On Sunday 19^th march 2023, Egypt Country Climate and Development Report was held in the faculty of Economics and Political science.

Presented by Dr. Miski Burhan, Director of the Urban Global Practice at the World Bank and Dr. Nancy Lozana. Discussed by Dr. Sara Adel Mansour, Assistant Professor, Department of Economics. Introduced by Dr. Adla Ragab, Economics professor and Center Director. Under the auspices of the cooperation between CEFRS and World Bank Group.

The main goal of the conference is discussing the climate changes that’s happening in the whole world and its consequences, specifically Egypt, and what are the public policies that the government has to take in order to  the sharpness of these consequences and the economic burdens that Egypt will face if the scenario of drowning Alexandria and Delta happens.

It started with the Dean Dr. Mahmoud Elsaied words who welcomed this conference.
 The conversation started by Dr. Miski Burhan who thanked the faculty, the Dean and the students who attended, she praised their awareness and their attempts to solve the climate problems.

She continued, saying that the MENA region is one of the most exposed to danger places, and also, the less prepared one especially when it comes to water security problems.

To find solutions, the world bank organised the climate change report that contained many countries like Iraq, Morocco, Jordan and finally Egypt.

She mentioned that they are concerned about food, water and energy more than anything else, accordingly, they decided to increase the spending in MENA region to 10 billion dollars in the next 4 years.

In order to achieve that they made what they called a development road map to help them in expanding their vision.

 Followed her Dr. Nancy Lozana who expressed her happiness because of seeing a bid room full of young students who care about the environment and its problems.

She clarified that the goal of this report is to find an intersection between the climate and development challenges.

What are these challenges and what are the opportunities?

The first challenge is the high uncertainty of availability of water resources. She mentioned that climate changes will lead to higher probability of droughts which will affect the flow of the Nile river that represents 97% of fresh water resource in Egypt, and added that droughts will happen at the same time with an increasing demand because of the continuous increase in the population and industries.

 The second feature is finding an intersection between dangers and opportunities in cities, today, about 80% of the Egyptian population in the largest 14 cities are exposed to at least one major climate risk, and it’s expected for these risks to become deeper, as the population will increase by 40 million in 2050.

Third, the world is going towards green projects, so it’s important for Egypt to compete by reducing carbon emissions.

 As Dr. Nancy finished, Dr. Sara followed her, who said that she will represent her report in 3 points. The first one is the global perspective, second, the opportunities of the Egyptian economy about reducing the carbon emissions, last but not least, the role of formal and informal organisation in the decision making.

She said that all what was mentioned was very good but it was only focused on the role of the formal organisations in forms if laws and regulations, but to convince people to rationalize their water and energy consumption we have to do some behavioural changes.

 She continued that from the global perspective, a lot is being achieved but it’s still not enough. She mentioned the role of cop27 in getting us closer to the goals of Paris agreement that put 1.5°C as the maximum for the global warming, and clarified that in case we reached 2°C we’ll face many negative consequences.

In case of 1.5°C, 14% are exposed to heat waves at least once every 5 years. While 37% are exposed to the heat waves if we reached 2°C.

Also mentioned the importance of giving out part of the GDP of the countries to spend on the ecosystem and the adaptation to the current changes, making it clear that the countries which will pay for those consequences are the developing countries not the countries that caused these emissions which is unfair.

What is being spent annually for the climate changes equals 650 million dollar when it is required to spend 7 trillion dollars to reach Paris agreement goals so what is being actually spent represents only 10%. For Egypt, it’s required to spend 250 billion dollars.

She ended her presentation with stressing on the importance of the informal organisations and how they affect the spending and the behaviour of the people.