“Carbon Credit & Carbon Platforms” was the title of Chapter Zero Egypt sixth awareness session for Board Members and senior executives as part of its comprehensive awareness mission to educate Business leaders on the opportunities and challenges of Climate change and climate governance.
Held in Elsewedy Electric premises, participants were welcomed by Manal Hassan the technical Advisor to the Board of Directors who introduced the speakers of the session Mr. Helmy Abouleish, Founding Board member of Chapter Zero Egypt and Secretary General and Chairman & Managing Director of SEKEM group as well as Mr. Sherif El Diwani Board member of Climate Business Developers MGM.
Abouleish delved into the whole system of carbon credits with a focus on the agricultural sector and the cost effectiveness of transforming into a net zero operation. Transformed farming practices to organic alone he said can contribute to decreasing emissions significantly and can yield the same amount of crops as the conventional method in 5-6 years stressing that Farmers are potential climate heroes. He also pointed out that high quality and high integrity carbon credits improve the climate as well as biodiversity, soil and human health, food and water security and the socioeconomic condition of small farmers. Challenges facing Egypt including water scarcity, population growth, degradation of natural resources, land fragmentation were addressed and most importantly climate change.
Abouleish also covered Accreditation programs that certify best practice in Green House Gas (GHG) emissions reduction and praised the Financial Regulatory Authority for issuing the carbon credit verification and certification guidelines along with the Central Bank’s sustainable Financing Principles and encouraging finances to projects addressing climate change as well as commending the Ministries of Finance, Planning & Economic Development and Environment for their achievements in Climate related issues.
The second part of the sixth awareness seminar, delivered by Sherif El Diwany tackled the Voluntary Carbon Market noting that the world is struggling to solve the Climate crisis caused by GHG emissions and that the 2015 Paris agreement revamped the Carbon Credits Market rules dividing them into compliance markets and voluntary ones. The carbon credit mechanism was explained along with the conventional Voluntary Carbon Markets and their Governance. El Diwany also highlighted that the path to Net Zero emissions is through Carbon neutrality and that this race has to have a four-step approach with a pledge from the top of the organization to reach this target by mid-century at the latest then plan, take action and publish progress at least annually.
