In the course of participation in the work of the Union for Mediterranean (UfM) Forum in Barcelona and the UfM parliamentary assembly in Brussels recently, Egypt has highlighted the need for wider intra-regional co-operation as one of the key components of international action to face the multiple challenges of climate change. As expressed by Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukri in a statement to the former event and by parliament speaker Hanafi Gebali in a statement to the latter event, the call fitted well in the context of the choice of Egypt as the venue for next year’s global climate summit, the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Climate Change, more commonly known as (COP). Grouping as it does 42 Euro-Mediterranean region countries with the aim of promoting dialogue co-operation, the UfM was a commendable platform for Egypt to put forward its call and share views with the group as part of its preparations to organise and host COP’s next summit, COP27.
Co-operation with the Euro-Mediterranean region countries in the furtherance of international climate action in the lineup for COP27 summit in Egypt implies some significant dimensions. In the first place, it encourages intra-regional coordination and dialogue which would, in turn, invite inter-regional interaction in preparation for the Egypt summit, thereby facilitating the formulation of a commonly agreed-upon vision on the world’s way ahead in dealing with climate change which hascertainly left not a single region immune against its dire effects. Secondly, the UfM has reflected awareness of the imperative of harmonising national, regional and international action to mitigate global climate change effects. And it was apparently in reflection of such awareness that hours before the opening of the Barcelona Forum, the UfM had co-signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the United Nations Development Programme (UND) Regional Bureau for Arab States to work together in fields that include climate action, especially through supporting Mediterranean countries in mitigating and adapting to the effects of climate change.
At the level of intra-regional co-operation, UfM has been instrumental in advancing climate-oriented modalities of joint action, having entered into a partnership agreement with the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) to support member-states’ access to critical data they need in dealing with Mediterranean climate change challenges. An equally important aspect of this partnership is the planning of specialised training programmes and materials for knowledge transfer and capacity building in the region. As a matter of fact, ensuring the availability of duly trained and qualified human resources is as much pivotal to the success of climate programmes as funding and infrastructure are.
Such ideas and modalities would indeed enrich the content of and consultations on the aspired vision that COP27 can build on and develop; hence Egypt’s keenness, as parliament speaker Hanafi Gebali noted in his statement to the assembly in Brussels, to engage actively in developing co-operation-based regional visions on the modalities of addressing such a dangerous global phenomenon as climate change.The accumulation of such visions would indeed constitute a considerable contribution to the fructification of the next global summit on climate change, COP27.
