UN envoy welcomes climate spotlight on Egypt, Africa
"Africa is bringing solutions," said Mahmoud Mohieldin, the UN Climate Change High Level Champion for Egypt, in an exclusive interview with Al-Monitor.
NEW YORK — Mahmoud Mohieldin, UN Climate Change High Level Champion for COP27, said that "Egypt is uniquely positioned" when it comes to its role in addressing climate change in an exclusive interview with Al-Monitor on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly meetings last week.
"It's an African country, it's a Mediterranean country, it's an Arab country with very strong ties around the world. … I think Egypt is coming with this kind of great geopolitical understanding, with the good geography that helped the country to understand the priorities and areas of tension between the different players. And it will prove to be a very strong deal broker as well.”
COP27, the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, will be the 27th annual gathering of nearly 200 countries to discuss climate commitments, held Nov. 6-18 in Sharm El Sheikh.
He added that it’s also “a very welcome development to have a spotlight on Africa, not just for the continent's sake” but “for the world's sake as well, because it's different news coming from Africa and different from the doom and gloom that we're seeing in many parts around the world.” He went on, “Africa is bringing solutions based on partnerships between the public and private sector, and there are some practical ways of doing that, including a pipeline of investible projects, and not just from Africa.”
