Egypt’s Embassy in Ethiopia and its permanent mission to the African Union on Saturday held a panel discussion on climate change in Africa as part of events organized by the embassy, in cooperation with AU, in preparation for Egypt’s hosting of the UN climate conference, COP27, the Foreign Ministry said.

In a press release, Egypt’s Ambassador in Addis Ababa Mohamed Gad stressed the special importance that adaptation and climate change mitigation topics have for Africa which is suffering severely from the climate crisis and is expected to continue to suffer more in the coming two decades despite global efforts to reduce harmful carbon emissions.

The Egyptian Presidency pays great attention to the adaptation topics which are a matter of main priority for the African and other vulnerable developing countries, Gad said.

Meanwhile, Mohamed Nasr, the director of the climate, environment, and sustainable development department at the Foreign Ministry, called for providing the soft financing necessary to implement the national adaptation plans in African countries without burdening them with more debts.

Nasr mentioned that 17 African countries are among the 20 most-affected states by climate change, despite the continent’s limited contribution to the crisis.

Meantime, Christina Chan, senior adaptation advisor to John Kerry, the US special presidential envoy for climate change, asserted the necessity of sharing climate data and information and supporting economic sectors in Africa, especially agriculture, which is the backbone of African economy and accounts for 60% of the livelihoods across the continent.

Source: State Information Service Egypt