CAIRO – 17 October 2022: President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi said Egypt will present an initiative, dubbed “Water Adaptation and Resilience,” in coordination with the World Meteorological Organization in the course of the UN Climate Change Conference (COP27) that Sharm El-Sheikh city will host in November.
Sisi made the remarks in a speech on the opening of the fifth edition of Cairo Water Week (CWW 2022) on Sunday within the presence of dozens of ministerial and official delegations and 66 international organizations from around 70 countries.
Egypt can be set to host an African center for water and adaptation to climate change with the aim of supporting African capabilities on this vital field, the president stressed.
Sisi invited participants of the CWW to take part in the events of the COP27 summit.
Intertwined challenges, climate change
“It was Egypt’s destiny to be at the center of those three intertwined challenges: water and food security and climate change,” Sisi said during his speech.
He affirmed that Egypt is amongst essentially the most arid countries worldwide, which relies almost exclusively on the Nile River for its renewable water resources.
He noted that around 80 percent of the country’s water resources go to the agriculture sector, which constitutes livelihood for over 60 million people- half of Egypt’s population.
“Because of this unprecedented water scarcity, Egypt’s water resources are actually unable to fulfill the needs of its people regardless of following a policy to rationalize consumption,” Sisi said.
He also make clear the impacts of climate change on water scarcity within the agricultural lands in Egypt, saying these lands are affected by the opposed consequences of climate change.
Resolving GERD issue
President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi has reaffirmed Egypt’s commitment to exert utmost efforts to settle the difficulty of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) in a way that ensures the interests of all parties.
Sisi called on the international community to exert utmost concerted efforts with the intention to help achieve this just goal.
“We dream of a typical endeavor to maximise the wealth of the Nile Basin that its nations shall all enjoy, as a substitute of acting individually and competing in an uncooperative way that may lead to a limited development, falling short in size and scope, in a way that destabilizes them,” Sisi said.
“Our entrenched vision is to work along with a give attention to establishing and sharing prosperity, as a substitute of competition and rivalry, which result in sharing impoverishment and instability,” he added.
