Tag: Egypt

Populists vs. the planet: How climate became the new culture war front line

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Delegates landing in Egypt’s Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheikh for U.N. climate talks this week are a global elite bent on tearing down national borders, stripping away individual freedoms and condemning working people to a life of poverty.

That dark view is held by a range of far-right or populist parties — among them Donald Trump’s Republicans, who are seeking to retake control in Tuesday’s U.S. midterm elections. Some of these radicals are rampaging through elections in Europe while others, such as Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro last week, have been defeated only narrowly.

Republican and Trump acolyte Lauren Boebert derides the environmentalist agenda as “America last;” Britain’s Brexit-backing Home Secretary Suella Braverman says the country is in thrall to a “tofu-eating wokerati;” and in Spain, senior figures in the far-right Vox party dismiss the U.N.’s climate agenda as “cultural Marxism.”

Right-wingers of various strains around the world have co-opted climate change into their culture war. The fact this is happening in countries that produce a large share of global greenhouse gas emissions has alarmed some green advocates.

“Reactionary populism is now the biggest obstacle to tackling climate change,” wrote three climate leaders, including Brazil’s former Environment Minister Izabella Teixeira, in a recent commentary.

In the U.S., Republicans are eyeing a return to power in one or both houses of Congress in Tuesday’s midterm elections. Many at the COP27 talks will be reliving the first week of the U.N. climate conference in Morocco six years ago when Trump’s election struck the climate movement like a hurricane.

A Republican surge would gnaw at the fragile confidence that has built around global climate efforts since President Joe Biden’s election, raising the specter of a second Trump term and perhaps the withdrawal — again — of the U.S. from the landmark 2015 Paris climate deal.

“I don’t want to think about that,” said Teixeira’s co-author Laurence Tubiana, a former French diplomat who led the design of the Paris Agreement and who now leads the European Climate Foundation.

Some on the American right are pushing a more conciliatory message than others. “Republicans have solutions to reduce world emissions while providing affordable, reliable, and clean energy to our allies across the globe,” said Utah Congressman John Curtis, who will lead a delegation from his party to COP27.

Tubiana and others in the environmental movement are trying to put on a brave face. They argue Republicans won’t want to tamper too much with Biden’s behemoth Inflation Reduction Act, which contains measures to promote clean energy.

“You might see railing against it, and I’m sure there’ll be lots of political talk and rhetoric, but I don’t expect that would be a focus for the Republicans,” said Nat Keohane, president of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, a green NGO based in Arlington, Virginia. Nevertheless, if Republicans take both houses, “we certainly won’t make any progress,” Keohane said.

Trump’s first term and the presidency of Brazil’s Bolsonaro — which ended in a narrow defeat in last month’s election — now look like the opening skirmishes in a struggle in which the planet’s stability is at stake.

In parts of Europe, the right present their policies as sympathetic to the risks of climate change while dismissing internationally sanctioned action as sinister elitism that threatens their voters’ prosperity.

“The Sweden Democrats are not climate deniers, whatever that means,” Swedish far-right leader Jimmie Åkesson told a crowd days before a September election that saw his party win big. But Sweden’s current climate plans, Åkesson said, were “100 percent symbolic” rather than meaningful. “All that leads to is that we get poorer, that our lives get worse.”

This is the gibbet on which the far right are hanging environmentalism: depicting them as the witting or unwitting cavalry of global elites.

“We consider it to be a globalist movement that intends to end all borders, intends to end our freedom, intends to end our freedom for our identities,” Javier Cortés, president of the Seville chapter of Spain’s far-right Vox party, said in an interview with POLITICO. “We are not in favor of CO2 emissions. On the contrary, we want to respect the environment. All we are saying is that the European Union has to clarify that it wants to sell us a climate religion in which we cannot emit CO2, while we make our industries disappear from Europe and we need to buy from China.”

To describe this as climate denial — a common but often inaccurate charge — would be to miss the point that this is now just another front in the culture wars.

Online disinformation about the last U.N. climate talks was largely focused on the hypocrisy and elitism of those attending, according to research from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD). The main spreaders weren’t websites and figures traditionally associated with climate denial, but culture war celebrities such as psychologist Jordan Peterson, Rebel Media’s Ezra Levant and Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams.

Populist attacks on globalism “rely on a well-funded transnational network,” said Tubiana. “It warrants serious scrutiny.”

But while economic interests may be powering parts of the movement, there is also a sense of political opportunism at work. Huge changes to the economy will be needed to lower emissions at the speed dictated by U.N.-brokered global climate goals. There will be winners and losers — and the losers may gravitate toward populists pledging to take up their cause.

“Far-right organizations are recognizing this as a potentially lucrative topic that they can win votes or support on,” said Balsa Lubarda, head of the ideology research unit at the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right.

Loving the losers

The far right’s focus on the losers has been “turbo charged” by the energy crisis, said Jennie King, head of civic action and education at ISD, which populists have wrongly argued is the fault of green policy. The European Parliament’s coalition of far-right parties has grown and capitalized on the energy crisis by joining with center-right parties to vote down environmental legislation.

Sweden’s Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson — newly elected with Åkesson’s support — aims to dilute the country’s ambitions for cutting some greenhouse gas emissions, a move center-right Liberal Environment Minister Romina Pourmokhtari justified in familiar terms: “That is a reaction to the reality people are facing.” And in Britain, Brexit leader Nigel Farage retooled his campaign to become an anti-net zero mouthpiece.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni says she wants to reclaim environmentalism for the right | Vincenzo Pinto/AFP via Getty Images

Strains of right-wing ecology may also mean that not all groups are actively hostile to the climate agenda, said Lubarda. Italy’s new Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is a huge fan of the books of J.R.R. Tolkien, which center on the Shire, an idealized bucolic homeland. Meloni says she wants to reclaim environmentalism for the right, but the protection of national economic interests still comes first.

“There is no more convinced ecologist than a conservative, but what distinguishes us from a certain ideological environmentalism is that we want to defend nature with man inside,” she said in her inaugural speech to parliament last month.

While Meloni has announced that she will attend COP27, she has also renamed the Ministry for the Ecological Transition the Ministry for Environment and Energy Security. The governing program of her Brothers of Italy party includes a section on climate change, but it strongly emphasizes the need to protect industry.

It’s this broad sense of demotion and delay that alarms those who are watching these ideas grow in stature among populists on the right. They say that while it may not sound like climate denial, the result is effectively the same.

“You can say that you are climate friends,” said Belgian Socialist MEP Marie Arena. “But in the act, you are not at all. You are business friends first.”

Jacopo Barragazzi, Charlie Duxbury and Zack Colman contributed to this report.

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November 6, 2022
As countries convene at climate summit in Egypt, reports show the world is wildly off track. Here’s what to watch at COP27 | CNN

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As global leaders converge in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, for the UN’s annual climate summit, researchers, advocates and the United Nations itself are warning the world is still wildly off-track on its goal to halt global warming and prevent the worst consequences of the climate crisis.

Over the next two weeks, negotiators from nearly 200 countries will prod each other at COP27 to raise their clean energy ambitions, as average global temperature has already climbed 1.2 degrees Celsius since the industrial revolution.

They will haggle over ending the use of coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel, which has seen a resurgence in some countries amid the war in Ukraine, and try to come up with a system to funnel money to help the world’s poorest nations recover from devastating climate disasters.

But a flood of recent reports have made clear leaders are running out of time to implement the vast energy overhaul needed to keep the temperature from exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius, the threshold scientists have warned the planet must stay under.

Reports from the United Nations and the World Meteorological Association show carbon and methane emissions hit record levels in 2021, and the plans countries have submitted to slash those emissions are beyond insufficient. Given countries’ current promises, Earth’s temperature will climb to between 2.1 and 2.9 degrees Celsius by 2100.

Ultimately, the world needs to cut its fossil fuel emissions nearly in half by 2030 to avoid 1.5 degrees, a daunting prospect for economies still very much beholden to oil, natural gas and coal.

“No country has a right to be delinquent,” US Climate Envoy John Kerry told reporters in October. “The scientists tell us that what is happening now – the increased extreme heat, extreme weather, the fires, the floods, the warming of the ocean, the melting of the ice, the extraordinary way in which life is being affected badly by the climate crisis – is going to get worse unless we address this crisis in a unified, forward-leaning way.”

Here are the top issues to follow at COP27 in Egypt.

Developing and developed countries have for years tussled over the concept of a “loss and damage” fund; the idea which suggests countries causing the most harm with their outrageous planet-warming emissions should pay poorer countries, which have suffered from the resulting climate disasters.

It has been a thorny issue because the richest countries, including the US, don’t want to appear culpable or legally liable to other nations for harm. Kerry, for instance, has tiptoed around the issue, saying the US supports formal talks, but he has not given any indication of what solution the country would sign on to.

Meanwhile, small island nations and others in the Global South are shouldering the impact of the climate crisis, as devastating floods, intensifying storms and record-breaking heat waves wreak havoc.

The deadly flooding in Pakistan this summer, which killed more than 1,500 people, will surely be an example the countries’ negotiators point to. And since September, more than two million people in Nigeria have been affected by the worst flooding there in a decade. At this very moment, Nigerians are drinking, cooking with and bathing in dirty flood water amid serious concerns over waterborne diseases.

It is likely loss and damage will have space on the official COP27 agenda this year. But beyond countries committing to meet and talk about what a potential loss and damage fund would look like, or whether one should even exist, it is unclear what action will come out of this year’s summit.

“Do we expect that we’ll have a fund by the end of the two weeks? I hope, I would love to – but we’ll see how parties deliver on that,” Egypt’s chief climate negotiator Ambassador Mohamed Nasr recently told reporters.

Former White House National Climate Adviser Gina McCarthy told CNN she thinks loss and damage will be the top issue at the UN climate summit this year, and said nations including the US will face some tough questions about their plans to help developing nations already being hit hard by climate disasters.

“It just keeps getting pushed out,” McCarthy said. “There’s need for some real accountability and some specific commitments in the short-term.”

People will be watching to see if the US and China can repair a broken relationship at the summit, a year after the two countries surprised the world by announcing they would work together on climate change.

The newfound cooperation came crashing down this summer when China announced it was suspending climate talks with the US as part of broader retaliation for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan.

Kerry recently said the climate talks between the two countries are still suspended and will likely remain so until China’s president Xi Jinping gives the green light. Kerry and others are watching to see whether China fulfills the promise it made last year to submit a plan to bring down its methane emissions or updates its emissions pledge.

The US and China are the world’s two largest emitters and their cooperation matters, particularly because it can spur other countries to act, too.

Separate from a potential loss and damage fund, there is the overarching issue of so-called global climate finance; a fund rich countries promised to push money into to help the developing world transition to clean energy rather than grow their economies with fossil fuels.

The promise made in 2009 was $100 billion per year, but the world has yet to meet the pledge. Some of the richest countries, including the US, UK, Canada and others, have consistently fallen short of their allocation.

President Joe Biden promised the US would contribute $11 billion by 2024 toward the effort. But Biden’s request is ultimately up to Congress to approve, and will likely go nowhere if Republicans win control of Congress in the midterm elections.

The US is working on separate deals with countries including Vietnam, South Africa and Indonesia to get them to move away from coal and toward renewables. And US officials often stress they want to also unlock private investments to help countries transition to renewables and deal with climate effects.

COP27 is intended to hold countries’ feet to the fire on fossil fuel emissions and gin up new ambition on the climate crisis. Yet reports show we are still off-track to keep global warming under 1.5 degrees Celsius.

A UN report which surveyed countries’ latest pledges found the planet will warm between 2.1 and 2.9 degrees Celsius. Average global temperature has already risen around 1.2 degrees since the industrial revolution.

Records were set last year for all three major greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide, according to the World Meteorological Organization.

There is a spot of encouraging news: the adoption of renewable energy and electric vehicles is surging and helping to offset the rise in fossil fuel emissions, according to a recent International Energy Agency report.

But the overall picture from the reports shows there is a need for much more clean energy, deployed swiftly. Every fraction of a degree in global temperature rise will have stark consequences, said Inger Andersen, executive director of the United Nations Environment Program.

“The energy transition is entirely doable, but we’re not on that pathway, and we have procrastinated and wasted time,” Andersen told CNN. “Every digit will matter. Let’s not say ‘we missed 1.5 so let’s settle for 2.’ No. We must understand that every digit that goes up will make our life and the life of our children and grandchildren much more impacted.”

The clock is ticking in another way: Next year’s COP28 in Dubai will be the year nations must do an official stocktake to determine if the world is on track to meet the goals set out in the landmark Paris Agreement.

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November 5, 2022
A showdown over climate reparations is brewing — and it will determine the success of the COP27 summit

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“Looking at loss and damage as a side issue is not acceptable because this is the reality that millions are facing every single day,” said Harjeet Singh, head of global political strategy at Climate Action Network.

Fida Hussain | Afp | Getty Images

The success or failure of the U.N.’s flagship climate conference is likely to depend on getting wealthy countries to deliver on reparations — a highly divisive and emotive issue that is seen as a fundamental question of climate justice.

The COP27 climate summit gets underway in Egypt from Nov. 6. The annual gathering of the U.N. Climate Change Conference will see more than 30,000 delegates convene in the Red Sea resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh to discuss collective action on the climate emergency.

It comes amid growing calls for rich countries to compensate climate-vulnerable nations as it becomes harder for many people to live safely on a warming planet.

Reparations, sometimes referred to as “loss and damage” payments, are likely to dominate proceedings at COP27, with diplomats from more than 130 countries expected to push for the creation of a dedicated loss and damage finance facility.

They argue agreement on this issue is imperative as climate impacts become more severe.

Rich countries, despite accounting for the bulk of historical greenhouse gas emissions, have long opposed the creation of a fund to address loss and damage. Many policymakers fear that accepting liability could trigger a wave of lawsuits by countries on the frontlines of the climate emergency.

If we lose the agenda fight then we might as well come home and forget about the rest of COP because it will be useless in the face of what is happening in the world on climate change.

Saleemul Huq

Director of ICCCAD

Saleemul Huq, director of the Bangladesh-based International Centre for Climate Change and Development, said he is expecting an “agenda fight” at the start of COP27 — the result of which he said will be critical to the summit’s integrity.

Finance to address loss and damage is on the provisional agenda for the U.N. climate conference. However, policymakers will need to determine whether to adopt it onto the official agenda at the start of the summit.

Huq, a pioneer of loss and damage research and advocacy, said it is feared that once again wealthy countries will refuse to endorse financial support for low- and middle-income countries acutely vulnerable to the climate crisis.

U.S. climate envoy John Kerry said Washington would not be “obstructing” talks on loss and damage in Sharm el-Sheikh.

Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images

For instance, at COP26 last year, high-income nations blocked a proposal for a loss and damage financing body, choosing instead to engage in a new three-year dialogue for funding discussions. The so-called “Glasgow Dialogue” has been sharply criticized as a program without a clear plan or an intended outcome.

Huq said during a webinar hosted by Carbon Brief that the battle to put loss and damage funding on the official agenda “is going to be the big fight coming up in Sharm el-Sheikh.”

“If we lose the agenda fight then we might as well come home and forget about the rest of COP because it will be useless in the face of what is happening in the world on climate change,” Huq said.

“It is beyond mitigation and adaptation now,” he added. “Loss and damage [funding] is by far the most important issue that needs to be discussed and if the UNFCCC doesn’t do it then it basically becomes redundant.”

‘The litmus test for the success of COP27’

The push for loss and damage payments differs from climate finance directed toward mitigation and adaptation.

Mitigation refers to efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that are causing global heating by, for instance, transitioning from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources. Adaptation, meanwhile, means preparing for the adverse effects of the climate crisis by taking action to minimize the damage.

These are two established pillars of climate action. Loss and damage funding, meanwhile, is recognized by many as the third pillar of international climate policy.

Anglers fish on the River Sava in heavy smog conditions in Belgrade, Serbia, on Tuesday, Nov. 1, 2022. Smog spewing from ancient coal-fired power plants, outdated automobiles and heating systems running on burning tires and wood is choking the Balkans both literally and economically.

Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Speaking two weeks ahead of COP27, U.S. climate envoy John Kerry said Washington would not be “obstructing” talks on loss and damage in Sharm el-Sheikh. His comments mean that, for the first time ever, the U.S. appears willing to discuss reparations at the U.N. climate conference.

Kerry’s openness to talks on loss and damage funding marked an abrupt change in tone from just one month earlier. Speaking at a New York Times event on Sept. 20, Kerry suggested the U.S. would not be prepared to compensate countries for the loss and damage they’ve suffered as a result of the climate emergency.

“You tell me the government in the world that has trillions of dollars — because that’s what it costs,” Kerry said. He added that he refused to feel “guilty” for the climate crisis.

“There’s plenty of time to be arguing, pointing fingers, doing whatever,” Kerry said. “But the money we need right now needs to go to adaptation, it needs to go to building resilience, it needs to go to the technology that is going to save the planet.”

A man inspects a devastated field in the village of Ramdaspur affected by Cyclone Sitrang in Bhola under Barishal, Division, Bangladesh on October 15, 2022.

Anadolu Agency | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images

Advocates of loss and damage funding argue it is required to account for climate impacts — including hurricanes, floods and wildfires or slow-onset impacts such as rising sea levels — that countries cannot defend against because the risks are unavoidable or the countries cannot afford it.

“This is the litmus test for the success of COP27,” said Harjeet Singh, head of global political strategy at Climate Action Network, which includes more than 1,500 civil society groups.

“Looking at loss and damage as a side issue is not acceptable because this is the reality that millions are facing every single day,” Singh said during the same webinar event, citing devastating floods in Pakistan and severe droughts in the Horn of Africa.

Singh said political mobilization over loss and damage funding makes COP27 the most important COP yet. “We now have to make sure it delivers climate justice that we have been demanding by creating a new system of funding so that we can support people who are facing the climate emergency now.”

What is loss and damage?

There is no internationally agreed definition for loss and damage, but it is broadly understood to refer to the economic impacts on livelihoods and property, and non-economic loss and damage, such as the loss of life and losses to biodiversity.

“I think it means different things to different people, but broadly I would see the idea as funding to address the impacts of climate change that can’t be avoided through mitigation and adaptation,” Rachel James, a climate scientist at the University of Bristol, told CNBC via telephone.

“That ties into why it is so important for climate justice because we don’t have a mechanism or funding to deal with that at the moment — and it’s too late to ignore it.”

James said that countries from the Global South will be looking for reassurance in Egypt that the $100 billion climate finance pledge by rich nations in 2009 to help low-income nations mitigate and adapt to the climate emergency is going to be met.

“That’s so crucial because that is a matter of trust,” James said. “If we can’t even get the funding for adaptation and mitigation that has already been promised then that calls into the question the ability to raise additional funds.”

So far, only one U.N. member state has pledged to offer loss and damage compensation to the most climate-vulnerable areas. Denmark announced in mid-September that it would support low-income nations with over 100 million Danish crowns ($13.3 million).

Nicola Sturgeon, first minister of Scotland, which is not a member of the U.N., announced at the COP26 summit in Glasgow last year a symbolic £1 million ($1.15 million) loss and damage investment in an effort to encourage other wealthy countries to follow suit.

Why does it matter?

“Loss and damage is happening every single day somewhere in the world — and it will continue to happen every single day from now on,” ICCCAD’s Huq said, citing the damage caused by Hurricane Ian in late September as a recent example.

“Ian is the biggest storm Florida has had so far. But that’s not going to be true next year, they are going to have a bigger one next year and they are going to one even bigger than that the year after. So, we have now entered the era of impacts from human-induced climate change causing losses and damages.”

“We need to deal with that — and we are not prepared to do it at all. Even the richest country in the world, the U.S., is not prepared for this,” he added.

Paddy McCully, senior analyst at non-governmental organization Reclaim Finance, said that although loss and damage funding was highly likely to feature prominently at COP27, nobody is expecting substantial progress.

“Given the geopolitical situation at the moment and the sharply different positions from the north and south on loss and damage, I think it is going to be hard for countries to achieve a dramatic breakthrough,” McCully told CNBC via telephone.

“The sign of a successful COP will be that there is at least agreement on a mechanism for providing finance in loss and damage,” he said. “And I think that a moderately successful COP would be that it doesn’t all fall apart in north-south acrimony, and you have at least agreement on further talks on setting up a mechanism.”

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November 3, 2022
Middle East round-up: Netanyahu’s back, back again

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Netanyahu back as Israeli PM, Saudi investment in Twitter, and police violence in Iran. Here’s your round-up, written by Abubakr Al-Shamahi, Al Jazeera Digital’s Middle East and North Africa editor.

Even with essentially all his political rivals united against him, Benjamin Netanyahu just couldn’t be kept down. The right-wing politician had spent 12 years as the Israeli prime minister, until March 2021, when he was forced out of office. Over the course of his career, Netanyahu had made so many enemies, across the entire political spectrum, that right-wing and left-wing Israelis, and even Palestinians, all united in a coalition against him. He’s also been indicted for fraud, and faces prison.

No matter, it seems. The anti-Netanyahu coalition collapsed, and for the fifth time in less than four years, Israelis voted. And with the count almost complete (by the time you read this, it could well be done), the results suggest that Netanyahu will be back as prime minister.

[READ: Four key takeaways from the Israeli elections]

How’d he do it? Netanyahu went and made new friends – namely Itamar Ben-Gvir, who once proudly displayed in his office a picture of an Israeli who massacred 29 Palestinians, and Bezalel Smotrich, who has said that the founders of Israel didn’t “finish the job” when they failed to get rid of all the Palestinians in 1948. It’s a glaringly stark sign of Israel’s plunge into the far right that Ben-Gvir and Smotrich’s alliance, the Religious Zionism Party, has done so well in the elections, and in the process has helped prop up Netanyahu.

[READ: Far-right Ben-Gvir emerges as key player in Israeli elections]

For many Palestinians, it’s just more of the same. Under the supposedly centrist, current and apparently outgoing prime minister, Yair Lapid, near-daily raids in the occupied West Bank have killed dozens of Palestinians since the start of the year. Meanwhile, as Zena Al Tahhan reports, many Palestinians living in Israel say they haven’t seen an improvement in their situation, despite the first-time presence of a Palestinian party in Israel’s now-outgoing coalition government.

Before the vote, Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst, Marwan Bishara, labelled Israel’s democracy an “utter fiction” because it rules over millions of Palestinians who are denied the right to vote. “Far-right fanatics and bloody generals dominate the absolute majority of seats in the Israeli Parliament,” Bishara says in his op-ed – and that was before the far right increased their seat tally.

Saudis are No. 2 at Twitter after Musk takeover

He might be the world’s richest person, but Elon Musk hasn’t just pumped his own money into his $44 billion takeover of Twitter. Instead, Saudi Arabia’s Kingdom Holding Company, led by Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, is keeping its shares, and together with bin Talal’s private office, is the second largest investor in the new and (if you believe Musk) improved Twitter.

The prince and Musk weren’t always so friendly. The two got into a Twitter tiff in April, when the owner of Tesla and SpaceX first announced his intention to buy the social media company, after bin Talal rejected Musk’s initial offer. Musk’s response was to ask about Saudi Arabia’s views on journalistic free speech. Feisty …

Video of Iranian riot police beating man goes viral

Authorities in Iran have limited the amount of protest footage that gets out by throttling the internet, and banning several messaging apps. But one of the videos that has made it out has been particularly shocking, and appears to show police beating a man, who is then beaten further as he lies on the ground. Iran’s police force has said it’s investigating the incident.

Anti-government protests began in mid-September. From Tehran, Al Jazeera’s correspondent, Dorsa Jabbari, explains how protesters continue to defy the authorities.

And now for something different

Being an Afghan refugee in Iran is already difficult enough. Add being a woman who coaches a men’s football team into the mix, and life just got that much harder. But that’s exactly what Rozma Ghafouri is doing, even though she’s often forbidden from coaching from the sidelines.

In Brief

Human Rights Watch accuses Bahrain’s government of using laws and other tactics to keep the opposition out of office – The Arab League holds its first summit since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in Algeria – Qatar has made progress on workers’ rights but challenges remain, says International Labour Organisation – Tunisia could be banned from the World Cup over government interference in the Tunisian Football Federation – Michel Aoun steps down as president of Lebanon, with no one to replace him – Ukraine demands that Iran stop sending weapons to Russia – Spanish football fan walking to the World Cup in Qatar has been arrested in Iran – Iraq’s parliament approves new government

[WATCH: One shaped like a tent, and another made out of shipping containers, here are Qatar’s World Cup stadiums]

Quote of the Week

“Alaa will either be free in the next days, or he will die in prison during #COP27 as the world watches.” – Canadian author Naomi Klein on the Egyptian prisoner Alaa Abd el-Fattah. The dissident has decided to escalate his hunger strike to protest against his imprisonment. His family says he will reduce his caloric intake to zero, and on November 6, stop drinking water, when the COP27 global climate talks begin in Egypt.

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November 3, 2022
ISA committed to set up effective mechanism for green energy transition: R K Singh

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The International Solar Alliance (ISA), which is the nodal global body set up to improve solar energy access, is all set to present its energy transition agenda at the upcoming COP27 summit in Sharm el-Sheikh Climate Change Conference in Egypt next month. The alliance with around 110 countries in participation is working towards providing greater green energy access to the deprived countries.
Declaring that energy transition was impossible without first ensuring energy access to the deprived, Raj Kumar Singh, who is the president of ISA, said the alliance is committed to put an effective mechanism in place to help countries in need.
“Energy transition is a big global challenge that will be discussed in COP27 next month. We will be there to push this cause. Our efforts will continue with the developed countries,” said Singh at the 5th Assembly of ISA in New Delhi on Tuesday.
Declaring that the transition was impossible without first ensuring energy access to the deprived, Singh, who is also the union minister for new and renewable energy, said ISA is committed to set up an effective mechanism to ensure energy access to all, especially in Africa.
“The only essential requirement for some countries is a mechanism for payment and insurance security,” he said.

ISA would, therefore, be creating a framework for payment security as well as set up a fund for insurance. Once both are in place, investments would come automatically for solar power projects, he added.
“As far as knowledge, consultancy, and expertise for projects are concerned, ISA is already providing that infrastructure. We are also running programmes for solar bids and these will be scaled up,” said Singh. ‘
He added that: “What ISA will be doing is that before energy transition happens it will be resolving the issue of access to electricity with green energy.”
Singh further added that ISA’s objective was to reach electricity to about 700 million people globally who at present don’t have access to it. He stated that this would be achieved through knowledge sharing, provision of consultancy services and designing of solar grids towards a greener planet.
Agreeing to his points, Chrysoula Zacharopoulou, co-president ISA, said that it was a challenging period for the world, especially after the Russian-Ukraine war.

“The European countries are the most vulnerable. With our alliance, the objective is to accelerate the deployment of renewable energy. This is not only a climate imperative but also a step towards energy independence and energy security for all of us,” said Zacharopoulou.
ISA works with countries to improve energy access and security worldwide and promote solar power as a sustainable way to transition to a carbon-neutral future. One of ISA’s objectives is to unlock $1 trillion of investments in solar by 2030 while reducing the cost of renewable technology and its financing.

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October 18, 2022
Senator’s human rights objections block some US aid to Egypt

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WASHINGTON (AP) — A veteran senator’s objections over Egypt’s human rights record, including its holding of an estimated 60,000 political prisoners, have compelled the Biden administration to trim a symbolically significant $75 million off its planned annual military aid to that country.

Senate Appropriations Chairman Patrick Leahy, the senator responsible, said in a statement Monday it was important that U.S. administrations not allow other policy interests to override congressionally mandated attention to Egypt’s poor human rights record, “because the situation facing political prisoners in Egypt is deplorable.”

The U.S. gives more than $1 billion in military aid annually to Egypt, which it views as a regionally important ally to the U.S. and Israel. That’s despite President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi’s record on human rights, including what rights groups say is the killing, imprisonment and torture of critics of the Egyptian government.

Congress in recent years has made the U.S. payment of $300 million of that aid contingent on Egypt’s government showing progress on rights, although the State Department can and often does overrule that requirement. Congress’s conditioning of some of Egypt’s security aid makes for an annual public test of U.S. administrations’ balancing of strategic interests and human rights.

The Biden administration said last month it planned to give a portion, $170 million, of that $300 million. It cited Egypt’s release of 500 political prisoners. Rights advocates, and family members of imprisoned activists, called Egypt’s releases a token.

Leahy objected to the administration’s decision, urging State to either clarify its standards on the matter or give the money as scholarships to Egyptian students or as military aid to Ukraine, Leahy spokesman David Carle said. The funding remained at an impasse until it hit a Sept. 30 spending deadline, and expired.

Egyptian news organization Mada Masr first reported the partial block of funding by a senator it did not identify. Reuters first reported it was Leahy.

In a statement Monday, the State Department said “we will continue to consult closely with Congress as we engage on human rights with the Egyptian government and seek tangible steps to address the concerns shared by the administration and the Congress.”

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October 18, 2022
Inside the fight to save an American cemetery and the secrets it holds in a ancient city

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Graves are seen in the American Cemetery in Cairo.

Courtesy of Jean Isteero

Cairo — Nestled among several other cemeteries in Old Cairo, sits the only American Cemetery in Egypt’s ancient capital. The plots were neglected for years, overgrown and at risk of falling apart, until a small group of “friends” set to work to save it.

The Reverend Andrew Watson, an American missionary, asked Egypt’s ruler in 1874 for a piece of desert land in Old Cairo for an American cemetery, where the dead of any nationality and any religion could be interred. His request was approved the following year, and he described the cemetery in his book, The American Mission in Egypt, published in 1904.

“Trees have been planted which give grateful shade from the burning sun, and some other improvements have also been made to make the place appear less desolate looking,” wrote Watson. He was buried there himself in 1916.

A row of badly damaged graves is seen in the American Cemetery in Cairo.

CBS News/Ahmad Shawkat

There are still trees, and the sun still bakes the ground under them, but in recent years the place had started looking rather desolate.

In the late 1960s, when American missionaries and many other foreigners were forced out of Egypt due to domestic political changes, the cemetery was turned over to the Evangelical Church of Egypt, which remains responsible for maintaining it today.

But upkeep has been lacking. The cemetery fell into such disrepair that the U.S. Embassy in Cairo started advising American citizens to bury their loved ones in the nearby British cemetery.

Like the German and Swiss cemeteries, which are also nearby, the British site is extremely tidy. A caretaker there ushered CBS News to “the Americans” at the site. Some of the headstones were as recent as this year. The caretaker explained proudly that the Americans chose his cemetery because their own, “is no good, and too small.”

The cemetery finds some friends

In 2011, retired missionary teacher Jean Isteero went to visit the grave of a friend who had died that year in Cairo. The state of the cemetery upset her, so she decided to do something about it.

“I contacted some of the families and started raising some funds to get it cleaned and renovated,” she told CBS News. She started a small group called the “Friends of the American Cemetery.”

Jean left Egypt for good earlier this year after spending most of the past six decades in the country. But she’s kept her work up from her new home in Baltimore.

“I am very persistent,” she said. “I believe that individuals who devoted so many years of their lives for the good of the church and country should be buried in a lovely, peaceful setting which their relatives will be proud to visit.”

Jean acknowledged that “some people are not interested in cemeteries,” but she found at least one other soul who shares her passion.

The Friends of the American Cemetery gather for a meeting in Cairo. From left to right: Anne Shalaby, Diana Van Bogaert, Jean Isteero, Nazli Rizk and Greg Olson.

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“The cemetery and the stories of the people buried there are a reflection of the involvement of Americans in Egypt over the past 150 years,” said Greg Olson, a retired international development specialist.

Mapping the past

Originally from Wisconsin, Olson has lived in Egypt for most of the last 45 years. He was recruited by Jean, who first asked him for help with translations, and then to look up some information on the people buried at the American Cemetery. He quickly became a devoted member of the “friends” group.

Olson has been working to build a digital map of the cemetery, which he hopes will eventually enable anyone to easily search for a name, locate the person’s burial plot and learn about them. He’s photographed every single headstone, and started tracking down everything he can on the people beneath them.

So far he’s managed to compile short biographies on about half of the people buried there.

“I found a map of the cemetery made in 1925, and it shows who’s buried where, but I didn’t know anything about the ones after that,” said Olson. “Then I found a list of all the people buried there through 1965, and now I am adding to that list.”

Some graves at the American Cemetery in Cairo are so badly damaged that it has been impossible to determine whose remains they hold.

CBS News/Ahmad Shawkat

There are still about ten graves whose inhabitants remain a complete mystery, but Olson is determined to finish his map. Already his work has granted him a unique glimpse at some of the ancient city’s more recent past.

Pieces in a puzzle

He noticed, for instance, that there are five Norwegians buried in the cemetery with the same date of death in 1959. That presented an alluring mystery, so Olson started digging.

“I searched the newspapers around that date. Didn’t find anything. I contacted the Norwegian Embassy, they didn’t know. I asked the oldest Norwegian in Egypt, she had no idea. I contacted a friend in Oslo, he had access to the archive of a leading daily newspaper, and he found the story,” Olson recounted. “They were seamen waiting in a convoy to go through the Suez Canal and they bought, illegally, some homemade alcohol from the locals, and were poisoned.”

The graves of five Norwegian seamen, all of whom died on the same date in 1959, are seen in the American Cemetery in Cairo, Egypt.

CBS News/Ahmad Shawkat

Mystery solved, and as an unexpected bonus, a genealogy website showed Olson that he had a familial link with one of the sailors, and he managed to get in touch with the man’s niece to share the news.

Behind every name on a gravestone at the cemetery, there’s a story about how the person ended up there, far from home. As he led CBS News past the graves, Olson’s passion for uncovering those stories was clear to see.

“For a long time, that guy was a mystery to me,” Olson said, indicating a grave. “It turned out he was using a pseudonym. He was an anti-Vietnam war activist.”

“This is Susie, she was a young girl who climbed the pyramids with some Marine soldiers and fell off and died on a Thursday evening in 1980,” he said in front of another grave. “I remember the news, I was in Cairo. Her family came to visit recently.”

Greg Olson speaks with CBS News as he walks among the graves in the American Cemetery in Cairo.

CBS News/Ahmad Shawkat

He points at another: “See the snakes on the grave? He was a herpetologist.”

“She was a nurse who helped saving a lot of Armenian orphans from the genocide.”

“This is George Reisner, a very famous archaeologist, anybody who’s an Egyptologist, they want to see his grave,” said Olson.

To Olson, the individual graves are like puzzle pieces, and he wants to put them all together. One headstone tells the story of one person, notes Olson, but all the headstones together will give a history of Americans in Egypt.

New “friends” needed

Isteero and Olson are hopeful that the U.S. Embassy and the American University in Cairo (AUC) will pitch in to help maintain, and even improve the cemetery going forward.

Headstones are seen inside a crypt in the American Cemetery in Old Cairo.

CBS News/Ahmad Shawkat

Olson has given both the former U.S. Ambassador to Egypt and the president of the AUC personal tours of the site, hoping to get them involved. He’s worried that without some outside support, the efforts of the six-member friends group won’t be sustainable.

So far, the cemetery hasn’t won commitments from any new friends.

In his book more than a century ago, the Reverend Watson quoted an Egyptian saying: “To honor the dead, bury them.”

Olson doesn’t buy into the finality of that, however.

“To honor the dead, tell their stories, and keep their memories alive,” he told CBS News.

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October 3, 2022
King Charles III will not attend U.N. climate change summit

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Buckingham Palace confirmed Sunday that King Charles III will not appear at an international climate change summit taking place in Egypt next month despite the monarch’s longstanding involvement in environmental advocacy. The statement came after reports that the British prime minister advised against his attendance.

The news is fueling speculation that Charles will have to rein in his environmental activism now that he has ascended the throne.

The Palace’s confirmation came after The Sunday Times reported that conservative Prime Minister Liz Truss objected to Charles attending the conference, known as COP27, when she met with the king last month at Buckingham Palace. The Times’ report suggested that Truss’ advice had influenced the king’s plans. King Charles has attended the conference in the past.

But a member of Truss’ Cabinet said the government and palace were in agreement about the decision.

“That is a decision that has been made amicably, as far as I am aware, between the palace and the government,” Simon Clarke told Times Radio. “The suggestions this morning that he was ordered to stay away are simply not true.”

Clarke also rejected suggestions that Truss didn’t want Charles to attend the summit because she intends to water down Britain’s climate goals. The government remains committed to the achieving its target of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, he said.

The Palace echoed Clarke’s comments in a statement to the BBC.

“With mutual friendship and respect there was agreement that the King would not attend,” the Palace said, according to the BBC.

Under the rules that govern Britain’s constitutional monarchy, the king is barred from interfering in politics. By convention, all official overseas visits by members of the royal family are undertaken in accordance with advice from the government.

Before becoming king when Queen Elizabeth II died on Sept. 8, there had been speculation Charles would travel to the summit in the role he then held as Prince of Wales.

Britain’s then-Prince Charles addresses a Commonwealth Leaders’ Reception, at the COP26 Summit, at the SECC in Glasgow, Scotland, Nov. 2, 2021.

Stefan Rousseau / Pool via AP

King Charles attended the previous climate summit, COP26, last year in Glasgow, Scotland, but his attendance at this year’s conference was never confirmed. COP27 is taking place Nov. 16-18 in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.

When he was Prince of Wales, Charles was accused of meddling in government affairs, including allegations that he inappropriately lobbied government ministers.

But Charles is now king, and he has acknowledged that he will have less freedom to speak out on public issues as monarch than he did as the heir to the throne. At the same time, his advisers would be looking for the right time and place for Charles’ first overseas trip as sovereign.

“My life will, of course, change as I take up my new responsibilities,” Charles said in a televised address after his mother’s death.

“It will no longer be possible for me to give so much of my time and energies to the charities and issues for which I care so deeply. But I know this important work will go on in the trusted hands of others.”

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October 2, 2022
EU aims for Israel reboot with summit

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The EU is seeking to reset its often testy relationship with Israel next week, convening a summit on Monday of senior political figures for the first time in a decade.

The meeting format, known as the EU-Israel Association Council, has essentially been dormant since 2013, when Israel canceled a gathering in protest over the EU’s stance on Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Since then, the two sides have continued to clash over similar issues.

But the 2021 exit of hardline Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu opened the door for current rapprochement. His replacement, Yair Lapid, who also holds the foreign minister role, has embraced a two-state solution with Palestine — a position more in line with many EU countries’ approach, even if several countries are still expected to express disapproval of Israel’s Palestinian policies on Monday. Brussels is also eager to shore up energy supplies from Israel amid Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Lapid is expected to attend Monday’s council meeting.

“There’s a big hope that the upcoming association council between the EU and Israel will bring … a new wind into our relationship,” Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavský told POLITICO last week at the United Nations General Assembly, expressing optimism that the development will be one of the key achievements of the Czechs’ six-month rotating EU presidency.

Still, getting EU consensus on one of the world’s most notoriously contentious conflicts is not going to be easy.

Countries like Ireland and Sweden have traditionally taken a more pro-Palestinian stance — Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas stopped off in Dublin for a meeting with the Irish prime minister earlier this month en route to the U.N. annual gathering. On the other end of the spectrum, Israel has strong supporters within the EU. Hungary, for example, is a staunch ally with economic and ideological bonds forged over the years between Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Netanyahu.

Before the EU-Israel council went dark, it had served for more than a decade as a forum for officials to regularly meet and discuss these issues. Now, with the council set to be revived, member states are tinkering with an official communique that needs to satisfy the spectrum of views regarding EU-Israeli relations.

Finding common language can mean weeks of fighting over a single word while backroom deals are cut to appease the myriad interests at play. Palestinian officials are also watching closely, demanding not to be left out of a similar diplomatic engagement with Brussels.

The EU’s complicated role in the Israel-Palestine conflict has played out in numerous controversies this year alone.

This spring, the European Commission was forced to delay funding for the Palestinian Authority over the content of textbooks, which critics say included anti-Israeli incitements to violence.

The decision to block the funds was led by Hungarian EU Enlargement Commissioner Olivér Várhelyi. As POLITICO first reported, 15 countries sent a letter to the Commission in April blasting the move. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen finally announced the money would be disbursed during a visit to the Palestinian city Ramallah in July.

EU commissioner for neighbourhood and enlargement Olivér Várhelyi | Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP via Getty Images

Further tensions with Tel Aviv emerged following an Israeli raid in July on the offices of Palestinian NGOs.

Israel had accused the groups — some of which received funds from EU countries — of being terrorist organizations. But numerous EU countries weren’t convinced.

In a joint statement at the time, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden all blasted Israel, saying it had not supplied “substantial information” to justify the raids. The bloc reiterated those “deep concerns” in August after further Israeli raids on civil society groups.

Another dynamic affecting the EU’s relationship with Israel is the Continent’s energy woes. As Europe scrambles to find alternative sources of Russian gas, furthering energy ties with Israel is one possible answer.

In a June visit to Israel, von der Leyen signed a memorandum of understanding with Israel and Egypt to boost gas exports. The EU is also Israel’s largest trade market and accounts for about a third of Israel’s total trade.

But while economic imperatives explain part of the new push for engagement with Israel, long-term observers say the outreach also reflects a new willingness to engage with Tel Aviv after Lapid came to power this summer. Lapid entered office as part of a power-sharing arrangement with Naftali Bennett, who held the job for a year prior to him.

“I think it is a genuine shift,” said Maya Sion-Tzidkiyahu, who helms the Israel-Europe Program at Mitvim Institute, an Israeli think tank. “The change of tone was made by Lapid, who shares much of the EU’s normative stance on the liberal democratic world order. It’s now much more positive than during Netanyahu’s government, even if Bennett and now Lapid government is not advancing the peace process.”

Sion-Tzidkiyahu said mutually beneficial scenarios are helping to replace “megaphone diplomacy” with closer dialogue.

“Disagreements on contentious issues such as the Palestinian or Iranian one will not disappear, but perhaps there are now better understanding for the concerns of each side,” she said.

Lipavský, the Czech foreign minister, is aware of the concerns some EU countries have about the Israeli’s government actions in the West Bank and towards Palestinians.

“We need to discuss [these concerns] openly, but I don’t think that one issue should block the debate about the others,” he said.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen poses for pictures with Israel’s Yair Lapid | Pool photo by Maya Alleruzzo/AFP via Getty Images

Officially, the EU supports the two-state solution that sees a Palestinian state living side-by-side in peace and security with Israel — a vision also shared by the United States. But making that prospect a reality seems as far away as ever.

Sven Koopmans, the EU special representative for the Middle East peace process, wrote earlier this month that all parties needed to help identify ways to solve the man-made conflict.

“The current situation is increasingly seen as a structural human rights problem, in which Israel has the upper hand,” he wrote in the Israeli outlet Haaretz. “That negatively affects how the world perceives Israel, and holds risks for the long-term. It should not be that way.”

When it comes to resuming the peace process, Sion-Tzidkiyahu is not confident.

“Under the current political circumstances in the Palestinian Authority and Israel, such development is not foreseen,” she said. “At most, the EU can push for more practical steps by Israel to improve Palestinian’s condition.”

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Ilya Gridneff and Joshua Zeitz

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September 28, 2022
Experts Say the Travel Industry is Bouncing Back From the Pandemic Quicker Than Expected

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Following an incredibly challenging period for the travel industry, demand has surged since governments relaxed or removed restrictions that had grounded most non-essential travel since the start of the pandemic.

Press Release
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Sep 8, 2022

MELBOURNE, Australia, September 8, 2022 (Newswire.com)
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According to Inspiring Vacations, leading provider of guided and group travel worldwide including tours to Egypt, tours of Cape York and everywhere in between, the travel industry is experiencing an unprecedented recovery with better than expected results posted by major travel agents and airlines.

In June, Qantas Group revealed it has reduced its net debt by $1.5 billion in just six months while Flight Centre said in a statement to ASX in July that it had returned to monthly profitability at the end of the financial year, now transacting similar values to those prior to the pandemic.

Inspiring Vacations explains the surge in demand coupled with higher than normal ticket prices caused by airlines reducing their capacity is the main reason for such a strong bounce back in the industry. The surge in demand has overwhelmed airports and airlines with travellers subject to massive queues, high rates of lost baggage and delays.

With the arrival of spring and the latest COVID wave dissipating across the country, Inspiring Vacations says there is renewed optimism amongst customers who are now feeling more confident to lock their travel bookings in. Many customers are now eager to plan trips ahead of time, which is a strong indication of the renewed confidence in the travel industry.

A recent survey of 5,000 Webjet customers found that 71% were now comfortable travelling internationally, with 64% saying they intended to head overseas in the next month.

Boasting the best-guided tours Egypt-wide as well as destinations closer to home such as Cape York tours, Inspiring Vacations offers a simple online booking system with detailed travel packages created in partnership with their worldwide network of local travel experts.

To learn more about their Egypt tours, tours to Cape York and everywhere in between, visit Inspiring Vacations online today.

Contact Info:
Inspiring Vacations
Phone: 1300 88 66 88
Email: bookme@inspiringvacations.com

Source: Inspiring Vacations

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September 8, 2022
Dream Getaway Destinations Close to Home

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Planning a holiday? From helicopter tours of Cape York to hikes through the Kimberley, Australia is full of breathtaking destinations.

Press Release
–

Aug 31, 2022

MELBOURNE, Australia, August 31, 2022 (Newswire.com)
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Australians are finally allowed to travel again after two long years of Covid-19 lockdowns and border closures. But with the recent onslaught of flight cancellations, airline staff shortages, Passport Office delays and lost baggage on international flights, many Aussies are ditching the Egypt tours and Fijian cruises and are instead opting to explore destinations closer to home this year, says Inspiring Vacations.

Australia is typically known for its white sand beaches and surf culture – but it is actually one of the most geographically diverse countries in the world. Inspiring Vacations, leading provider of tours to Cape York, Cape Town and everything in between, reports that the continent is full of red deserts, buzzing cities, pristine beaches, dense rainforests, breathtaking mountain ranges and more.

According to Inspiring Vacations, who offers holiday packages everywhere in Australia from Hobart to Cape York, tours are the best way to see everything a destination has to offer. Whether Australians want to explore the vast, beautiful coastline of Western Australia or get a taste of Melbourne’s world famous coffee, tour guides will make sure travellers are well taken care of and will be able to soak in everything there is to do, see and experience. Tours typically include sightseeing, transportation, accommodation, and meals – travellers barely have to worry about planning a thing.

The tours to Egypt and ski trips in Japan will still be there next year, says Inspiring Vacations. This year, Aussies should take some time to discover everything their own backyard has to offer instead. Inspiring Vacations is the top Australian provider of guided tours Egypt, Japan and everywhere in between. To book a trip or learn more about the tours they have on offer, contact Inspiring Vacations today.

Contact Info:
Inspiring Vacations
Phone: 1300 88 66 88
Email: bookme@inspiringvacations.com

Source: Inspiring Vacations

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August 30, 2022
International Borders Are Open, but Travelers Are Still Feeling Nervous – Experts Reveal Why

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Although borders are open, many Australians are nervous about the prospect of international travel. Inspiring Vacations, expert in guided tours to Egypt, Australia and beyond, shares its tips for combating that anxiety.

Press Release
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Jul 13, 2022

MELBOURNE, Australia, July 13, 2022 (Newswire.com)
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International travel resumed for the first time in two years earlier in 2022, and many Australians flocked to airports to take a well-deserved holiday or visit family and friends overseas. However, there remains a significant portion of the population who is still feeling nervous about the prospect of traveling internationally. Travel expert Inspiring Vacations reveals why some Aussies are feeling wary, and shares its tips for combating travel anxiety.

For the past couple of years, Australia – in particular, Melbourne and Sydney – has been in and out of lockdowns; Covid-19 rules have been known to change suddenly and with very little warning, and Aussies have been stuck outside of their home states, stranded and begging to be let back in. In 2020 at the onset of the pandemic, Australians were even finding themselves marooned overseas, desperately trying to book flights home from foreign countries as airfares rose and restrictions tightened. Of course, this has caused some lingering apprehension when it comes to travel, says Inspiring Vacations.

However, travel experts are reassuring nervous Aussies that although their fears aren’t unfounded, they no longer have anything to be worried about. For instance, travelers can rest assured that airplanes are some of the most Covid-safe places to be as they have a better air filtration system than most buildings or other forms of transport. Coupled with Australia’s ongoing mask mandate on planes, it is highly unlikely travelers will contract Covid from a plane trip.

Inspiring Vacations suggests nervous travelers opt for a tour rather than a self-planned trip. Whether traveling close to home or as far away as Japan or Egypt, tours ensure everyone is Covid-safe and abiding by local regulations. Tours often have travel insurance included, so if anything were to go wrong, travelers are covered. Travelers will still get to enjoy all that their destination has to offer without stressing about what could go wrong.

Explore tours to Egypt, Alaska and everywhere in between with Inspiring Vacations – contact their team to find out more.

Contact Info:
Inspiring Vacations
Phone: 1300 88 66 88
Email: bookme@inspiringvacations.com

Source: Inspiring Vacations

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July 12, 2022
‘Suez Canal and Challenges in World Trade’ Conference Kicks Off at Expo 2020 Dubai Amid International Turnout

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DUBAI, Arab Emirates, January 18, 2022 (Newswire.com)
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Admiral Osama Rabie, Chairman of the Suez Canal Authority (SCA), attended on Sunday morning the international conference the SCA organized under the title ‘The Suez Canal and Challenges in World Trade’ as part of Expo 2020 Dubai.

The conference discussed how to support global trade amid different challenges, including the coronavirus pandemic, as well as the policies and procedures adopted to ensure the sustainability of the services the SCA offers and the continuation of the flow of global trade through the Suez Canal, which is the lifeline of supply the world over.

Nevine Gamea, the Egyptian Minister of Trade and Industry, participated in the seminar via videoconference. Other participants included Yehia Zaki, Chairman of the Suez Canal Economic Zone, and a host of officials working in the maritime transport sector locally, regionally and globally, as well as representatives of the most prominent international commercial and maritime associations, institutions, companies, and shipping lines.

Taking part in the international conference were: Rumaih bin Muhammad Al-Rumaih, President of the Public Transport Authority in Saudi Arabia; Henriette Hallberg Thygesen, CEO of Fleet and Strategic Brands at Mærsk; Guy Platten, Secretary-General of the International Chamber of Shipping; Keiji Tomoda, Vice President of the Japanese Shipowners’ Association; and Yasser Zaghloul, Group CEO of the United Arab Emirates’ National Marine Dredging Company.

Launching the conference, Admiral Rabie welcomed the attendees, the partners in business and success, who attended the event to exchange ideas and visions that serve the interests of the global navigation community and the maritime transport industry and that are meant to shape the future of the industry in the medium and long terms. He saluted the organizers of Expo 2020 Dubai for hosting this important event, expressing his pride in the success of this edition, which has captured the world’s attention.

In his speech, Admiral Rabie stressed the importance of the concerted efforts of all the parties in the maritime transport industry to maximize available resources to face various changes and unprecedented challenges to the global trade movement. The most prominent of these challenges is the coronavirus pandemic and its variants and climate change and its grave repercussions, which may reshape the map of global trade movement and related logistical operations for decades to come.

Admiral Rabie stressed that the SCA is fully aware of the challenges the world has been facing over the past two decades and which still cast a large shadow on the global trade movement and the global supply chain. These challenges resulted in the biggest lockdown humanity has ever known, he added.

The SCA chairman spoke about a number of successful experiences through which the authority was able to overcome enormous challenges and turn them into opportunities for success and growth, such as overcoming the challenges posed by the coronavirus crisis and its repercussions on global trade movement thanks to the direct support of the political leadership and the adoption of a number of thoroughly studied measures and flexible pricing and marketing policies. The SCA did all of this while supporting the global trade movement, customers, and shipping companies and lines operating in the field of maritime transport, preserving the safety of workers in the Suez Canal and ensuring that infection does not spread among them, while increasing the revenues of the canal, which is one of the most important hard currency earners for the Egyptian economy, the admiral stated.

These marketing policies have succeeded in attracting 4,920 new ships in 2021 that had not previously passed through the Suez Canal, and achieved an increase in revenues of $1.1 billion, he pointed out.

Admiral Rabie explained that the SCA has made great strides towards enhancing the use of digital technology as part of its ambitious strategy for 2023. The authority has succeeded in completing the design and construction of two advanced data centers in conjunction with the implementation of the comprehensive digital transformation of the electronic monitoring system and the 16 navigational guidance stations along the course of the canal. The authority has also made a unified network system that allowed the launch of five electronic services entirely directed to international shipping lines.

Citing the success of the SCA’s digital transformation system in achieving its goals, Admiral Rabie said the authority implemented a remote reception and guidance operation, which was the first of its kind, for one of the largest cruise passenger ships in the world without the presence of an SCA guide on board, as is the procedure, due to the presence of 65 confirmed coronavirus cases on board the ship.

The SCA chairman stressed that the authority’s development strategy also focused on the environmental dimension, which is in line with achieving the objectives of the Egypt Vision 2030 strategy and the Egyptian state’s wish to take effective steps towards achieving carbon neutrality and cementing efforts to curb the repercussions of climate change. This is the framework under which Egypt was chosen to host the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP27) in November.

The authority has adopted all the necessary measures and procedures to ensure the announcement of the Suez Canal as a “green canal” and to work on reducing carbon emissions for transiting ships by providing various incentives for shipping lines that observe environmental standards, he said.

Admiral Rabie referred to the mega vessel Ever Given, sailing under the flag of Panama, that blocked the Suez Canal, as being a practical example of how the SCA overcomes crises and is able to turn challenges into opportunities. The SCA’s various specialized team members were able to float the ship safely in only six days, despite the expectations of experts in the maritime transport and global rescue sector that the flotation process would take weeks or months, rendering the incident the focus of the world’s attention.

In her speech, Gamea, the Minister of Trade and Industry, stressed the government’s keenness to maximize the economic benefit of the Suez Canal on the regional and international levels to boost Egypt’s position as a global commercial and logistics hub. She added that the global trade movement is currently facing many challenges, the most important of which is the coronavirus pandemic, which has led to a decrease in global trade growth rates as a result of lockdowns, travel restrictions, and border closures, in addition to the rising prices of energy, and subsequently the increase in the cost of freight and transportation.

The minister stated that the Egyptian government adopted many exceptional measures that aided in the resumption of work in the industrial sector during the pandemic, which contributed to the availability of goods and services in the local market. She explained that many exceptional measures were taken to facilitate the release of goods for the continuation of trade movement and supply chains. Minister Gamea added that her ministry worked in coordination with the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Transport to raise the efficiency of customs release systems by linking the concerned authorities electronically and beginning the implementation of the system in October 2021, which contributed to reducing the time for releasing raw materials needed for industries.

Minister Gamea explained that the Ministry of Trade and Industry has implemented a comprehensive strategy to gain access to more markets and enhance the competitiveness of Egyptian products to reach the target of $100 billion in exports annually, pointing out that the Egyptian Council for Export has been reconstituted under the leadership of H. E. President of Egypt Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi. Plans and policies to maximize exports were designed while activating the role of the Export Development Fund, developing a network of trade partnerships with foreign markets, and benefiting from regional integration and preferential trade agreements.

These measures contributed to a leap in Egyptian exports, which exceeded $31 billion in 2021, in addition to the increase in the contribution of industrial production to GDP to reach 17 percent during fiscal year 2019/2020, up from about 16 percent in fiscal year 2018/2019, the minister added.

Minister Gamea pointed out that the Egyptian government welcomes the promotion of joint commercial and industrial cooperation with all countries to maximize their investments in Egypt and benefit from the advantages offered by the Egyptian market. The most important of these is access to global markets through preferential trade agreements reached between Egypt and many countries and regional and international groupings, which provide nearly 2.6 billion people around the world with access to Egyptian products.

Zaki, the Chairman of the Suez Canal Economic Zone, announced in his speech the launch of ship fueling and marine services in the economic zone in the coming months. The zone is adding the final touches to activate these services and to study the offers it has received, he said, pointing out that marine and fueling services are some of the goals stated in the Economic Zone Strategy 2020-2025. He added that projects for the green hydrogen industry in the zone will be announced in conjunction with Egypt’s hosting of COP27 in November.

Zaki stated that the Suez Canal Economic Zone is a promising investment destination with a total area of 461 square kilometers, comprising four industrial zones and six seaports. It is located on the main international sea route and is an attractive platform for many industries with its comprehensive ports, logistics, and industrial areas, which enjoy world-class infrastructure and utility networks, including electric power, water desalination, water supply and wastewater treatment plants, in addition to telecommunications and natural gas.

Zaki stressed that the Suez Canal Economic Zone has succeeded in achieving its objectives, which focused on creating opportunities to attract diversified investments, pointing out that the economic zone targeted about 15 industrial and logistical sectors, three of which have already been contracted, namely the petrochemical industries that are located in Ain Sokhna, and industries for railroad supplies, green hydrogen and marine services, in addition to participating in the Egyptian state’s plan to localize the automobile industries.

Suez Canal sees strong growth despite challenges

The Suez Canal has retained its importance as the most vital navigational waterway in the world for more than 150 years, thanks to its unique strategic location that places it at the heart of the global trade movement and makes it the lifeline of global supply chains, especially those related to global maritime trade. Ninety percent of the world’s seaborne trade passes through the Suez Canal.

Despite the repercussions of the coronavirus pandemic, the subsequent fragility of global economic conditions, and the recent global supply chain disruptions, the SCA succeeded in overcoming these challenges after it was able to guide more than 20,000 ships with a total tonnage of more than 1 billion tons annually to cross the most important shipping lane in the world.

For more information, please contact: angie.mahran@strategic.ae

Source: Suez Canal and Challenges in World Trade Conference

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January 18, 2022