Dr. Mahmoud Mohieldin participated in a panel discussion as part of the Third Global dialogue and investment focused event under the Sharm El-Sheikh mitigation ambition and implementation work programme, alongside Mr. Amar Battacharya, Dr. Omar El-Arini and Mr. Daouda Sembene to discuss the structural barriers and fiscal constraints hindering investments in renewable energy and low carbon development and how to address them. Dr. Mohieldin began with a nod to one of the more important outcomes of COP27: undoing the false dichotomy between climate and development finance. Dr. Mohieldin then mentioned current estimates of the financing gaps, shedding light on how the absence of dependable data creates a variance in estimates of investment needs. He then proceeded to highlight some of the key barriers to investment in the green transition including prevalent debt distress issues that developing economies specifically face, crowding out space for investment in the green transition and in sustainable development more broadly. To address this financing gap, Dr. Mohieldin references the High-Level Expert Group’s report on finance for climate action to showcase the multiplications needed in finance flows from private sources, domestic sources, concessional sources and through bilateral and multilateral finance.
On the topic of solutions to these barriers, Dr. Mohieldin asserted that breaking structural barriers to investment in the green transition happen on four levels: Global, regional, national and subnational. In that context, Dr. Mohieldin mentioned the work of the two initiatives launched in the lead up to COP27 on the regional level with the regional platform for climate projects and on the local level with the Egyptian National Initiative for Smart and Green projects, which serve as two examples of how a pipeline of investable projects on the regional and country level can spur further growth in private sector led, country/region specific investment in climate action.
