Mahmoud Mohieldin: Achieving sustainable development and climate targets requires applicable scientific solutions and investing in societal awareness
COP27 in Sharm El-Sheikh worked on mobilizing finance from its different sources either public or private
Dr Mahmoud Mohieldin, UN Climate Change High Level Champion for Egypt and UN Special Envoy on Financing 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, said that sustainability and achieving development goals including climate targets require applicable scientific solutions and investing in societal awareness.
His remarks came during his participation in “Reimagining: Towards Inclusive, Innovative Circular Systems” conference, held by “Ahead of the Curve” foundation specialized in sustainable management practices, in cooperation with Oxfam and “Work in Progress Alliance”.
Mohieldin stated that achieving SDGs including the goal of facing climate change requires three matters, first of them is scientific solutions, sharing knowledge, and improving skills through investing in human capital in order to benefit from solutions provided by science, explaining that SDGs will not be achieved without science and investing in research, studies and innovative solutions.
He added that the second requirement is sufficient and just finance, noting that COP27 in Sharm El-Sheikh worked on mobilizing finance from its different sources either public or private and merging between local and global finance to achieve mitigation and adaptation to climate change on local, national and global levels.
The third requirement, according to Mohieldin, relates to behavior change through changing public and private regulations in order to go with the targeted goals, and investing in knowledge and societal awareness.
Mohieldin emphasized that facing climate change as one of the SDGs requires linking climate to different sectors such as energy sector that represents the core of mitigation action, beside water management and agriculture sectors to ensure the resilience of these sectors and their adapting to climate change.
Regarding the results of COP27, Mohieldin said that the conference achieved breakthroughs such as establishing Loss and Damage Fund as a commitment to help the developing countries threatened by climate change, adding that the conference stressed the need to the restructuring of the global finance system to be more fair and efficient and provide the required finance.
He added that the conference emphasized the importance of the holistic approach that links financing and implementing climate action to the other SDGs, explaining that financing and implementing climate action means necessarily financing and implementing the other SDGs such as the goals relate to agriculture, food, water, energy, and urban cities sustainability.
Mohieldin noted that COP27 made a progress regarding adaptation to climate change through launching Sharm El-Sheikh Adaptation Agenda that aims to achieve resilience for 4 billion people by 2030, adding that the agenda will help achieve 30 adaptation outcomes globally through five main work fields which are food and agriculture, water and nature, coasts and oceans, human settlements, and infrastructures, beside working on providing the required planning and finance.
He highlighted the Early Warning System Initiative proposed by the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres as one of the big achievements of the conference regarding to adaptation, adding that that the conference witnessed notable progress regarding supporting and financing just transition in the developing countries.
The climate champion pointed to the five regional roundtables to mobilize finance for climate action, saying that the results of these roundtables have been showcased in COP27, in the same time, the conference, according to Mohieldin, highlighted the debt swaps as a new and innovative solution for climate action financing and easing debt burdens in the developing countries, adding that the conference praised some successful debt swaps models based on KPIs.
Mohieldin said that carbon markets demonstrated during COP27 as one of the innovative ways to mobilize finance for climate action and emissions reduction, praising in this context the launching of Africa Carbon Markets Initiative during the conference.
He stated also that green washing file received a big attention in COP27 as a report was issued by a high level group of experts to set the rules for non-state actors including corporates, investors, cities and regions to deliver their promises of achieving NetZero emissions.
