Mohieldin: COP27 Prepares Criteria Paper for Climate Public, Private Finance

Dr Mahmoud Mohieldin, UN Climate Change High Level Champion for Egypt and UN Special Envoy on Financing 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, said that it is necessary to put the results and outcomes of the international reports about the developed countries commitment to climate finance in consideration to push these countries toward fulfilling their pledges to finance climate action in the developing countries and emerging markets.

His remarks came during his participation via video in the Benha University's first annual conference of humanities postgraduate studies, with the participation of Dr Gamal Sousa, the university president, and a number of the university academics and officials.

Mohieldin stated that COP27 that will take place in Sharm El Sheikh next month is preparing a criteria paper for public and private climate action financing that helps managing finance and pour money into the most in need activities, sectors and countries, and pushing the developed countries toward fulfilling their related pledges.

Mohieldin highlighted mechanisms of mobilizing and accelerating climate action financing, with the fulfilling of Copenhagen conference pledge to finance climate action in the developing countries by 100$ billions annually in the front, saying that fulfilling this pledge will pave the way to fulfill other pledges and commitments despite the fact that if even being fulfilled it will not represent more than 3% of the required finance considering the big gap between the available and the required finance that estimated 2$ trillions.

He added that financing climate action mechanisms that COP27 focuses on includes also depending on investments instead of debt, scaling up the participation of the private sector, activating innovative finance tools and debt remanagement, establishing carbon markets, setting clear criteria for financing environmental and social activities to face green washing, and linking the public budgets to SDGs.

The climate champion said that the five regional forums initiative launched by Egypt presidency of COP27, UN regional economic commissions and HLCs aimed mainly to link between regional projects, investments and finance entities in unprecedented way, in order to find projects that may benefit from the 130$ trillions GFANZ finance and other sources of financing.

Mohieldin referred to the National Initiative for Smart Green Projects launched by Egypt, saying that it is an unprecedented initiative across all countries that hosted the previous COPs, and it aims to localize climate action and scaling up the participation of local actors such as governorates, municipalities, volunteer work entities, NGOs, universities and scientific research centers.

He explained that the local actors registered 6281 projects in a short time, the best 18 of them will be selected upon the criteria of compatibility with environmental and climate goals and making the most benefit of digitalization and technology development, beside 27 projects will be selected by governors (one for each governorate) to represent the governorate, declaring that the competition will held annually as it succeeded in setting an investment map across Egypt governorates and enhancing the culture of development and climate action.

Mohieldin mentioned the priorities of Egypt presidency of COP27, including adopting a climate action holistic approach that balances between mitigation and adaptation measures, addresses losses and damages, and mobilizes sufficient finances for climate activities, turning pledges and commitments into actual implementation, enhancing local and regional aspects of climate action to integrate with the global effort, and applying the previously mentioned mechanisms of financing climate action.