden. The second emphasizes the potential for financial savings through the adoption of mitigation policies. Both framings construct climate issues through a cost\\u0026ndash;benefit lens, often articulated in terms of temporal projections of economic impact. Particularly salient are short-term scenarios that forecast a decline in agriculture-driven economic growth alongside rising unemployment and migration rates. By invoking these future-oriented projections, both framings seek to foreground risk and danger and position climate change as an urgent economic threat that demands policy response. Notably, these framings rely not on subtle rhetorical strategies but on direct and straightforward linguistic elements\\u0026mdash;explicit references to costs, savings, and growth\\u0026mdash;that leave little ambiguity about the economic priorities being advanced. In line with Lakoff\\u0026rsquo;s (2010) observation that words can be deliberately chosen to activate desired frames, and with Entman\\u0026rsquo;s (1993) account of how frames are manifested through recurring keywords and stock phrases, these cost-based framings demonstrate how simple lexical triggers can shape public understandings of climate change in economic terms.\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003eAnother framing within the economic cost\\u0026ndash;benefit discourse centers on the cost of climate mitigation policy itself. Here, the financial burden of integrating renewable energy technologies is highlighted as a challenge to mitigation efforts. Nevertheless, these costs are ultimately framed as justifiable, since future projections of potential economic benefits are presented as outweighing the initial expenditures. This framing reinforces the broader cost\\u0026ndash;benefit logic and simultaneously positions climate action as an investment whose value lies in long-term economic returns. Consider the following extracts from the corpus:\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003cul class=\\\"decimal_type\\\"\\u003e\\n \\u003cli\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003eIn its report, BAM said that Morocco has significant potentials in terms of non-conventional water resources, such as in the desalination of sea water. However, the production capacity of mechanisms for this purpose remain weak and limited, not to mention the \\u003cstrong\\u003ehigh cost\\u003c/strong\\u003e of such alternatives.\\u003c/em\\u003e [Text 189]\\u003c/li\\u003e\\n \\u003cli\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003ethe \\u003cstrong\\u003ehigh\\u003c/strong\\u003e \\u003cstrong\\u003ecost\\u003c/strong\\u003e of electrolysis technology - used to create green hydrogen from water with renewable energy - remains a major burden for the adoption of the relatively new technology\\u003c/em\\u003e. [Text 133]\\u003c/li\\u003e\\n \\u003cli\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003eMorocco is expected to have the third lowest green hydrogen production \\u003cstrong\\u003ecost\\u003c/strong\\u003e in 2050 ranging between roughly $0.7/ kgH2 and $1.4/kgH2, the International and Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) said in its latest report\\u003c/em\\u003e.\\u0026nbsp;[Text 133]\\u003c/li\\u003e\\n \\u003cli\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003ethe \\u003cstrong\\u003ehigh prices\\u003c/strong\\u003e of large-scale electrolyzers hinder Morocco\\u0026rsquo;s plans to deliver affordable and carbon-free energy for its domestic market and Europe in upcoming years.\\u003c/em\\u003e [Text 139]\\u003c/li\\u003e\\n\\u003c/ul\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003eDespite the presence of frames that highlight the financial pressures associated with addressing climate change, these do not function as oppositional arguments against mitigation policies. Instead, they emphasize the importance of attracting investment in alternative projects designed to reduce the cost of sustainable energy production. In doing so, they provide both legitimacy and an economic rationale for the mobilization of substantial financial resources into large-scale initiatives such as climate-adaptive agriculture, solar and wind energy development, green hydrogen production, and desalination plants. The extracts below exemplify this pattern.\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003e\\u0026nbsp;\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003e\\u0026nbsp;\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003cul\\u003e\\n \\u003cli\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003e\\u0026ldquo;We need further piloting and scaling-up of early action programmes, we need to bring together \\u003cstrong\\u003efinance\\u003c/strong\\u003e and \\u003cstrong\\u003einvestment\\u003c/strong\\u003e \\u003cstrong\\u003eopportunities\\u003c/strong\\u003e and make them available for developing countries. Agriculture and climate finance need to be addressed together\\u003c/em\\u003e\\u0026rdquo; [Text 1]\\u003c/li\\u003e\\n \\u003cli\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003eHighlighting the need to \\u003cstrong\\u003eincrease\\u003c/strong\\u003e \\u003cstrong\\u003einvestments\\u003c/strong\\u003e in global solar and wind energy, Germany\\u0026rsquo;s Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Action Robert Habeck noted that, \\u0026ldquo;The high world market prices for fossil energies as a result of the Russian war of aggression are having an impact not only in Germany and Europe, but also in developing and emerging countries, where they encounter significantly lower incomes.\\u0026rdquo;\\u003c/em\\u003e [Text 139]\\u003c/li\\u003e\\n \\u003cli\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003eMorocco To Benefit from Germany\\u0026rsquo;s \\u0026euro;126 million Climate Initiative\\u003c/em\\u003e\\u003c/li\\u003e\\n\\u003c/ul\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003eThe German funding is expected to serve Morocco\\u0026rsquo;s green hydrogen and energy efficiency programs.\\u003c/em\\u003e [Text 139]\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003cul\\u003e\\n \\u003cli\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003eMoroccan \\u003cstrong\\u003einvestment\\u003c/strong\\u003e in desalination technology is a no-brainer according to Minister Baraka. Morocco\\u0026rsquo;s investment in green energy over the past decades should allow the country to run desalination plants at a competitive cost to produce much-needed potable water.\\u003c/em\\u003e [Text 104]\\u003c/li\\u003e\\n \\u003cli\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003eOCP Group \\u0026ldquo;believes that achieving sustainable agriculture and food security involves \\u003cstrong\\u003einvestment\\u003c/strong\\u003e in innovation and new technologies,\\u0026rdquo; Charradi noted\\u003c/em\\u003e. [Text 107]\\u003c/li\\u003e\\n \\u003cli\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003eWith climate changes and water scarcity as among the factors that are derailing the continent\\u0026rsquo;s quest for inclusive and sustainable growth, Bouraqqadi said it is important to \\u003cstrong\\u003eincrease\\u003c/strong\\u003e \\u003cstrong\\u003einvestment\\u003c/strong\\u003e in scientific research to position agriculture as a capital for sustainable economic and social development and as a solution to certain challenges like decarbonization, biodiversity and hidden hunger\\u003c/em\\u003e.[Text 128]\\u003c/li\\u003e\\n\\u003c/ul\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003eIt thus appears that cost-framed messages signaling conservative resistance to climate mitigation or overt climate skepticism are absent from the corpus. Instead, the cost frame is mobilized to emphasize the challenges posed by water scarcity for projects such as green hydrogen production, and to present effective interventions including solar and wind energy initiatives and desalination plants as viable solutions. These are exemplified in large-scale ventures such as the Total Eren Guelmim Oued-Noun hydrogen project and the Noor Ouarzazate concentrated solar power plant, the latter established by the Moroccan Agency for Sustainable Energy through a public\\u0026ndash;private partnership.\\u0026nbsp;\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003eAnother framing mechanism highlighted in the discourse emphasizes local development initiatives associated with the solar project. These initiatives are situated within the broader national policy agenda of addressing rural development and are linked to positively framed narratives of modern technological and societal transition, including gender equality, participation, and decentralization. The promise of local \\u0026ldquo;development\\u0026rdquo; through job creation and gendered programs aimed at empowering women serves to construct the project as inclusive, suggesting that all stakeholders will share in its benefits. Consider the following extract.\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003eThe High Atlas Foundation (HAF) is doing important work to empower women in the agricultural sector, including through the USAID Farmer-to-Farmer Program, to tackle climate change in Morocco. HAF engages women in rural communities to plant organic fruit trees that build food security and reduce carbon emissions. Through a participatory development approach, HAF also works to improve women\\u0026rsquo;s project management, decision-making, and leadership capacities, empowering them to initiate changes in their communities that promote the well-being of both people and the planet. Ultimately, empowering women empowers societies to tackle climate change, and we must engage women if we want to protect the planet and humanity\\u003c/em\\u003e. [Text 48]\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003eAltogether, the benefit-framed argument that supports the implementation of green energy projects such as the ones mentioned here constitutes an important part of the Moroccan climate action narrative, which has resonated considerably with global and European climate change and energy transition debates (Haddad et al., 2022).\\u0026nbsp;\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003eConsideration of the historical and political contexts in which climate projects are framed by their promoters may shed further light on the predominance of the economic cost\\u0026ndash;benefit frame in Moroccan climate action policy and its discursive legitimation.\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003eRyser (2019) observes that the Noor projects, which entailed extensive communal land appropriation and intensive water use, were discursively framed as a \\u0026ldquo;win\\u0026ndash;win\\u0026ndash;win\\u0026rdquo; scenario for all stakeholders. This framing was reinforced by an official discourse strategically deployed to legitimize large-scale expropriations despite their serious social and ecological consequences, including the loss of access to land, water, and native plants for local communities (Rignall, 2016). Central to this legitimizing discourse was the framing of communal land as \\u0026ldquo;wasteland\\u0026rdquo; suitable for the sustainable production of green energy. Such framing is not ideologically neutral; rather, it reproduces a historical logic that divides Morocco into \\u0026ldquo;valuable\\u0026rdquo; and \\u0026ldquo;worthless\\u0026rdquo; spaces, a spatial and legal categorization inherited from the French protectorate\\u0026rsquo;s centralized governance structures (Rignall, 2016; Cantoni \\u0026amp; Rignall, 2019).\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003eThe discourse underlying the cost-benefit framing of climate action in the corpus of news reports can be situated within the larger and dominant discourse of ecological modernization, one which is \\u0026ldquo;used to describe a technology-based and innovation-oriented approach to environmental policy\\u0026rdquo; (J\\u0026auml;nicke, 2008, p. 557) and which \\u0026ldquo;offers storylines in which economic and environmental goals are no longer pitted against each other\\u0026rdquo; (Machin, 2019, p. 208). Following several structural changes in governance and institutional arrangements in Morocco (Mathez and Loftus, 2022), this discourse laid ground for the emergence of various policies and large-scale projects such as the Green Morocco Plan aimed at promoting agricultural modernization and orienting agricultural production towards international markets under the economic imperative of maximizing yield and profit and neoliberal governance.\\u0026nbsp;\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003eThis model of agricultural development is firmly embedded within Morocco\\u0026rsquo;s climate action policy. The modernist transformation of agriculture, promoted as a pathway to resilience, is framed not merely as a driver of economic growth but also as an essential response to climate change adaptation and water scarcity. Central to the dissemination of this eco-modernist discourse is the OCP Group, Morocco\\u0026rsquo;s state-owned phosphate and fertilizer giant. The token \\u003cem\\u003eOCP\\u003c/em\\u003e occurs 87 times across 11 texts in the corpus which shows the company\\u0026rsquo;s prominence as both an economic and environmental actor. Following the Nigeria\\u0026ndash;Morocco Gas Pipeline mega-project, OCP articulated its commitment to producing green energy, emphasizing that Nigerian gas could lower production costs. Implicit in this framing is the fact that the same gas is indispensable for fertilizer production, OCP\\u0026rsquo;s core commercial output. Thus, the parallel pursuit of green energy, fertilizer production, and the adoption of digital technologies in smallholder farming is positioned as a model of sustainable development in which resilience is equated with profit maximization and investment attraction.\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003eInterviews with OCP leaders present increasing agricultural productivity and protecting the environment as complementary goals. The discourse implies that economic growth through higher output is also a means of addressing climate change. This reinforces an eco-modernist vision that legitimizes industrial intensification as both a developmental and ecological necessity.\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003cul\\u003e\\n \\u003cli\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003e\\u0026ldquo;A lot is being done already to \\u003cstrong\\u003eincrease\\u003c/strong\\u003e \\u003cstrong\\u003eagricultural\\u003c/strong\\u003e \\u003cstrong\\u003eproductivity\\u003c/strong\\u003e and \\u003cstrong\\u003eprotect\\u003c/strong\\u003e the \\u003cstrong\\u003eenvironment\\u003c/strong\\u003e. What has become important is that there is an increasing awareness regarding the emerging threats. OCP Africa, alongside its partners, are mobilized to boost the \\u003cstrong\\u003eeconomic\\u003c/strong\\u003e \\u003cstrong\\u003egrowth\\u003c/strong\\u003e of agriculture in the continent,\\u0026rdquo; he added.\\u003c/em\\u003e [Text 128]\\u003c/li\\u003e\\n \\u003cli\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003e\\u0026nbsp;\\u0026ldquo;To \\u003cstrong\\u003eincrease\\u003c/strong\\u003e farmers\\u0026rsquo; yield and profitability, OCP Africa also relies on leveraging supply chain maturity models and data science analytics to optimize fertilizers flow and improve the \\u003cstrong\\u003eproduction\\u003c/strong\\u003e inputs,\\u0026rdquo;\\u003c/em\\u003e Bouraqqadi added. [Text 134]\\u003c/li\\u003e\\n \\u003cli\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003eThis global trend also coincides with a call for south-south or triangular cooperation to support sustainable development across the Global South in the face of regional and international rises in food insecurity, rising energy prices, climate change, and political instability. In such a context, the Moroccan fertilizer giant OCP Group has pushed for a modern, climate-resilient African agriculture. It has notably benefitted from record-breaking revenues in the first months of 2022\\u003c/em\\u003e. [Text 132]\\u003c/li\\u003e\\n \\u003cli\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003eAccording to Jamali, sustainable food systems can be built \\u0026ldquo;by putting the smallholder farmer in a virtual loop through the sustainable \\u003cstrong\\u003eincrease\\u003c/strong\\u003e of his/her productivity, facilitating access to quality products and services, and developing his market linkage.\\u0026rdquo;\\u0026nbsp;\\u003c/em\\u003e[Text 90]\\u003c/li\\u003e\\n \\u003cli\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003e\\u0026nbsp;\\u0026ldquo;Farmers have no incentive to \\u003cstrong\\u003eproduce\\u003c/strong\\u003e \\u003cstrong\\u003emore\\u003c/strong\\u003e, we need to address this,\\u0026rdquo; pointed out El Fali, Advisor to OCP\\u0026rsquo;s Chairman.\\u0026nbsp;\\u003c/em\\u003e[Text 111]\\u003c/li\\u003e\\n \\u003cli\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003e\\u0026ldquo;Africa needs \\u003cstrong\\u003eincreased\\u003c/strong\\u003e \\u003cstrong\\u003eproductivity\\u003c/strong\\u003e in its agriculture and \\u003cstrong\\u003ehigher incomes\\u003c/strong\\u003e in its rural areas, and rural communities and the agro-ecosystems on which they depend have to adapt to climate change and become more resilient to its impacts,\\u0026rdquo; said Alexander Mueller, FAO\\u0026rsquo;s Assistant-Director General for Natural Resources.\\u0026nbsp;\\u003c/em\\u003e[Text 1]\\u003c/li\\u003e\\n\\u003c/ul\\u003e\"},{\"header\":\"4. Climate action is an economic opportunity\",\"content\":\"\\u003cp\\u003eOn the other side of the cost\\u0026ndash;benefit dichotomy, climate mitigation policy is frequently presented in terms of potential economic gains. As Lakoff (2014) argues, frames \\u0026ldquo;shape the goals we seek, the plans we make, the way we act, and what counts as a good or bad outcome of our actions\\u0026rdquo; (p. 11). As the discussion indicates so far, clearly what counts as a good outcome of climate action is not only avoiding losses but also creating profitable business opportunities. The corresponding framing could be formulated as\\u0026nbsp;CLIMATE ACTION IS AN ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY.\\u0026nbsp;This is expressed explicitly in the excerpts below:\\u0026nbsp;\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003cul\\u003e\\n \\u003cli\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003e\\u0026ldquo;We need to turn climate change challenges into \\u003cstrong\\u003ebusiness opportunities\\u003c/strong\\u003e instead of going about business as usual,\\u0026rdquo; he said. \\u0026ldquo;We need to accelerate the rate of the digital and green transition.\\u0026rdquo; Of the importance of supporting green-oriented business initiatives, the Moroccan entrepreneur noted: \\u0026ldquo;Morocco is taking a step in the right direction, but we need to move faster. This is where green initiatives like ClimateLaunchpad Morocco come in. \\u0026rdquo;Morocco\\u0026rsquo;s forward-looking solutions for water scarcity, and food security are relevant now more than ever, Ouhlisse concluded.\\u003c/em\\u003e [Text 121]\\u003c/li\\u003e\\n \\u003cli\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003e\\u0026quot;Today, these sciences and technologies are helping to increase the production of small and medium farmers,\\u0026rdquo; Hilale emphasized during the meeting. The diplomat also explained the crucial role that AI plays in \\u0026ldquo;helping to produce more food with less water and energy.\\u0026quot;\\u0026hellip; Hilale also stated that a paradigm change toward development is required to transform this worldwide \\u003cstrong\\u003ecrisis\\u003c/strong\\u003e into \\u0026quot;an \\u003cb\\u003eopportunity\\u003c/b\\u003e for sustainability.\\u0026quot;\\u003c/em\\u003e [Text 93]\\u003c/li\\u003e\\n\\u003c/ul\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003eBeyond the classical discourse of ecological modernization, the framing of environmental challenges as business opportunities aligns with the progressive narrative of the \\u0026ldquo;green economy\\u0026rdquo; or \\u0026ldquo;green modernization,\\u0026rdquo; advanced primarily by international institutions such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the World Trade Organization, and the United Nations Environment Programme (Ferguson, 2015). This paradigm conceives environmental crises as opportunities and promotes economic activity as a means to achieve a \\u0026ldquo;triple-bottom line \\u0026ndash; people, planet, and profit \\u0026ndash; and support sustainable development\\u0026rdquo; (Bergius and Buseth, 2019, p. 58). Yet, these conceptions remain rooted in a Cartesian legacy that separated humans from nature and reduced the ecological costs of capitalist modernization to mere \\u0026ldquo;externalities\\u0026rdquo; (p. 64). In the next section, I argue against this persistent separation of economy from ecology and the subordination of nature within dominant development discourses.\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003eThe green economy agenda has been criticized for relying on the \\u0026lsquo;myth\\u0026rsquo; of (Jackson, 2009) \\u003cem\\u003edecoupling\\u0026nbsp;\\u003c/em\\u003eeconomic growth from environmental degradation (Wanner, 2015; Ferguson, 2015). While this narrative calls for an \\u003cem\\u003eabsolute\\u003c/em\\u003e decoupling, the reality suggests a \\u003cem\\u003erelative\\u0026nbsp;\\u003c/em\\u003eone since evidence for the reduction of biophysical throughput relative to economic growth is \\u0026lsquo;scant\\u0026rsquo; (Ferguson, 2015). Wanner (2015, p.31) argues that the notion of absolute decoupling functions as an ideological instrument of a passive revolution in which the priority of economic growth is preserved and ecological realities obscured. This revolution is \\u0026lsquo;passive\\u0026rsquo; because the greening of economies is embedded in neoliberal capitalism which continues to commodify and privatize nature. Consequently, the green economy/growth discourse constitutes an extension to the broader sustainable development paradigm (Ferguson, 2015; Wanner, 2015; Bergius and Buseth, 2019), and as such, continues to sustain capitalist hegemony and economic growth (Wanner, 2015), and what Bl\\u0026uuml;hdorn and Welsh (2007, pp. 186\\u0026ndash;187) call a \\u0026ldquo;techno-economic hegemony\\u0026rdquo; and the dominance of eco-economic \\u0026ldquo;win\\u0026ndash;win\\u0026rdquo; thinking.\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003eBergius and Buseth (2019) state that the green modernization discourse in Africa \\u0026ldquo;extends an unshaken belief in technological fixes to alleviate poverty, feed the world and protect the environment\\u0026rdquo; (p. 76). Consider the following extract.\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003eTo achieve this, HM the King went on, \\u0026quot;we must promote innovation, encourage scientific research and state-of-the-art technology, and improve the match between the training we provide and the needs of the job market.\\u0026quot; Such policies should \\u0026quot;withstand global changes and upheavals, and help us address the key issues of poverty, vulnerability, food security, water scarcity and climate change, as well as problems pertaining to the liberalisation of world trade and the disruption of global financial markets\\u003c/em\\u003e [Text 3]\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003eIn light of these ideas, it is reasonable to raise concern about whether climate action is regarded necessary only insomuch as its costs are justified by corresponding benefits, or whether mitigation is primarily driven by the investment opportunities it generates, as Nerlich and Koteyko (2010) observed in their analysis of United Kingdom press coverage. Such a framing warrants critique for subordinating intrinsic values to extrinsic values of monetary gain (Stibbe, 2015). Because what counts as a bad outcome of climate change is primarily financial loss, climate action is reframed as a way of generating profit. Without dismissing environmental limits outright, this framing seeks to reconcile ecological concerns with the pursuit of economic growth, which from an ecological perspective are often in tension. Shaw and Nerlich (2015) similarly observe that \\u0026ldquo;there is a very strong sense that climate change mitigation is no longer in opposition to the imperative of economic growth, but instead is becoming a driver of growth and a source of competitive advantage\\u0026rdquo; (p. 38).\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003eFurthermore, because of what Chawla (2001) calls the \\u0026ldquo;habit of counting\\u0026rdquo; in economics, the economic frame emphasizes solutions in terms of quantifiable measures. This tendency, as Chawla notes, \\u0026ldquo;makes it easy to put one\\u0026apos;s faith in material progress\\u0026rdquo; (p. 119). The cost\\u0026ndash;benefit frame thus operates as a \\u0026ldquo;conscious political act\\u0026rdquo; (Shaw and Nerlich, 2015), defining climate change primarily as an economic problem that can be both remedied and transformed into a business opportunity. For Shaw and Nerlich (2015), this represents a key dichotomy in climate discourse, as it sidelines alternative frames rooted in justice, ethics, or democratic decision-making. As they argue, \\u0026ldquo;suggesting that climate change is primarily an economic problem reduces the policy space for these alternative framings, and the resultant marginalisation of these less expert, technical frames undermines efforts being made elsewhere to build strong positive public engagement\\u0026rdquo; (Machin, 2013; Carvalho and Peterson, 2012, cited in Shaw and Nerlich, 2015, p. 34).\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003eStibbe (2015, p. 51) identifies the more general framing\\u0026nbsp;CLIMATE CHANGE IS A PROBLEM, which establishes a relationship between two elements, a problem and a solution: \\u0026nbsp;\\u0026ldquo;once the solution has been applied the problem no longer exists\\u0026rdquo;. \\u0026nbsp; This framing is problematic because it runs counter the \\u003cem\\u003eresilience\\u0026nbsp;\\u003c/em\\u003eprinciple: \\u0026ldquo;If climate change can be \\u0026lsquo;solved\\u0026rsquo; then there is no need to create resilient societies that can adapt to the harmful impacts that climate change has already started having\\u0026rdquo;.\\u003c/p\\u003e\"},{\"header\":\"5. Growth is good?\",\"content\":\"\\u003cp\\u003eDiscursive practices have been widely acknowledged to exert \\u003cem\\u003eideological effects\\u003c/em\\u003e (Fairclough \\u0026amp; Wodak, 1997; Fairclough, 2013), particularly through their capacity to produce or reproduce hegemonic power relations. Since \\u0026ldquo;ideology endeavors to cover its own traces\\u0026rdquo; (Fairclough, 2013, p. 46), identifying its presence is not a straightforward task. Within ecolinguistics, the central concern is whether ideologies influence people in ways that sustain or undermine the ecological conditions upon which life depends (Stibbe, 2013, 2015). Among the most strongly criticized ideologies in this field is the ideology of \\u003cem\\u003egrowth\\u003c/em\\u003e (Victor, 2008; Jackson, 2009; Stibbe, 2015; Haapanen \\u0026amp; Tapio, 2016). Halliday (2001), for example, critiques the pervasive assumption that \\u0026ldquo;growth is good,\\u0026rdquo; warning that \\u0026ldquo;growthism and classism are our two major ideological menaces; and ideologies are constructed in language\\u0026rdquo; (p. 198).\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003eI argue that the ideological evaluation \\u003cem\\u003e\\u0026ldquo;economic growth is good\\u0026rdquo;\\u003c/em\\u003e is diffused throughout climate discourse in order to legitimize the opportunistic framing of the ecological crisis. Such discursive strategies legitimate neoliberal economic interests and sustain the logic of profit-driven growth. This evaluative positioning can be understood through appraisal theory (Martin \\u0026amp; White, 2005), which foregrounds the role of language in constructing attitudes, judgments, and values. Within this framework, the recurrent positive appraisal of economic growth operates as a mechanism of ideological legitimation (van Leeuwen, 2008), rendering growthist logic not only desirable but also morally and pragmatically necessary. In this section, I therefore examine the linguistic mechanisms that build a positive valuation of economic growth, with particular attention to evaluative lexis that align climate action with economic gain. At the same time, I highlight the disputatious aspects of the growthist ideology embedded in the corpus, including tensions between ecological sustainability and perpetual expansion, and contradictions between discourses of environmental responsibility and discourses of profit maximization.\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003eThe two most significantly frequent collocates of \\u003cem\\u003egrowth\\u0026nbsp;\\u003c/em\\u003eare \\u003cem\\u003eeconomic\\u0026nbsp;\\u003c/em\\u003eand \\u003cem\\u003epopulation\\u003c/em\\u003e as shown in table 4\\u003cem\\u003e.\\u0026nbsp;\\u003c/em\\u003eThis distribution indicates that the discourse predominantly orients towards economic growth and population growth as the primary referents of the concept.\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cstrong\\u003eTable 4\\u0026nbsp;\\u003c/strong\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003eTop 5 most frequent collocates of \\u0026lsquo;growth\\u0026rsquo; (L5, R5)\\u003c/em\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003ctable border=\\\"1\\\" cellspacing=\\\"0\\\" cellpadding=\\\"0\\\" align=\\\"\\\" width=\\\"100%\\\"\\u003e\\n \\u003ctbody\\u003e\\n \\u003ctr\\u003e\\n \\u003ctd valign=\\\"top\\\" style=\\\"width: 102px;\\\"\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cstrong\\u003ecollocate\\u003c/strong\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003c/td\\u003e\\n \\u003ctd valign=\\\"top\\\" style=\\\"width: 79px;\\\"\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cstrong\\u003eFreq. (L)\\u003c/strong\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003c/td\\u003e\\n \\u003ctd valign=\\\"top\\\" style=\\\"width: 84px;\\\"\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cstrong\\u003eFreq. (R)\\u003c/strong\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003c/td\\u003e\\n \\u003ctd valign=\\\"top\\\" style=\\\"width: 72px;\\\"\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cstrong\\u003eRange\\u003c/strong\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003c/td\\u003e\\n \\u003c/tr\\u003e\\n \\u003ctr\\u003e\\n \\u003ctd valign=\\\"top\\\" style=\\\"width: 102px;\\\"\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u0026nbsp;\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003eeconomic\\u003c/em\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003epopulation\\u003c/em\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003eurbanization\\u003c/em\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003estability\\u003c/em\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003estages\\u003c/em\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003c/td\\u003e\\n \\u003ctd valign=\\\"top\\\" style=\\\"width: 79px;\\\"\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u0026nbsp;\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e10\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e12\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e3\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e1\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e1\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003c/td\\u003e\\n \\u003ctd valign=\\\"top\\\" style=\\\"width: 84px;\\\"\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u0026nbsp;\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e3\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e0\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e0\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e2\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e1\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003c/td\\u003e\\n \\u003ctd valign=\\\"top\\\" style=\\\"width: 72px;\\\"\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u0026nbsp;\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e11\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e11\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e3\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e3\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e2\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003c/td\\u003e\\n \\u003c/tr\\u003e\\n \\u003c/tbody\\u003e\\n\\u003c/table\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003eThe term \\u003cem\\u003egrowth\\u003c/em\\u003e itself occurs 56 times across 36 texts, and it is often directly associated with \\u003cstrong\\u003eGDP estimates\\u003c/strong\\u003e (\\u003cem\\u003ef\\u003c/em\\u003e = 29, Range = 22). This collocational behavior confirms the centrality of \\u003cstrong\\u003egrowthist economic discourse\\u003c/strong\\u003e, where growth is primarily framed in quantitative terms of national productivity. Table 5 further illustrates this by displaying the nineteen most frequent two-word clusters containing the token \\u003cem\\u003egrowth\\u003c/em\\u003e in the right-hand position. It shows that \\u003cem\\u003epopulation growth\\u003c/em\\u003e and \\u003cem\\u003eeconomic growth\\u003c/em\\u003e dominate the two-word clusters, followed by a small number of collocations that qualify growth in either temporal (e.g., \\u003cem\\u003epre-pandemic growth\\u003c/em\\u003e, \\u003cem\\u003eprojected growth\\u003c/em\\u003e) or evaluative terms (e.g., \\u003cem\\u003esustainable growth\\u003c/em\\u003e, \\u003cem\\u003epositive growth\\u003c/em\\u003e). This distribution highlights how growth is primarily framed in quantitative and economic terms, with occasional modifiers that attribute normative value.\\u0026nbsp;\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cstrong\\u003eTable 5\\u0026nbsp;\\u003c/strong\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003eThe Top 19 Most Frequent Two-Word Clusters of \\u0026lsquo;Growth\\u0026rsquo;\\u003c/em\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003ctable border=\\\"1\\\" cellspacing=\\\"0\\\" cellpadding=\\\"0\\\" align=\\\"\\\" width=\\\"100%\\\"\\u003e\\n \\u003ctbody\\u003e\\n \\u003ctr\\u003e\\n \\u003ctd valign=\\\"top\\\" style=\\\"width: 163px;\\\"\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cstrong\\u003eCluster\\u003c/strong\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003c/td\\u003e\\n \\u003ctd valign=\\\"top\\\" style=\\\"width: 54px;\\\"\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cstrong\\u003eFreq.\\u0026nbsp;\\u003c/strong\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003c/td\\u003e\\n \\u003ctd valign=\\\"top\\\" style=\\\"width: 60px;\\\"\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cstrong\\u003eRange\\u003c/strong\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003c/td\\u003e\\n \\u003c/tr\\u003e\\n \\u003ctr\\u003e\\n \\u003ctd valign=\\\"top\\\" style=\\\"width: 163px;\\\"\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003e\\u0026nbsp;\\u003c/em\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003epopulation growth\\u003c/em\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003eeconomic growth\\u003c/em\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003eexpected growth\\u003c/em\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003epre-pandemic growth\\u003c/em\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003eproduction growth\\u003c/em\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003esustainable growth\\u003c/em\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003eagriculture growth\\u003c/em\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003edemographic growth\\u003c/em\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003edifferent growth\\u003c/em\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003egreen growth\\u003c/em\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003c/td\\u003e\\n \\u003ctd valign=\\\"top\\\" style=\\\"width: 54px;\\\"\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u0026nbsp;\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e12\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e8\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e2\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e2\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e2\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e2\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e1\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e1\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e1\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e1\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003c/td\\u003e\\n \\u003ctd valign=\\\"top\\\" style=\\\"width: 60px;\\\"\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u0026nbsp;\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e11\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e6\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e2\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e1\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e2\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e2\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e1\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e1\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e1\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e1\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003c/td\\u003e\\n \\u003c/tr\\u003e\\n \\u003c/tbody\\u003e\\n\\u003c/table\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cbr\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003ctable border=\\\"1\\\" cellspacing=\\\"0\\\" cellpadding=\\\"0\\\" align=\\\"\\\" width=\\\"100%\\\"\\u003e\\n \\u003ctbody\\u003e\\n \\u003ctr\\u003e\\n \\u003ctd valign=\\\"top\\\" style=\\\"width: 163px;\\\"\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cstrong\\u003eCluster\\u003c/strong\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003c/td\\u003e\\n \\u003ctd valign=\\\"top\\\" style=\\\"width: 54px;\\\"\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cstrong\\u003eFreq.\\u0026nbsp;\\u003c/strong\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003c/td\\u003e\\n \\u003ctd valign=\\\"top\\\" style=\\\"width: 60px;\\\"\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cstrong\\u003eRange\\u003c/strong\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003c/td\\u003e\\n \\u003c/tr\\u003e\\n \\u003ctr\\u003e\\n \\u003ctd valign=\\\"top\\\" style=\\\"width: 163px;\\\"\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003e\\u0026nbsp;\\u003c/em\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003eold growth\\u003c/em\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003eplant growth\\u003c/em\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003eplants growth\\u003c/em\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003epositive growth\\u003c/em\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003eprojected growth\\u003c/em\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003erapid growth\\u003c/em\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003espurring growth\\u003c/em\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003elong-term growth\\u003c/em\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003eindustrial growth\\u003c/em\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u0026nbsp;\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003c/td\\u003e\\n \\u003ctd valign=\\\"top\\\" style=\\\"width: 54px;\\\"\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u0026nbsp;\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e1\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e1\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e1\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e1\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e1\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e1\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e1\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e1\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e1\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003c/td\\u003e\\n \\u003ctd valign=\\\"top\\\" style=\\\"width: 60px;\\\"\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e\\u0026nbsp;\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e1\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e1\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e1\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e1\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e1\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e1\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e1\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e1\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003cp\\u003e1\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n \\u003c/td\\u003e\\n \\u003c/tr\\u003e\\n \\u003c/tbody\\u003e\\n\\u003c/table\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003eIn contexts where climate change and other factors are represented as impacting national economic growth, this growth is implicitly evaluated in a positive light. In the passage below, for instance, the clustering of qualifying lexical items (highlighted in bold) constructs a pattern of positive appraisal of economic growth.\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003eThese reforms include pricing scarcer water resources at an \\u003cstrong\\u003eappropriate\\u003c/strong\\u003e level, developing \\u003cstrong\\u003eefficient\\u003c/strong\\u003e water allocation mechanisms, such as a tradable quota system, and producing and publishing \\u003cstrong\\u003eaccurate\\u003c/strong\\u003e and \\u003cstrong\\u003edetailed\\u003c/strong\\u003e data on water resources and their use, the World Bank said in the report, which identifies resilience as a key element for Morocco\\u0026rsquo;s \\u003cstrong\\u003egrowth\\u003c/strong\\u003e and economic \\u003cstrong\\u003estability\\u003c/strong\\u003e\\u003c/em\\u003e [Text 186].\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003eThe positive connotations borne by these appraising items (Martin \\u0026amp; White, 2005) collectively trigger a favorable evaluation of economic growth. The clustering of lexical items \\u003cem\\u003eappropriate\\u003c/em\\u003e, \\u003cem\\u003eefficient\\u003c/em\\u003e, \\u003cem\\u003eaccurate\\u003c/em\\u003e, \\u003cem\\u003edetailed\\u003c/em\\u003e, and \\u003cem\\u003eresilience\\u003c/em\\u003e produces what Alexander (2009, p. 140) terms a \\u0026ldquo;positive cumulative effect.\\u0026rdquo; Although none of these words functions as a direct modifier of \\u003cem\\u003egrowth\\u003c/em\\u003e, their association with it generates an evaluative environment in which economic growth is positioned as desirable. These lexical items cognitively evoke images and emotions associated with order, precision, resilience, and stability; all values mapped onto the concept of economic growth. In Halliday\\u0026rsquo;s (2001) terms, these items carry \\u0026ldquo;positive affective loadings\\u0026rdquo; that reinforce the cultural assumption that growth is inherently beneficial.\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003eA similar evaluative mechanism is evident in the following passage. Here, the conjunction \\u003cem\\u003eor\\u003c/em\\u003e implies that \\u003cem\\u003eeconomic growth\\u003c/em\\u003e is synonymous with or an alternative to \\u003cem\\u003eeconomic recovery\\u003c/em\\u003e. Furthermore, the correlative conjunction \\u003cem\\u003enot only \\u0026hellip; but also\\u003c/em\\u003e establishes grammatical parallelism between the prosperity of the agricultural sector and the livelihood of citizens. Both syntactic structures function as appraisal resources: the sector is construed as prosperous, and this prosperity is directly linked to the welfare of society.\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003eAs agriculture represents a key sector in Morocco\\u0026rsquo;s economic \\u003cstrong\\u003egrowth\\u003c/strong\\u003e or \\u003cstrong\\u003erecovery\\u003c/strong\\u003e, the water shortage does not only threaten the \\u003cstrong\\u003eprosperity\\u003c/strong\\u003e of the sector but also the \\u003cstrong\\u003elivelihood\\u003c/strong\\u003e of citizens\\u003c/em\\u003e [Text 105].\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003eThis example reinforces the pattern whereby growth is imbued with positive value, positioned as both synonymous with recovery and instrumental to national well-being. Such constructions further entrench the ideological assumption that growth is inherently desirable and indispensable.\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003eBuilding on the previous discussion of cost\\u0026ndash;benefit framings, the prioritization of economic growth further illustrates the logic of growth in mainstream decision-making. In the extract above, for example, economic growth is equated with welfare, a central feature of what Haapanen and Tapio (2016) describe as \\u0026ldquo;growth as an ideology.\\u0026rdquo; This assumption has been widely critiqued (Victor, 2008; Jackson, 2009; Stibbe, 2015). Stibbe (2015) draws on several authors to challenge the reliance on GDP as a measure of national progress, emphasizing how it can be misleading. Such reliance fosters the cultural evaluation \\u003cem\\u003eeconomic growth is good\\u003c/em\\u003e, which, as Stibbe (2015, p. 89) notes:\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003ebecomes a standard way of evaluating an area of life, the original reasons for why it was established may be forgotten. An increase in GDP could be considered positive automatically because of the cultural evaluation rather than from consideration of what the increase actually represents in terms of improved wellbeing, equity and the preservation of the systems that support life.\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003eIn addition, the ideology of growth is frequently criticized for positioning economic growth as a prerequisite for addressing contemporary challenges, including environmental ones (Victor, 2008; Wanner, 2015). As discussed earlier, climate change is often framed as an economic problem with foreseeable short-term outcomes. This leads to climate action being represented less as an ecological imperative than as a series of economic measures designed primarily to sustain growth. This framing reflects a broader segregation of the economy from social and ecological realities, a central criticism of growth ideology (Victor, 2008). The assumption that the ecological crisis can be resolved by the very growth-oriented strategies that contributed to it has been described as \\u0026ldquo;pathological\\u0026rdquo; (Jackson, 2009). Such reasoning ignores the fundamental dependence of the economy on social and ecological systems\\u003c/p\\u003e\"},{\"header\":\"Conclusion\",\"content\":\"\\u003cp\\u003eDifferent frames foreground different actors (Stibbe, \\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR36\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e2015\\u003c/span\\u003e). Within the mainstream economy-based frame, investment forces and financial service providers emerge as central actors in mitigation narratives. As Hulme (\\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR16\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e2009\\u003c/span\\u003e) observes, \\u0026ldquo;Framing climate change as a failure of markets, for example, implies that it is market entrepreneurs, economists and businesses that need to take the lead in \\u0026lsquo;correcting\\u0026rsquo; the failure\\u0026rdquo; (p. 277). This perspective is exemplified in the Stern Report (2007), which characterizes climate change as \\u0026ldquo;the greatest market failure the world has ever seen.\\u0026rdquo; Building on this, the analysis identified the framings CLIMATE CHANGE COSTS MONEY, CLIMATE ACTION SAVES MONEY, and CLIMATE ACTION IS AN ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY. These framings operationalize the market-failure perspective by emphasizing the economic dimensions of climate change, particularly the costs and benefits of action versus inaction. Market-based solutions are thereby cast not only as corrective measures but also as business opportunities, which reflects the dominance of the neoliberal growth paradigm in both policy and public communication. In this way, the cost-benefit frame reinforces the idea that the economic imperative, minimizing loss and maximizing growth, constitutes a primary rationale for climate action.\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003eIt was noted that, when the broader socio-ecological implications of such climate policies are considered (see Mathez \\u0026amp; Loftus, \\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR25\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e2022\\u003c/span\\u003e; Haddad et al., \\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR13\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e2022\\u003c/span\\u003e; Ryser, \\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR29\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e2019\\u003c/span\\u003e; Cantoni \\u0026amp; Rignall, \\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR5\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e2019\\u003c/span\\u003e; Rignall, \\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR28\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e2016\\u003c/span\\u003e), the mainstream modernist discourse reproduced in Morocco appears to reinforce the ideology of reconciling economic growth with environmental policy. Within this discourse, \\u0026ldquo;protection of natural resources and social justice are subordinated to an increase in yields and profits\\u0026rdquo; (Methez \\u0026amp; Loftus, 2022, p. 18), while existing power relations are extended into new energy and climate governance structures.\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003eBy considering the political and social implications of major projects that form a key part of Morocco\\u0026rsquo;s climate mitigation policy, I sought to highlight the importance of situating the economics-based framing within its geopolitical context. Much of the climate policy debate in Morocco reproduces globally diffused paradigms such as \\u003cem\\u003egreen growth\\u003c/em\\u003e, \\u003cem\\u003egreen economy\\u003c/em\\u003e, and \\u003cem\\u003esustainable development\\u003c/em\\u003e, around which a wide range of contemporary social, political, and economic issues are organized. Issues of rural development, women\\u0026rsquo;s empowerment, participatory governance, and migration are embedded within the dominant green discourse, which provides audiences with interpretive frameworks aligned with the interests of prevailing power structures. In this sense, the power dynamics of this discourse are not neutral. They interact with existing hierarchies in ways that consolidate them and simultaneously offer promissory policy proposals that claim to address climate-related challenges through the \\u0026ldquo;green\\u0026rdquo; approach.\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003eThe rationale behind economic framings is that economic arguments are more accessible to the public than complex climate science and thus more effective at generating concern (Mildenberger \\u0026amp; Leiserowitz, \\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR26\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e2017\\u003c/span\\u003e; Bertolotti el, 2021). However, research \\u0026ldquo;suggests that the public\\u0026rsquo;s climate concerns are largely insensitive to economic conditions\\u0026rdquo; (Mildenberger \\u0026amp; Leiserowitz, \\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR26\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e2017\\u003c/span\\u003e, p. 18). In general, evidence on the effects of \\u003cem\\u003etopical\\u003c/em\\u003e frames (Sch\\u0026auml;fer and O\\u0026rsquo;Neill, \\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR30\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e2017\\u003c/span\\u003e) such as the economic frame on individuals\\u0026rsquo; concern and engagement is largely inconsistent (Bernauer \\u0026amp; McGrath, \\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR2\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e2016\\u003c/span\\u003e; Li and Su, \\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR22\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e2018\\u003c/span\\u003e).\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003eThe effects of communicating the economic consequences of climate change and related policies on environmental concern has been the subject of an increasing number of studies (Kahn and Kotchen, \\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR19\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e2011\\u003c/span\\u003e; Mildenberger and Leiserowitz, \\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR26\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e2017\\u003c/span\\u003e; Bertolotti et al., \\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR3\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e2021\\u003c/span\\u003e; Scruggs and Benegal, \\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR31\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e2012\\u003c/span\\u003e). Kahn and Kotchen (\\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR19\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e2011\\u003c/span\\u003e) for instance found that increase in unemployment rates is associated with increases in skepticism and denial of climate change during the 2008 recession. This was observed in the decrease of internet searches for \\u0026lsquo;global warming\\u0026rsquo;. Higher unemployment rates are also associated with low support for climate mitigation policies and decrease in climate beliefs (Scruggs and Benegal, \\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR31\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e2012\\u003c/span\\u003e). The authors speculate that the mechanism underlying their results relate to how people are more likely to focus on day-to-day short-term \\u0026ldquo;threats\\u0026rdquo; such as losing one\\u0026rsquo;s job than the more abstract uncertain threats of climate change. This behavior, they argue, is consistent with Maslow\\u0026rsquo;s theory of hierarchy of needs (1954). It is also consistent with the argument from political science that support for more liberal policies and the prioritization of environmental policymaking increases during favorable economic conditions (Durr, 1993 in Kahn and Kotchen, \\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR19\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e2011\\u003c/span\\u003e; Mildenberger and Leiserowitz, \\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR26\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e2017\\u003c/span\\u003e).\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003eFinally, this paper argues that the Moroccan case illustrates how climate discourse reproduces neoliberal economic priorities under the guise of sustainability, which reinforces the need for more critical examination of the ideological implications of climate framing in media communication in the Global South.\\u003c/p\\u003e\"},{\"header\":\"Declarations\",\"content\":\"\\u003ch2\\u003eAuthor Contribution\\u003c/h2\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003eA.E. conceived the study, collected and compiled the corpus, conducted the analysis, and wrote the manuscript. All aspects of the work were completed by A.E.\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003ch2\\u003eData Availability\\u003c/h2\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003eThe author confirms that the data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article and its supplementary materials which can be accessed through this [hyperlink](https:/drive.google.com/drive/folders/1X1gnblAk0_-NV3pEDcKp1D8CP0R2CLXf) .\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003ch2\\u003eEthics declaration\\u003c/h2\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003eNot applicable\\u003c/p\\u003e\"},{\"header\":\"References\",\"content\":\"\\u003col\\u003e\\n\\u003cli\\u003eAlexander, R. (2009). Framing discourse on the environment: A critical discourse approach. New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203890615\\u003c/li\\u003e\\n\\u003cli\\u003eBernauer, T., McGrath, L. Simple reframing unlikely to boost public support for climate policy. \\u003cem\\u003eNature Clim Change\\u003c/em\\u003e \\u003cstrong\\u003e6\\u003c/strong\\u003e, 680\\u0026ndash;683 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2948\\u003c/li\\u003e\\n\\u003cli\\u003eBertolotti, M., Catellani, P., \\u0026amp; Nelson, T. (2021). Framing Messages on the Economic Impact of Climate Change Policies: Effects on Climate Believers and Climate Skeptics. \\u003cem\\u003eEnvironmental Communication\\u003c/em\\u003e, \\u003cem\\u003e15\\u003c/em\\u003e(6), 715\\u0026ndash;730. https://doi.org/10.1080/17524032.2021.1890175\\u003c/li\\u003e\\n\\u003cli\\u003eBl\\u0026uuml;hdorn, I., \\u0026amp; Welsh, I. (2007). Eco-politics beyond the paradigm of sustainability: A conceptual framework and research agenda. \\u003cem\\u003eEnvironmental Politics\\u003c/em\\u003e, \\u003cem\\u003e16\\u003c/em\\u003e(2), 185\\u0026ndash;205. https://doi.org/10.1080/09644010701211650\\u003c/li\\u003e\\n\\u003cli\\u003eCantoni, R., \\u0026amp; Rignall, K. (2019). Kingdom of the Sun: a critical, multiscalar analysis of Morocco\\u0026rsquo;s solar energy strategy. Energy Research \\u0026amp; Social Science, 51, 20-31. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2018.12.012\\u003c/li\\u003e\\n\\u003cli\\u003eChawla, S. (2001). Linguistic and philosophical roots of our environmental crisis, in A. Fill and P. M\\u0026uuml;hlh\\u0026auml;usler (eds) \\u003cem\\u003eThe ecolinguistics reader: language, ecology, and environment\\u003c/em\\u003e. London: Continuum, pp. 115\\u0026ndash;123.\\u003c/li\\u003e\\n\\u003cli\\u003eEntman, R.M. (1993). 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Harvard University Press.\\u003c/li\\u003e\\n\\u003cli\\u003eHaapanen, L., \\u0026amp; Tapio, P. (2016). Economic growth as phenomenon, institution and ideology: a qualitative content analysis of the 21st century growth critique. \\u003cem\\u003eJournal of Cleaner Production\\u003c/em\\u003e, \\u003cem\\u003e112\\u003c/em\\u003e, 3492-3503. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2015.10.024\\u003c/li\\u003e\\n\\u003cli\\u003eHaddad, C., G\\u0026uuml;nay, C., Gharib, S., \\u0026amp; Komendantova, N. (2022). Imagined inclusions into a \\u0026lsquo;green modernisation\\u0026rsquo;: local politics and global visions of Morocco\\u0026rsquo;s renewable energy transition. \\u003cem\\u003eThird World Quarterly\\u003c/em\\u003e, \\u003cem\\u003e43\\u003c/em\\u003e(2), 393\\u0026ndash;413. https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2021.2014315\\u003c/li\\u003e\\n\\u003cli\\u003eHalliday, M.A.K. (2001 [1990]). New ways of meaning: The challenge to applied linguistics. In Alwin Fill \\u0026amp; Peter M\\u0026uuml;hlh\\u0026auml;usler (eds.), The ecolinguistics reader: Language, ecology and environment, 175\\u0026ndash;202. London: Continuum.\\u003c/li\\u003e\\n\\u003cli\\u003eHampicke, U. (2011). Climate change economics and discounted utilitarianism. Ecological Economics, 72, 45-52. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2011.08.028\\u003c/li\\u003e\\n\\u003cli\\u003eHulme, M. (2009). Why we disagree about climate change: Understanding controversy, inaction and opportunity. Cambridge University Press.\\u003c/li\\u003e\\n\\u003cli\\u003eJackson, T. (2009). Prosperity without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781849774338\\u003c/li\\u003e\\n\\u003cli\\u003eJ\\u0026auml;nicke, M. (2008). Ecological modernisation: new perspectives. \\u003cem\\u003eJournal of cleaner production\\u003c/em\\u003e, 16(5), 557-565. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2007.02.011\\u003c/li\\u003e\\n\\u003cli\\u003eKahn, M. E., \\u0026amp; Kotchen, M. J. (2011). Business cycle effects on concern about climate change: the chilling effect of recession. \\u003cem\\u003eClimate Change Economics\\u003c/em\\u003e, \\u003cem\\u003e2\\u003c/em\\u003e(03), 257-273. https://doi.org/10.1142/S2010007811000292\\u003c/li\\u003e\\n\\u003cli\\u003eLakoff, G. (2010). Why it Matters How We Frame the Environment. \\u003cem\\u003eEnvironmental Communication\\u003c/em\\u003e, \\u003cem\\u003e4\\u003c/em\\u003e(1), 70\\u0026ndash;81. https://doi.org/10.1080/17524030903529749\\u003c/li\\u003e\\n\\u003cli\\u003eLakoff, G. (2014). \\u003cem\\u003eThe all new don\\u0026apos;t think of an elephant!: Know your values and frame the debate\\u003c/em\\u003e. Chelsea Green Publishing.\\u003c/li\\u003e\\n\\u003cli\\u003eLi, N., \\u0026amp; Su, L. Y. F. (2018). Message framing and climate change communication: A meta- analytical review. \\u003cem\\u003eJournal of Applied Communications\\u003c/em\\u003e, 102(3), 4. https://doi.org/10.4148/1051-0834.2189\\u003c/li\\u003e\\n\\u003cli\\u003eMachin, A. (2019). Changing the story? The discourse of ecological modernisation in the European Union. In The Future of European Union Environmental Politics and Policy (pp. 22-41). Routledge.\\u003c/li\\u003e\\n\\u003cli\\u003eMartin, J. R., \\u0026amp; White, P. R. R. (2005). The language of evaluation (Vol. 2). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.\\u003c/li\\u003e\\n\\u003cli\\u003eMathez, A., \\u0026amp; Loftus, A. (2022). Endless modernisation: Power and knowledge in the Green Morocco Plan. \\u003cem\\u003eEnvironment and Planning E: Nature and Space\\u003c/em\\u003e, \\u003cem\\u003e6\\u003c/em\\u003e(1), 87-112. https://doi.org/10.1177/25148486221101541 \\u003c/li\\u003e\\n\\u003cli\\u003eMildenberger, M., \\u0026amp; Leiserowitz, A. (2017). Public opinion on climate change: Is there an economy\\u0026ndash;environment tradeoff? \\u003cem\\u003eEnvironmental Politics\\u003c/em\\u003e, \\u003cem\\u003e26\\u003c/em\\u003e(5), 801\\u0026ndash;824. https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2017.1322275\\u003c/li\\u003e\\n\\u003cli\\u003eNerlich, B., \\u0026amp; Koteyko, N. (2009). Compounds, creativity and complexity in climate change communication: The case of \\u0026lsquo;carbon indulgences\\u0026rsquo;. \\u003cem\\u003eGlobal Environmental Change\\u003c/em\\u003e, 19(3), 345-353. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2009.03.001\\u003c/li\\u003e\\n\\u003cli\\u003eRignall, K. E. (2016). Solar power, state power, and the politics of energy transition in pre Saharan Morocco. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 48(3), 540- 557. https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X15619176\\u003c/li\\u003e\\n\\u003cli\\u003eRyser, S. (2019). The anti-politics machine of green energy development: the Moroccan solar project in Ouarzazate and its impact on gendered local communities. Land, 8(6), 100. https://doi.org/10.3390/land8060100\\u003c/li\\u003e\\n\\u003cli\\u003eSch\\u0026auml;fer, M. S., \\u0026amp; O\\u0026rsquo;Neill, S. (2017). Frame Analysis in Climate Change Communication: Approaches for Assessing Journalists\\u0026rsquo; Minds, Online Communication and Media Portrayals. In M. Nisbet, S. Ho, E. Markowitz, S. O\\u0026rsquo;Neill, M. S. Sch\\u0026auml;fer, \\u0026amp; J. Thaker (Eds.), (p. n/a). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780190228620.013.48\\u003c/li\\u003e\\n\\u003cli\\u003eScruggs, L., \\u0026amp; Benegal, S. (2012). Declining public concern about climate change: Can we blame the great recession?. \\u003cem\\u003eGlobal environmental change\\u003c/em\\u003e, \\u003cem\\u003e22\\u003c/em\\u003e(2), 505-515. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2012.01.002\\u003c/li\\u003e\\n\\u003cli\\u003eShaw, C., \\u0026amp; Nerlich, B. (2015). Metaphor as a mechanism of global climate change governance: A study of international policies, 1992\\u0026ndash;2012. \\u003cem\\u003eEcological Economics\\u003c/em\\u003e, \\u003cem\\u003e109\\u003c/em\\u003e, 34\\u0026ndash;40. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2014.11.001\\u003c/li\\u003e\\n\\u003cli\\u003eStecula, D. A., \\u0026amp; Merkley, E. (2019). Framing climate change: Economics, ideology, and uncertainty in American news media content from 1988 to 2014. \\u003cem\\u003eFrontiers in Communication\\u003c/em\\u003e, 4, 6. https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2019.00006\\u003c/li\\u003e\\n\\u003cli\\u003eStern, N. H. (2007). The economics of climate change: the Stern review. Cambridge University press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511817434\\u003c/li\\u003e\\n\\u003cli\\u003eStibbe, A. (2013). An Ecolinguistic Approach To Critical Discourse Studies. \\u003cem\\u003eCritical Discourse Studies\\u003c/em\\u003e, \\u003cem\\u003e11\\u003c/em\\u003e(1), 117\\u0026ndash;128. https://doi.org/10.1080/17405904.2013.845789\\u003c/li\\u003e\\n\\u003cli\\u003eStibbe, A. (2015). \\u003cem\\u003eEcolinguistics: Language, ecology and the stories we live by.\\u003c/em\\u003e Routledge.\\u003c/li\\u003e\\n\\u003cli\\u003evan Leeuwen, T. (2008). Discourse and Practice: New Tools for Critical Discourse Analysis. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195323306.001.0001\\u003c/li\\u003e\\n\\u003cli\\u003eVictor, D. G. (2008). Climate accession deals: new strategies for taming growth of greenhouse gases in developing countries. Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements Discussion Paper, 18.\\u003c/li\\u003e\\n\\u003cli\\u003eWanner, T. (2014). The New \\u0026lsquo;Passive Revolution\\u0026rsquo; of the Green Economy and Growth Discourse: Maintaining the \\u0026lsquo;Sustainable Development\\u0026rsquo; of Neoliberal Capitalism. \\u003cem\\u003eNew Political Economy\\u003c/em\\u003e, \\u003cem\\u003e20\\u003c/em\\u003e(1), 21\\u0026ndash;41. https://doi.org/10.1080/13563467.2013.866081\\u003c/li\\u003e\\n\\u003c/ol\\u003e\"}],\"fulltextSource\":\"\",\"fullText\":\"\",\"funders\":[],\"hasAdminPriorityOnWorkflow\":false,\"hasManuscriptDocX\":true,\"hasOptedInToPreprint\":true,\"hasPassedJournalQc\":\"\",\"hasAnyPriority\":false,\"hideJournal\":true,\"highlight\":\"\",\"institution\":\"\",\"isAcceptedByJournal\":true,\"isAuthorSuppliedPdf\":false,\"isDeskRejected\":\"\",\"isHiddenFromSearch\":false,\"isInQc\":false,\"isInWorkflow\":false,\"isPdf\":false,\"isPdfUpToDate\":true,\"isWithdrawnOrRetracted\":false,\"journal\":{\"display\":true,\"email\":\"info@researchsquare.com\",\"identity\":\"researchsquare\",\"isNatureJournal\":false,\"hasQc\":true,\"allowDirectSubmit\":true,\"externalIdentity\":\"\",\"sideBox\":\"\",\"snPcode\":\"\",\"submissionUrl\":\"/submission\",\"title\":\"Research Square\",\"twitterHandle\":\"researchsquare\",\"acdcEnabled\":true,\"dfaEnabled\":false,\"editorialSystem\":\"\",\"reportingPortfolio\":\"\",\"inReviewEnabled\":false,\"inReviewRevisionsEnabled\":true},\"keywords\":\"climate change communication, ideology of growth, ecolinguistics, framing\",\"lastPublishedDoi\":\"10.21203/rs.3.rs-7704015/v1\",\"lastPublishedDoiUrl\":\"https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-7704015/v1\",\"license\":{\"name\":\"CC BY 4.0\",\"url\":\"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/\"},\"manuscriptAbstract\":\"\\u003cp\\u003eThis study adopts an ecolinguistic approach to critical discourse analysis to examine how Moroccan online news outlets frame climate change. Drawing on a corpus of 195 articles (2011\\u0026ndash;2022), the analysis combines corpus linguistics with cognitive and ecolinguistic frameworks to uncover dominant linguistic patterns. Quantitative mapping of salient lexis and collocations highlights the prevalence of economic vocabulary, while qualitative interpretation traces how these linguistic triggers activate specific frames. Findings reveal four recurring framings: CLIMATE CHANGE IS AN ECONOMIC PROBLEM, CLIMATE CHANGE COSTS MONEY, CLIMATE ACTION SAVES MONEY, and CLIMATE ACTION IS AN ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY which collectively constitute a dominant economics-based frame. This frame foregrounds agri-business, green energy, and investment as central to Morocco\\u0026rsquo;s climate response, thus aligning with broader narratives of ecological modernization and green growth. While these framings legitimize large-scale projects and policy agendas by emphasizing the cost\\u0026ndash;benefit logic, they simultaneously risk subordinating ecological and social concerns to the ideology of perpetual growth and the myth of decoupling economic growth from environmental pressures. The paper argues that the Moroccan case illustrates how climate discourse reproduces neoliberal economic priorities under the guise of sustainability, which reinforces the need for more critical examination of the ideological implications of climate framing in media communication in the Global South.\\u003c/p\\u003e\",\"manuscriptTitle\":\"Between economic failure and success: a corpus-assisted eco-critical analysis of climate change framing in Moroccan news\",\"msid\":\"\",\"msnumber\":\"\",\"nonDraftVersions\":[{\"code\":1,\"date\":\"2025-10-13 13:29:36\",\"doi\":\"10.21203/rs.3.rs-7704015/v1\",\"editorialEvents\":[{\"type\":\"communityComments\",\"content\":0}],\"status\":\"published\",\"journal\":{\"display\":true,\"email\":\"info@researchsquare.com\",\"identity\":\"researchsquare\",\"isNatureJournal\":false,\"hasQc\":true,\"allowDirectSubmit\":true,\"externalIdentity\":\"\",\"sideBox\":\"\",\"snPcode\":\"\",\"submissionUrl\":\"/submission\",\"title\":\"Research Square\",\"twitterHandle\":\"researchsquare\",\"acdcEnabled\":true,\"dfaEnabled\":false,\"editorialSystem\":\"\",\"reportingPortfolio\":\"\",\"inReviewEnabled\":false,\"inReviewRevisionsEnabled\":true}}],\"origin\":\"\",\"ownerIdentity\":\"b7ba281a-75a1-48aa-98c2-fa66df8e40a3\",\"owner\":[],\"postedDate\":\"October 13th, 2025\",\"published\":true,\"recentEditorialEvents\":[],\"rejectedJournal\":[],\"revision\":\"\",\"amendment\":\"\",\"status\":\"posted\",\"subjectAreas\":[],\"tags\":[],\"updatedAt\":\"2026-01-05T15:59:25+00:00\",\"versionOfRecord\":{\"articleIdentity\":\"rs-7704015\",\"link\":\"https://doi.org/10.1007/s41701-025-00222-4\",\"journal\":{\"identity\":\"corpus-pragmatics\",\"isVorOnly\":false,\"title\":\"Corpus Pragmatics\"},\"publishedOn\":\"2025-12-29 15:57:15\",\"publishedOnDateReadable\":\"December 29th, 2025\"},\"versionCreatedAt\":\"2025-10-13 13:29:36\",\"video\":\"\",\"vorDoi\":\"10.1007/s41701-025-00222-4\",\"vorDoiUrl\":\"https://doi.org/10.1007/s41701-025-00222-4\",\"workflowStages\":[]},\"version\":\"v1\",\"identity\":\"rs-7704015\",\"journalConfig\":\"researchsquare\"},\"__N_SSP\":true},\"page\":\"/article/[identity]/[[...version]]\",\"query\":{\"redirect\":\"/article/rs-7704015\",\"identity\":\"rs-7704015\",\"version\":[\"v1\"]},\"buildId\":\"8U1c8b4HqxoKbykW_rLl7\",\"isFallback\":false,\"isExperimentalCompile\":false,\"dynamicIds\":[84888],\"gssp\":true,\"scriptLoader\":[]}","source_license":"CC-BY-4.0","license_restricted":false}