The world climate summit that Egypt hosted and chaired in Sharm el-Sheikh earlier this month provided an opportunity for the country to illustrate some aspects of green transformation that could nationally be adopted to support the international drive to deal with the adverse effects of climate change. From whichever angel one would prefer to look at, and into, green transformation, the view illustrates both theoretical and practical advantages for the process. Before and during COP27, Egypt put forward quite magnificent cases of the drive to spread and accelerate green transformation. The launch of the first phase of a green hydrogen plant in the Suez Canal Economic Zone (SCZone), the Food and Agriculture Sustainable Transformation (FAST) programme that aims to achieve the sustainability of food systems by the year 2030 and the developing of the host city Sharm el-Sheikh into a green urban area are just three of the steps and projects that Egypt initiated while preparing to host and also during its actual presidency of the COP27.
Egypt’s moves to promote green transformation at home and through the many mechanisms of international climate action during its ongoing COP27 presidency, continue with noticeable eagerness. Last Wednesday, Prime Minister Moustafa Madbouli oversaw the signaling of a package of memoranda of understandings on the launch of studies on projects of green hydrogen and its derivatives. Bringing together the New and Renewable Energy Authority (NREA), the Sovereign Fund of Egypt, the General Authority for SCZone, local and international companies such as the Saudi company Benchmark, international-local alliance of Acwa Power and the British alliance of OCIOR ENERGY, the documents make available a wide base of research and development capacities that are certainly needed in promoting such a new activity as green transformation, including through attracting more local and foreign direct investments to implement green hydrogen projects, as PM Madbouli indicated in remarks at the event. As a developmental orientation, green transformation does in fact involve very many trends. Keenness on greening urban activities is one such trend. Live footage of the New Mansoura City that President Sisi opened its first phase on December 1 showed an estimated area of 1,800 feddans of green spaces and external and open areas characterising the new urban development. Sustained attention to incorporating this trend into every aspect of urbanisation and urban development would ultimately assert the trend as an inseparable part of development.
So far, national and international action to keep climate change within the limits stipulated by the Paris Agreement continue along the hardcore axes of adaptation and mitigation, augmented this time by the momentum created by COP27 especially regarding the promotion of climate justice including through the establishment of a loss and damage assessment fund for countries ranked most vulnerable to climate change strikes, a matter that the UN Envirnment Programme has hailed as a historic decision. And as climate action continues in this direction, headways in the direction of boosting green transformation would create an additional asset for the reinvigoration of the world’s entire response to climate change.
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