Mahmoud Mohieldin, UN Climate Change High Level Champion for Egypt and UN Special Envoy on Financing 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, participated in the “High-level Interactive Seminar: Key Achievements of the G20 Indonesian Presidency (2022): The Case of Energy Transition and Climate”, within the events of the Annual Meeting of IsDB.
The seminar also included Mohamed Al-Jadaan, Saudi Arabia’s Minister of Finance; Sri Mulyani Indrawati, Indonesia’s Minister of Finance and IsDB Governor; and Mohamed Al Jasser, Chairman of IsDBG.
He pointed out the support of G20 to the decisions of COP27, especially those relating to establishing Loss and Damage Fund and launching Sharm El Sheikh Adaptation Agenda that covers five main areas of work: food and agriculture, water and nature, coasts and oceans, human settlements, and infrastructure.
He cleared that the world suffered for long years from the reductive approach of dealing with sustainable development fields, but it currently witnesses a strong approval on what Egypt called for through its presidency of COP27, which is adopting a holistic approach that gathers all climate action measures that have been stipulated by Paris Agreement, and put them all in a more comprehensive framework that aims to achieve SDGs altogether.
He stressed the importance of dealing seriously with debt problems and activating debt reduction mechanisms especially for financing climate and development action, as well as activating innovative financing tools such as debt swaps for investment in nature and climate, and establishing carbon markets as an effective tool to mobilize funds for climate and development projects.
He also stressed the importance of enhancing private sector participation in financing and implementing development and climate action, pointing in this regard to some promising PPPs models in Egypt, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia.
“It’s necessary that international financing organizations adopt concessional financing policies that include low interest rates and long-term grace and repayment periods.” Mohieldin said.
The climate champion explained that mitigation, adaptation and dealing with loss and damage caused by climate change are the three lines of defense against the phenomenon, stressing that enhancing these lines necessarily requires adopting the holistic approach of climate action and the actual implementation of climate projects that Egypt called for through its presidency of COP27.
In the end of his participation, Mohieldin highlighted the three keys of climate and development action success: providing fair and sufficient funding, applying technological solutions and sharing information, and thoughts and behaviors change on the level of all actors in a way that ensures achieving the desired results of climate and development action.
