Egypt jumps up four places in Climate Change Performance Index: Min.

CAIRO - 4 December 2019: "Egypt jumped up four places in the Climate Change Performance Index for 2019 to rank 24th out of 57 evaluated countries." said Minister of Environment Yasmin Fouad on Wednesday.

Following the ministry's participation in the presidential summit on climate change in Madrid, the minister said in the a press releases that this progress is attributed to the national policy that is adopted by Egypt to address the effects of climate change during the last period.

It is worth mentioning that Egypt had received an invitation to participate in COP25 climate change conference due to be held in Madrid on December 2-13.

According to a study by the Climate Change Performance Index 2019, she said that Egypt scored a total of 57.49 points, adding that Egypt continues to progress among the world through its promising plan to address the effects of climate change.

The Climate Change Performance Index consists of 14 sub-indicators to measure progress in four areas related to climate change; greenhouse gas emissions, new and renewable energy, energy use and climate policies.

The index showed that Egypt achieved success in the field of greenhouse gas emissions by occupying the fifth place, scoring 33 points.

She pointed out that the most important projects that contributed to the realization of this advanced center are major environmental projects such as Banban solar power plant, the Jabal al-Zayt wind power station, the Asyut hydroelectric dam station, the new valley and the Red Sea Governorate.

In November 2019, the minister said that Egypt has been working on minimizing the impact of climate change for 10 years. the minister's remarks came at the Future of Electric Mobility Conference in Egypt.

Fouad added that the Egyptian government is developing a plan,in cooperation with international institutions and programs of the United Nation,to use Egypt's resources in a way that minimizes the impact of climate change and environmental pollution.

In September 2019, the ministry launched a green-roof initiative to increase flora area nationwide. The roof will be planted with ornamentals, medical and aromatic plants, the minister said. Green roofs provide the individuals with oxygen they need and reduce pollution.

Moreover, a study was published by Science in July and revealed that the universe has to cultivate 1 billion hectares of trees to help curb carbon dioxide emissions globally and limit the impacts of climate change.

Scientists estimated that growing 0.9 billion trees can absorb 25 percent of carbon dioxide, saying “We estimate that if we cannot deviate from the current trajectory, the global potential canopy cover may shrink by ~223 million hectares by 2050, with the vast majority of losses occurring in the tropics. Our results highlight the opportunity of climate change mitigation through global tree restoration but also the urgent need for action.”

Egypt is one of the African countries that announced to plant millions of trees to mitigate the climate change. Late July 2019, Ethiopia planted more than 350 million trees in only 12 hours. In addition, Kenya announced that it would cultivate 20 million trees around its highland forests.

At the 2019 Climate Change Summit that convened at the 74th Session of the UNGA meetings in New York upon a call by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in September, Egypt and the UK co-chaired a coalition on climate adaptation and resilience to raise funds to implement the resilience and adaptation strategies that address climate change impacts.