CGIAR Discusses Climate Adaptation with Egypt's Minister of Environment
21 January 2022, Cairo - Egypt's Minister of Environment, Dr. Yasmine Fouad, and CGIAR's CWANA Regional Director and ICARDA Director-General Eng. Mr. Aly Abousabaa met to discuss how to deliver Egypt's action plan for climate change adaptation and mitigation through agricultural research.
After the negotiations held at COP26 in Glasgow, Dr. Fouad informed Mr. Abousabaa that her ministry had put together a national strategy on adapting and mitigating climate change and financing the initiatives it contains. She emphasized that cooperating with research development alongside institutions with proven technologies like CGIAR is the cornerstone of the strategy.
Dr. Fouad also discussed her ministry's partnership plans for ICARDA under CGIAR to support the action plan of the COP27 Climate Change Conference, to be hosted in Egypt this year.
Eng. Mr. Abousabaa outlined key CGIAR innovations and approaches to improving water use efficiency and management in dry areas and new methods to produce climate-smart seeds and crops. ICARDA has a long-standing and productive relationship with Egypt’s Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation and Egypt's Agricultural Research Center (ARC), built over several decades since 1979. Working with ARC, ICARDA and other partners, the relationship has provided innovative solutions to strengthen Egypt's agricultural sector's resilience and its smallholder farmers against multiple challenges such as climate change, water scarcity, and rising food import dependence. New resilient and climate-smart varieties of strategic crops like bread, and durum wheat, barley, faba bean, lentil, and chickpea have been developed, as well as proven technologies that use water more productively for better yields and sustainable land management practices that protect and rehabilitate the environment.
ICARDA and CGIAR look forward to continuing its work in Egypt through the Egyptian Government and particularly the Ministry of Environment and the Ministry of Agriculture and land reclamation by addressing the challenges related to climate change and mitigating its impact on agriculture.