Egypt to form climate change council

Egyptian Prime Minister Ibrahim Mehleb made a resolution Tuesday forming a National Council on Climate Change.

The council will be led by the minister of environment. Council membership will also include the executive president of the Egyptian Environmental Affairs Agency, along with representatives from key government bodies including the Ministries of Defense, Interior, Foreign Affairs, Planning, Finance, Water Resources, Agriculture and Industry.

The council will be responsible for drafting and updating a comprehensive national strategy for climate change and national sustainable development strategy, according to a Cabinet statement. It will also be charged with organizing national research efforts on climate change and projects to reduce emissions and adapt to climate change risks, and will be responsible for vetting projects submitted to the Green Climate Fund.

As a low-lying, coastal country with limited fresh water and a large population to feed, Egypt is highly vulnerable to climate change. Rising sea levels present a particular threat — according to World Bank data, a one-meter rise in sea levels would force 10.5 million Egyptians from their homes and inundate a quarter of the Nile Delta, Egypt’s prime agricultural land.

In 2011, cabinet think tank IDSC produced a document entitled “Egypt’s National Strategy for Adaptation to Climate Change And Disaster Risk Reduction.” Individual government bodies, such as the Ministry of Water, have their own strategy documents.

These existing documents generally present recommendations on projects to consider, rather than concrete action plans.

At a recent panel discussion on Climate Change in Egypt, Mohamed Bayoumi, an environment specialist at the United Nations Development Program, explained that competing interests among government bodies is one of the key obstacles to moving forward with plans to cope with climate change.

Decisions that benefit farmers may not always be good for wildlife for example, while decisions that are good for heavy industry could have a negative impact on tourism.

“It’s quite tough to find a win-win situation for everybody. Sometimes, some institutions are not going to be happy with what they will get, but the national interest should come out ahead,” he said at the time.

Bayoumi and other experts argue that decisions about how Egypt can prepare for climate change need to be “mainstreamed,” with all government arms and agencies making decisions with climate change in mind.

Including such a wide variety of ministries in the Climate Change Council could help achieve this aim. It could also heighten the conflict between Egypt’s competing interests.