DUABI – As chair of the 27th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP27) last year, Egypt tried to integrate climate change with biodiversity and desertification, Minister of Environment Yassmine Fouad said.
Fouad made the remarks on Saturday while co-chairing a session on speeding up the implementation of the Enhancing Nature-based Solutions for an Accelerated Climate Transformation (ENACT) initiative, held as part the 28th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP 28), set for November 30 to December 12 in Dubai, UAE.
Fouad and German counterpart Steffi Lemke co-chaired the session at the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), an international organization working in the field of nature conservation and sustainable use of natural resources.
She said the international conventions on these problems, signed during the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, showed no interlinkage between them; therefore, there had been global calls for controlling environmental degradation and its adverse impacts on nature and sustainable development.
The session tackles the measures needed to achieve the goals of the initiative, topped by achieving integration between climate action, natural conservation, and strengthening climate resilience for at least 1 billion people, half of whom are women and girls, the minister said.
In partnership with Germany and the European Union, Egypt launched the ENACT at COP27 in Sharm El-Sheikh in December 2022. The ambitious global initiative seeks to coordinate global efforts to address climate change, land and ecosystem degradation, and biodiversity loss through Nature-based Solutions.
Canada, the European Union, Spain, Malawi, Norway, South Korea, Japan and Slovenia were also founding members of the partnership. Six new countries and a United Nations agency are also joining the ENACT Partnership this year.
