Mohieldin: It Is Necessary to Link Climate Finance with SDGs

Dr. Mahmoud Mohieldin, UN High-Level Climate Change Champion for Egypt and UN Special Envoy on Financing the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, stressed the need to link the sustainable development plans with climate finance, especially since the majority of climate finance still depends on countries’ budgets, including low-income countries through the mobilization of national resources.

This came during his speech at the roundtable hosted by Cairo for a high-level group of experts concerned with preparing a report on climate finance. The report and meeting are commissioned by the Egyptian and British presidencies of the COP27 and COP26 climate conferences, in the presence of Ambassador Wael Abul-Magd, a Special Representative of the COP27 President and representatives of a number of international financial and economic institutions. The session discussed the draft report prepared by the group.

Mohieldin stressed the need to strengthen the role of the private sector and multilateral development banks, praising the concessional financing policies of the International Development Agency (IDA)as one of the most effective mechanisms for providing financing. He added that the scope of these concessional policies can be expanded through multilateral development banks.

The climate champion also highlighted the importance of activating innovative financing methods, such as debt swaps for investment in nature, in addition to supporting carbon markets.

During the session, Ambassador Wael Abul-Magd, a Special Representative of the President of the COP27 Conference, stressed the need to attract trillions of dollars to support climate finance, taking into account the priorities of developing countries that suffer from the negative effects of climate change.

On their part, Dr. Vera Snungwe and Dr. Nick Stern, Chairs of the Independent High-level Expert Group on Climate Finance, thanked the Egyptian COP27 Presidency for hosting the meeting and the Climate Champions for the support of the work of the group.

The chairs of the meeting explained that the report is monitoring the most prominent gaps related to climate financing, identifying their causes and proposing recommendations for mobilizing the necessary financing to support climate action.

They also stressed the vital role of multilateral development banks, and development finance institutions as a whole, in participating strongly not only in creating conditions for investment but also in action to manage, reduce and share risks.

The two chairs of the group indicated their keenness to include the observations and suggestions that were put forward during today's meeting in order to develop the draft report

The climate champion noted that the group is to meet today the prime minister, in the presence of a number of ministers, in the framework of preparations for the upcoming climate summit to be held in Sharm El-Sheikh next November.