SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt – Saudi Arabia is utilizing technology and its digital national cadres to accelerate green and renewable energy projects, environment-friendly tourism projects, and carbon capture and storage projects, a minister highlighted at an event held on the sidelines of the COP27 conference.
Saudi Minister of Communications and Information Technology, Eng Abdullah bin Amer Al-Swaha was participating in a discussion session held as part of the second edition of the “Saudi Green Initiative Forum” in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt.
UAE’s Minister of Climate Change and the Environment Mariam bint Mohammed Almheiri also highlighted that the technological innovations are driving regional climate action and are presenting opportunities for collaboration.
Saudi Arabia’s Al-Swaha stressed during the session that the Kingdom — under the leadership of Saudi Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud – has moved from ambition to action during the past two years to empower people, protect the planet and shape new horizons.
The minister shed light on innovative business models based on sustainable solutions in Aramco, SABIC, the Red Sea, and NEOM.
Achieving the goals
Separately, Saudi Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Cabinet Member and Climate Affairs Envoy, Adel bin Ahmed Al-Jubeir highlighted the Kingdom’s efforts and initiatives to preserve the environment and reduce climate change, which are among the pillars of its Vision 2030, indicating that the Gulf country is pursuing many initiatives in renewable energy in order to protect the environment, and it has a responsibility to pay attention to climate change.
He was taking part in a session entitled: “Diplomatic Relations and International Cooperation”, within the activities of the Saudi Green Initiative (SGI) forum held on the sidelines of COP27 Summit in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt.
On the importance of international cooperation in the climate field, he said, “The problem of climate change does not recognize gender, race or borders, calling on the international community to cooperate to address the effects of climate change.”
He also touched on the outcomes of the Middle East Green Initiative Summit 2022, and the importance of achieving climate and environmental objectives, in a way that contributes to achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030.
Saudi Deputy Minister of Environment, Water and Agriculture for Environment Dr. Osama Ibrahim Faqeeha, on his part, stressed the importance of the Food and Agriculture Initiative for sustainable transformation, in strengthening the connection between climate change, agriculture, and food security and the efforts made to launch the initiative.
This came during his participation on behalf of the Minister of Environment, Water, and Agriculture, in a session discussing the launching of the initiative, which was held under the chairmanship of the Egyptian Minister of Agriculture and Agrarian Reform with the participation of several ministers.
Dr Faqeeha highlighted the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s strategies and initiatives in agriculture, water, food security, food waste, and rural development, including the global initiative to reduce land degradation launched by the Kingdom during its presidency of the G-20 Summit in 2020, and the Middle East Green Initiative, in addition to the Kingdom’s support for the World Food Program to address the famine in the world.
Moving forward
UAE’s minister Mariam Almheiri, during a session titled “The need for climate action”, reflected on the importance of holding two consecutive COPs in the Middle East and shared her hopes that the world will take this opportunity to catalyse real change.
With one year to go before the UAE hosts COP28, Almheiri discussed the key role that next year’s global event will play.
She said, “It will be the first global stock take. This is going to be unique in the COP process – in a way it’s like a report card. We’ll be able to see where we are, compared to where we want to be. We need to be more ambitious. We know that the results of the ‘report card’ will not look good. But it is important to realize from now that this is an implementation COP. It’s really important that we scale up. Having COP27 in here in Egypt, having COP28 in the UAE next year and having the Saudi Green Initiative – these are all opportunities that we can move forward.”
“It would be amazing if we could see regional carbon markets increasing our collective liquidity. We’re electrifying our industries and mobility as well in order to decarbonise, so having interconnected grids to help stabilise the grid and increase efficiency across region. We’re all putting a lot of a lot of focus now on hydrogen, on CCUS [carbon] – with Saudi Arabia really putting a lot of efforts in on this – and it’s amazing when you see what these technologies can actually do.”
“There is hope, there is light at the end of the tunnel. We are moving in the right direction. We need to move faster, but I really think that we should use this as an opportunity to catalyse efforts to put these technologies into place,” she stated.