Environment min. to participate in Montreal meeting on climate change

CAIRO - 13 Sep 2017: Minister of Environment Khaled Fahmy will participate in the ministerial meeting on climate change that will be held this week in Montreal in Canada.

The minister was invited by Canada’s minister of environment and climate change, China’s special representative for climate change affairs and EU commissioner for climate action and energy.

Inviting Egypt for such meeting comes within a limited number of invited ministers from developing countries in addition to the Chinese minister of Environment and climate change.

In a statement issued on Wednesday, Ministry of environment said that the meeting aims at discussing major points of contention to prepare for The UN Climate Change Conference that will take place in November in Bonn.

Fahmy will visit, on the fringe of the conference, Executive Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) to sign the host country agreement, a statement read.

Egypt was decided to host the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD/COP 14) in 2018 after negotiations held over the past months with the Secretariat in cooperation with Egypt’s foreign ministry, a statement noted.

The ministerial meeting will be followed by a meeting on the level of countries’ presidents that will be held on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly meetings in New York in the next week to discuss results of the ministerial meeting

As well, Fahmy will attend the World Economic Forum, which is held annually on the sidelines of the UN general assembly meetings.

Representatives from developed countries attend this forum to tackle important development and environmental issues, especially those related to climate change.

The forum is expected to discuss linking between sustainable development and climate change in addition to means to enable countries to commit to their obligations within the framework of the Paris agreement.

Egypt’s participation in such meetings, despite its chairmanship of the African Ministers of Environment of Gabon (AMCEN), affirms its vital role in the region regarding negotiations of the climate change at the Arab, African and Mediterranean levels.