Egypt’s Minister of Environment Yasmine Fouad participated on Tuesday in the United Nations Food Systems Summit under the title “Transferring Food Systems and Fighting Climate Change”.
During her speech, Fouad stressed the need to put food security at the heart of climate change mitigation processes, given the impact of climate change on all countries, whether developing or developed.
The minister explained that food production is the most affected sector by the effects of climate change, whether in poor or rich societies, as climate change affects the soil and agricultural land and threatens food and food security at the world level.
She further noted that the Paris Agreement has set a priority to protect food security and eradicate hunger.
Fouad also stressed the need to take innovative measures to deal with food security in the context of facing the effects of climate change, including providing enough space to discuss food production and agriculture processes, sustainable management of land and biodiversity, and focusing on smart farming systems or agriculture from an adaptation perspective, and in conjunction with discussions on the issue of climate change.
Furthermore, the Minister of Environment pointed to President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi’s initiative launched during Egypt’s presidency of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP14) in 2018.
The presidential initiative called for a synergistic approach to deal with biodiversity loss, land degradation and climate change together through the integration of the three Rio environmental conventions
The three Rio conventions are the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
