CLIMATE change remains a most serious existentialist threat to the world especially given the continuing aggravation of the phenomenon’s consequences, so President Abdel Fattah El Sisi stressed in a video-conferenced statement he delivered to the High-level Roundtable on Climate Change that Egypt, the incoming president of the world climate summit (COP27), co-convened with the United Nations last Wednesday as part of the activities of the UN General Assembly’s 77th session. The timing of the statement served as reminder of the urgency of invigorating climate action when countries of the world gather in Sharm el-Sheikh a few weeks from now for the world climate summit that Egypt will host and chair. Citing the recent wave of heavy floods, forest fires and other manifestations of extreme weather conditions that wreaked havoc across continents, President Sisi suggested three areas for the aspired acceleration of climate action: implementing climate promises especially regarding the reduction of emissions, enhancing capacity-building in the pursuance of climate adaptation programmes and promoting climate action financing to developing countries. “As an international community, we fully know the extent of the burden that developing and least-developed countries shoulder in seeking to honour their climate commitments while concomitantly maintaining their efforts to achieve development and eradicate poverty,” the Egyptian leader said in the statement.
Of relevance to this orientation was the emphasis that the roundtable participants placed on the centrality of a multilateral response to the climate crisis that ensures inclusivity and
transparency—admittedly two essential factors for guaranteeing the worthiness of multilateral action, especially when the subject matter involves the sharing of commitments and pledges. The joint Egypt-UN roundtable has therefore provided a valuable opportunity for world leaders to air their views and visions on the way ahead for international climate action. Again, the timing of the roundtable was both significant and useful, coming as it did following record high temperatures that struck many regions from the Far East to Africa and across the Atlantic from Europe to the Americas and the Caribbean, and before convening the COP27 summit, scheduled for Sharm el-Sheikh on November 7-8.
Seizing of such a time opportunity, the leaders who took part in the roundtable noted that they were looking forward to the Sharm summit “to reignite momentum, build on progress at COP26, and accelerate action and close gaps on mitigation, adaptation, finance and loss and damage,” according to the event chair’s summary. Such an attitude would contribute to the building of firm and wide base of unanimity at the highest political and diplomatic levels, in effect enabling the conference to reach workable, deliverable and useful conclusions that can turn the event into a milestone in international climate action and a strong forward momentum.
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