Egypt’s Minister of Environment and Ministerial Coordinator and Envoy of COP27, Yasmine Fouad, participated in a session on transformational climate action in agriculture and land in Egypt through the SCALA programme, at the UN pavilion as part of the activities of the Adaptation and Agriculture Day on the sidelines of the 27th UN Conference of the Parties (COP27) in Sharm El-Sheikh.
The seventh day of COP27 discussed adaptation as one of the most pressing topics for the whole world, and places food security at the heart of this challenge, and how all partners from governments, the private sector, UN agencies, development banks, civil society and entrepreneurs work in an integrated manner towards this goal.
She added that the Egyptian presidency of COP27 as an implementation conference, was keen, during its design for the substantive days of the conference and initiatives, to involve all parties, as it worked to reflect these days on the informal green zone to ensure that all voices are heard, from youth, women and civil society, university students and schools around the world.
Fouad explained that the session addressed a different angle of the SCALA programme “raising climate ambition in land uses and agriculture”, which is the financing of adaptation, which always faces challenges such as developing a specific definition of adaptation, how to assess, measure and finance adaptation, and collect the information and data required to measure it, noting its particular importance following the COP26 agreed to work on the global adaptation target, and the COP27 was keen to make progress on this goal in order to be able to reach agreement on it at the coming COP28.
The minister pointed out that Egypt was keen to present executive steps at the COP27, through the “FAST” Agriculture initiative, and to highlight the SCALA programme as a model for financing by providing the opportunity for countries to benefit from funding in developing their national adaptation plans, and areas of investment in these plans with the participation of the private sector.
Fouad further called for focusing on water and food issues in adaptation, as one of the urgent issues in 2022, and to consider the Egyptian experience in preparing a package of projects for the Energy, Food and Water nexus and presenting it as an implementation model for countries at COP27.
