Egypt’s Minister of Environment Yasmine Fouad has addressed climate change topics at a preparatory meeting prior to the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) that will take place in November.
During the meeting, Fouad highlighted Egypt’s keenness to present visions and ideas on negotiating issues related to climate change. This is especially with regard to achieving a balance between mitigation and adaptation to the effects of the issue.
The minister’s remarks came during her speech at the preparatory ministerial meeting held by the UK, in its capacity as COP26 President.
The meeting was attended by ministers from over 50 countries, including Spain, China, Gabon, France, Australia, Denmark, and a group of Arab and African countries. It aimed to discuss ways to move forward on negotiating topics in preparation for the COP26 in Glasgow.
Fouad highlighted the need to reach a clear agreement that sets a specific definition of the global goal for adaptation, with the need to assess the collective progress made towards achieving this goal.
The minister also stressed the importance of having an agreement among countries on this definition.
Fouad said that there is an urgent need to clarify specific measures of the global goal for adaptation from data collection, reporting and monitoring, timetables, goals, and baselines.
This also includes work to measure the goal quantitatively and qualitatively in a nationally defined manner, with these indicators to be collected to measure the impact on the global goal.
She further added that the procedures should be reconsidered for adaptation projects that were not approved due to a lack of climate justification. This comes particularly in light of the clear impact of this on access to adaptation financing within the Green Climate Fund.
Fouad noted the need to provide clear guidelines to the Green Climate Fund on how to provide the needed funding in a rapid manner for the policies, projects, and programmes defined by the national action programmes.
This would see less complex procedures, alongside efforts to work on finding a concrete way towards allocating specific financial resources to implement the national adaptation plans.
