The Minister of International Cooperation, H.E. Dr. Rania A. Al-Mashat, Participates in a Discussion Session During COP28 on Aligning Climate Finance and Development with Humanitarian Needs with the participation of the Regional Director of the IFAD, the Executive Director of the World Food Programme, the Vice President of the World Bank, the Green Climate Fund, and the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
● Al-Mashat: Despite the continuous increase in climate financing, it has not reached the required level, and there is a large gap between financing mitigation and adaptation projects.
● The need to reach a fair and resilient path to low-carbon development through just financing.
● The Sharm El Sheikh Guidebook for Just Financing provides practical action to enhance the fairness of climate finance, taking into account countries’ historical responsibility.
● The guidebook calls for practical action to straighten the structure of global climate finance and sets out solutions to stimulate private investment and encourage innovative financing instruments
During the activities of the United Nations Climate Conference COP28, the Minister of International Cooperation, H.E. Dr. Rania A. Al-Mashat, participated in a discussion session co-organized by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, and the World Bank Group, on “Aligning Development and Climate finance with Humanitarian Needs,” where the session explored how to align development, humanitarian and climate financing, to effectively enhance resilience to climate shocks, and also discussed the role of national and country platforms.
The session was moderated by Dina Saleh, Regional Director of the IFAD, and attended by Cindy McCain, Executive Director of the World Food Programme (WFP), Jürgen Voegele, Vice President for Sustainable Development at the World Bank, Henry González, Vice President Executive Director of the Green Climate Fund, Eugene Williamson, CEO of BESCO Africa, Middle East and South Asia, and Martin Griffith, Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
In her speech, Al-Mashat said that it is important to strengthen the alignment between climate financing, development financing, and humanitarian needs by putting citizens at the top of the agenda, explaining that confronting climate change has become more urgent than ever before and has become an essential part of The 2030 SDGs, in light of their negative repercussions on the planet.
H.E. added that despite the continuous increase in the level of climate financing globally, it has not reached the levels that put it on the right track, and there is also an imbalance in directing financing between mitigation and adaptation, and projects to adapt to climate change reach only about 5% of the required financing, which confirms the need to focus on this matter and achieving balance.
H.E. also pointed out the importance of increasing water resources and achieving fair distribution at the level of geographical regions and sectors, which paves the way towards moving to a fair and flexible path to reach low-carbon development, through just financing, which includes addressing the issues of adding climate financing to current and future development financing and ensuring compatibility in global market tools with the requirements of developing countries.
Al-Mashat continued, “While we are in the 28th session of the climate conference, we must point out that Egypt hosted the 27th edition of the conference, as it was an implementation conference during which Egypt’s presidency of the climate conference worked with the international community to move from pledges to implementation, and against the backdrop of that, two major initiatives were launched by the Ministry of International Cooperation. In coordination with national bodies, the first of which is the Sharm El-Sheikh Guidebook for Just Financing, and the second is the NWFE program, the link between water, food, and energy projects.”
H.E. explained that the Guidebook provides a practical guide to increasing climate investments based on the idea of justice in all aspects of finance, achieves a balance between mitigation and adaptation, ensures equal access to finance in quality and quantity, and sets a definition of fair finance as finance that takes into account countries' historical responsibilities for climate change, while ensuring access to fair and quantitative climate financing that supports flexible development paths, without leaving anyone behind in development.
H.E. noted that the guide includes 12 principles to achieve equitable access to climate financing, as these principles serve as a guiding framework to stimulate partnerships between all relevant parties, especially the public and private sectors, to advance the transition process towards a sustainable green economy. The concept of equitable finance and its basic principles represent a call for practical action towards assessing the current global climate finance structure, and to include reforms emerging from these principles, which serve as a framework to guide innovative climate finance tools. The guide also identifies challenges to private investments and proposes solutions to overcome them, including innovative financing models, blended financing, resilience credit and carbon.
Al-Mashat touched on cooperation with the IFAD, through the Supreme Committee for the Resilience Credit Evaluation Initiative, with the participation of concerned parties, with the aim of measuring flexibility and investing its benefits in order to attract and stimulate private sector investments, stressing that resilience has become an important concept that must be sought. Countries to increase, measure and encourage their investment in it.
In a related context, Al-Mashat stressed that the NWFE program comes as a practical application of the principles and recommendations of the Sharm El-Sheikh Guidebook for Just Financing,” as it aims to accelerate the climate action agenda and enhance joint action that mobilize climate finance and private investments to support the transition to a green economy, and enhance integration between development efforts and climate action through priority, citizen-focused and implementable projects, under the umbrella of the National Climate Change Strategy.
Al-Mashat also discussed the ongoing efforts with the United Nations through the United Nations Technology and Innovation Team to explore innovation-based projects, especially those that intersect between climate action and digital transformation through joint work between various national bodies and international agencies, pointing also to the international Climatech Run competition. Which was launched during the last climate conference and continues this year to support emerging technology companies in the field of climate action.
H.E. pointed out the Egyptian state's keenness to enhance the exchange of experiences, benefit from successful practices, and support the process of exchanging knowledge with other countries to support climate action efforts.
Link to the full discussion session
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osAq1l9uWhM
To download the follow-up report for the NWFE program
https://moic.gov.eg/ar/news/1218
Link to the joint final statement of 20 development partners on the NWFE program
https://moic.gov.eg/ar/news/1221
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