On Wednesday Dec,12th 2021, the center for economic and financial research and studies in faculty of economics and political science Cairo university hosted a seminar on the environmental dimension in the sustainable development plan with their guest Dr. Yasmin Fouad -the minister of environment-. The seminar was managed by Dr. Heba Nassar -the associate professor of economics in Cairo University-.

Starting the seminar by welcoming her excellency Dr. Yasmin Fouad – the minister of environment- and the attendants, it was obvious that there is an increasing interest for the environmental dimension among all age groups as attendants were from different age groups.

The dean welcomed the minister and introduced the subject, then showed government interest in achieving the 3 dimensions of sustainable development plan which are economic, social, and environmental and urban development, achieving green economic growth and reducing the emissions of CO2.

Her excellency started her talk showing that her ministry isn’t an executive one but it’s more of a coordinating ministry that aims to work with other ministries and organizations to achieve the planned goals and completing its role in 2030 plan which is having an integrated ecosystem through coordinating with other organizations to take the environmental dimension into consideration in their plans.

She moved to laws regarding environment as those laws focused on integrating the environmental dimension in all fields, the importance of natural resources security, exploitation and investment which guarantees next generations’ rights. In order to achieve its goals the ministry aimed at managing the natural resources such that sustainability is taken into consideration, decreasing pollution and wastes, maintaining the balance of ecosystems and biodiversity, and keeping Egypt’s international agreements related to environment.

The ministry worked on 3 main dimensions to achieve its goals which are decreasing wastes, protecting natural resources and facing the environmental changes. This was done through giving KPIs to measure the effectiveness of the achieved jobs and encouraging environmental investment and green economy.

Then, she declared that regular ways of punishments and taxes aren’t efficient enough to achieve the goals so they tried to provide new sustainable economic opportunities, the ministry attempts to achieve these goals through different dimensions which are, leaving the old school of environmental tourism to get away from  landmarks to the new school of raising awareness, encouraging the private sector to convert wastes into energy by buying from investors by 140 cents/kilowatt and in cooperation with central bank of Egypt, it provide loans to investors in that field by doing so, the total investments in that field for 8 firms only is 345 million dollars,  expanding in using and generating bioenergy and fertilizers in villages, taking care of protectorates that is in Cairo and nearby. 

She opened the way for any questions by the attendants. And questions were as follows: what’s her opinion in 2030’s plan and what is the predicted time to achieve its goals? , another question was about wastes’ system specially in old neighborhoods, what are the monitoring methods specially in villages? , what incentives do the government provide to private sector to engage? , are there any agreements for green finance? .

Dr. Yasmin answered all the questions as follow: she assured that there exist many agreements to provide green finance for instance, ministry of electricity got 475 million dollars for expanding in generating renewable resources, regarding the wastes’ system, she declared that there will still be wastes for more 5 years as eliminating wastes needs a lot of factors to be worked upon first, concerning monitoring, the ministry has specialized monitoring offices that do its job in each governate then she showed with pride that the ministry has responded to 99% of the received complaints that it received, regarding the incentives, she assured that CBE provide loans for investors in converting wastes into Energy , the government buys from them by 140 cents/kilowatt , she then added that there are incentives for decreasing the use of plastics and increasing the use of devices that work with renewable energy.

She ended her enriched seminar by thanking the attendants and showing her pride of faculty of economics and political science Cairo university as she took her PHD from it.