Egypt's COP 27 president-designate asserts salience of funding for climate mitigation, adaptation in Africa

CAIRO – 2 August 2022: In a recorded speech at a roundtable on climate initiatives in Africa, Minister of Foreign Affairs Sameh Shokry, who is COP 27 president-designate, asserted the salience of securing the necessary funding to achieve mitigation and adaptation.

The minister had stated in several meetings before that Egypt's priorities in the summit will be the providion of climate financing to developing countries and encouraging developed states to fulfill their pledges on that front. 

In light of its presidency of COP27 that will take place in Sharm El Sheikh next November, COP27 Egyptian presidency announced Sunday the launching of an unprecedented initiative to enhance investments in different climate action sectors by putting climate projects, investors, companies, international financing entities, development banks and other stakeholders on one table with the aim of starting actual implementation of projects that help achieving climate action goals.

The Egyptian initiative includes holding five major regional roundtables. The first of them will take place on August 2-4 in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, which is the home of the UN regional economic committee for Africa. The second will be in Bangkok, the home of the UN regional economic committee for Asia-Pacific, on August 25th. The third will convene in Santiago, home of the UN regional economic committee for LAC, on September 1-2. The fourth will be held in Beirut, home of ESCWA, on September 15th, while the fifth will be in Geneva, home of UN regional economic committee for Europe, on September 20th. The outcomes of the five meetings will be announced at COP27.

UN Climate Change High-Level Champion Mahmoud Mohieldin commented that the initiative aims to discuss investment opportunities in the sectors of food, water, irrigation systems development, increasing agricultural productivity, new and renewable sources of energy, relevant infrastructure, and digital transformation in those sectors, in a way that helps in implementing climate projects on the ground and, therefore, achieving climate goals and providing job opportunities in the countries of the five regions.

Mohieldin stated that the first roundtable will be entitled "Towards COP27: African Regional Forum on Climate Initiatives to Finance Climate Action and the SDGs." It will have as high-level participants from Egypt the ministers of foreign affairs, environment, international cooperation, as well as EGX chief.

The forum includes many sessions that will discuss financial vehicles for just transition finance, upscaling investment in adaptation, green business matchmaking in Africa, and private sector networking for climate action.

The forum aims to catalyze climate finance and investment flows towards building climate resilience in Africa as well as fulfilling AU 2063 Agenda and 2030 SDGs. That is in addition to devising climate-oriented solutions that would earn Africa carbon credits, tackle key barriers precluding large scale debt swaps, enhance collaboration between public, private stakeholders and different countries to improve risk management.