Egypt’s Minister of State for Environment Affairs Yasmine Fouad and with Abdullah Nasir, Maldivian Minister of State for Environment, Climate Change and Technology on Monday signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on environment protection.
The two sides agreed on means to boost co-operation between Egypt and Maldives in preserving natural resources and achieving sustainable development to safeguard the rights of present and future generations.
This came on the sidelines of the 15th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP15) in Canada, which wrapped up yesterday.
Fouad said the memo was aimed to reduce environmental pollution and protect nature based on equality and mutual benefit through the exchange of expertise, information, skills and technology.
Co-operation will cover priority areas such as confronting the effects of climate change and integrating biodiversity objectives in development sectors, the minister said.
Meanwhile, a new deal to protect nature has been agreed at the UN biodiversity summit, COP15.
The “historic” plan will put 30 per cent of the planet under protection by the end of the decade.
There will also be targets for safeguarding vital ecosystems such as rainforests and wetlands.
The agreement was finalised in the early hours of yesterday in Montreal, Canada, the BBC reported.
The participants in the summit agreed on maintaining, enhancing and restoring ecosystems, including halting species extinction and maintaining genetic diversity of populations of wild animals.
They also agreed on sustainable use of biodiversity, essentially to ensure that species and habitats can provide the services for humanity, such as food and clean water, without being destroyed, according to Reuters.
The agreement included ensuring that the benefits of resources from nature, like medicines that come from plants, are shared fairly and equally and that indigenous peoples’ rights are protected, in addition to putting resources into biodiversity: Ensuring that money and conservation efforts get to where they are needed, particularly the poorest and most biodiverse countries.
Sue Lieberman of the Wildlife Conservation Society told media that the agreement was a compromise, and although it had several good and hard-fought elements, it could have gone further “to truly transform our relationship with nature and stop our destruction of ecosystems, habitats and species”.
The agreement follows days of intense negotiations. On Saturday, ministers made impassioned speeches about the need to agree on clear goals to put nature on a path to recovery by the end of the decade.
“Nature is our ship. We must ensure it stays afloat,” said EU Commissioner for Environment, Oceans and Fisheries, Virginijus Sinkevicius.
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