Egypt selected as nominee to host COP27 UN climate conference in 2022

Egypt has been selected as a nominee to host the COP27 UN climate conference 2022 set to be held in Glasgow in November.

The summit works towards actioning the goals of the Paris Agreement and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and is hosted by a different country each year representing a different region in the world.

Earlier this month, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi said that adapting to climate change is a “top priority for developing countries” and that Africa “suffers from severe consequences of climate change, especially the consequences that relate to water scarcity, drought, land desertification and the threat to food security.”

Al-Sisi also called on developed countries to take their responsibility for reducing CO2 emissions within the framework of the Paris Agreement.

The announcement that Egypt is a nominee to host the conference comes as the North African country grapples with numerous environmental crises of its own.

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In 2019, the UN postponed an anti-torture conference to be held in the Egyptian capital on the basis that it is illogical to hold a conference on torture in a place where torture is systematic.

In 2007 the World Bank ranked the air in the capital Cairo as the worst in the world for pollution by particles.

An article published on Our World in Data in 2019 states that the death rate in Egypt attributed to outdoor air pollution is ten times higher than in Sweden, Finland and New Zealand.

Due to the sheer volume of traffic, pollution has visibly damaged buildings and changed their colour. There is also a high level of noise pollution.

Rising sea levels are threatening to flood the coastal city of Alexandria, which is surrounded by the Mediterranean Sea and a lake, and could overwhelm poorer neighbourhoods archaeological sites.

Alexandria is next to the Nile Delta, which a 2018 study predicted could be inundated by 2050 as a result of rising water levels.