Dr. Mahmoud Mohieldin, UN Climate Change High Level Champion for Egypt and UN Special Envoy on Financing 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, said that the results of the first Global Stocktake (GST), that will be announced during COP28, should represent a working document for climate action in the coming period.
This came during his participation in the session of “COP28 and UNFCCC High level dialogue on GST: Enhancing climate action and support for Africa” within the events of Africa Climate Summit (ACS) held in Nairobi, Kenya.
Mohieldin stressed that the assessment process is not limited to governments, but includes all actors, and will show everyone the positives and the negatives what have been done regarding climate action in the past years.
Mohieldin stated that COP26 in Glasgow, COP27 in Sharm El Sheikh, and even COP28 in Dubai, sought to confirm the holistic approach that focuses on all aspects of climate action in an integrated way, explaining that in the previous years, climate action was reduced to emission reduction activities, especially with regard to carbon and its pricing, while adaptation activities and dealing with the loss and damage resulting from climate change have been compromised.
“COP27 created a practical mechanism to implement adaptation activities by state and non-state actors by launching the Sharm El Sheikh Adaptation Agenda, which includes five main areas of action: agriculture and food, water and nature, coasts and oceans, human settlements, and infrastructure. The conference also witnessed the launch of the Loss and Damage Fund.” Mohieldin said.
He explained that COP27 refuted the allegations about the separation of climate action and development action. The conference stressed that climate action is a development anction and that climate finance is a financing for development, and this principle has become a basis on which climate and development action is built in the coming period.
Mohieldin highlighted the Five Regional Roundtables Initiative launched by the Egyptian presidency of COP27 in cooperation with the regional economic commissions of the UN and HLCs with the aim of strengthening the regional dimension of climate action, explaining that the initiative has succeeded in finding regional platforms for climate action that increasingly contribute to finding solutions and facing the challenges of climate and development action.
He said that GST must shed the light on the successful models of national effort in implementing NDCs, and the role of governments, private sector and civil society in the implementation of these contributions, adding that at the local level, Egypt presented a model for the localization of climate and development action through the National Initiative for Smart Green Projects, which drew an investment map in all Egyptian cities and villages.
The climate champion noted that climate finance faces many challenges, which requires more innovative solutions such as establishing carbon markets that suit the economies of countries and help them achieve their development and climate goals, with setting standards in line with external standards of carbon trade.
Mohieldin participated in another session entitled “Winning on Climate Action in Africa: Unlocking Finance for City-Scale Transformation Through Multi-Level Governance”, which attended by Alessandra Scobbi, Head of Unit for Climate Finance at DG CLIMA, Philipp Knill, Director at the Directorate Afrika II of German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development, Michal MIynár, Deputy Executive Director of UN-Habitat, Shahbano Tirmizi, Senior Advisor for International Programs and Partnerships for
COP28, Yunus Arikan, Director at ICLEI, and AILUN YANG, Head of International Programs of Climate and Environment at Bloomberg Philanthropies.
During the session, Mohieldin stated that taxes, local projects and activities are important sources of financing urban transformation, explaining that the process of urban transformation, improving services and livelihoods, providing sources of food, water and energy requires localizing climate and development action.
Mohieldin confirmed the importance of adopting a holistic climate and development action approach in order to make urban transformation, as adaptation activities that are closely linked to urban transformation activities do not receive fair and adequate finance compared to mitigation activities, explaining that in Africa, for example, adaptation activities receive finance of about $11 billion, while some statistics confirm the need for ten times this amount to implement adaptation activities.
He pointed out the importance of the participation of all actors including governments, private sector, financing institutions and civil society in mobilizing finance from its various sources to implement the urban transformation process, adding that Sharm El Sheikh Adaptation Agenda represents an action program to implement activities related to agriculture, food, water, infrastructure and human settlements and, thus, implement the urban transformation process.
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