Egypt’s Minister of Environment Yasmine Fouad has reviewed in a meeting with a delegation of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Egypt’s efforts in the climate sector, especially with the launch of the National Climate Change Strategy 2050, and Egypt’s hosting of the COP27 climate conference.
The mission representatives expressed aspiration to learn about Egypt’s vision for implementing the climate change strategy, updating the national contributions strategy, and mechanisms to direct Egypt towards green investment and the involvement of the private sector.
During the meeting, Fouad stressed that Egypt’s experience in working on the first offering of green bonds through the Ministry of Finance was distinguished, especially in working on selecting programs and projects that will be implemented within the framework of these bonds and ensuring that they take into account the climate dimension of adaptation and mitigation.
The minister pointed out that Egypt’s vision in green financing and investment is based on advancing the process of greening national projects, especially in light of critical global economic and political conditions, and working with the Ministry of Finance to issue the second offering of green bonds.
Egypt’s vision also includes adopting better practices to support the Egyptian banking sector to encourage the adoption of climate finance projects, as work is currently underway on the climate finance system project with the aim of changing the convictions of local banks towards financing environment and climate projects in particular, training them and building their capacities on the best ways to finance climate projects.
Fouad further explained that Egypt has completed updating the national contributions strategy, which includes a set of quantitative goals and raises the ambition to reduce greenhouse emissions and adapt to 2030, according to what was agreed upon in Paris Agreement, “but it is linked to providing the necessary funding sources to achieve these goals, as their implementation requires $264bn, $196bn of them are dedicated for mitigation and $50bn for adaptation measures.
The minister added that natural gas is one of the stages of the transition towards low-carbon fuels and the trend towards increasing the proportion of renewable energy in the energy mix, within the national climate change strategy 2050, whether in the field of energy or transportation.
With regard to the COP27, Fouad stressed Egypt’s keenness, during its presidency of the conference, to achieve balance in all negotiation tracks and make progress in the issues of mitigation, adaptation, losses and damages and financing, and as an implementation conference, Egypt was keen to implement a number of substantive days during the conference to discuss priority issues.
