Dr. Mahmoud Mohieldin, the climate pioneer for the Egyptian presidency of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention on Climate Change “COP 27” and the United Nations Special Envoy for Financing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, stressed that the world is suffering from a crisis of confidence and surpluses in crises that require decision-making institutions to do two inseparable things. The first is to be guided by actual data and detailed information that is constantly updated, and the second is to track major economic and political phenomena and their general trends and the extent of their impact on current affairs, and to prepare for them with alternative scenarios with a high degree of flexibility for sudden changes.
Mohieldin said, in an article in the “Future Horizons” magazine issued by the Information and Decision Support Center of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, that the world is going through a state of “continuous crisis” after it was exposed during the year 2022 to five shocks that confused it, including the repercussions of the Corona pandemic, the crisis in Ukraine, and inflation. The rise in energy and food prices, stagnation or a sharp decline in growth, debt challenges in developing countries and emerging markets, in addition to a sixth economic crisis that global economists warned about, which is the trade wars between the major economic powers.
Mohieldin explained that climate change, geopolitical turmoil, cybersecurity risks, energy challenges, epidemics and infectious diseases top the list of risks that threaten the world, and these risks must be addressed and dealt with so that the international community can achieve the goals of sustainable development by the end of the current decade.
The climate pioneer stated that dealing with the major disruptions that the world is exposed to requires investment in people, especially with regard to education, health care and social security systems, and addressing the phenomenon of climate change with investments that contain its effects in the areas of mitigation and adaptation and dealing with the file of losses and damages while providing the necessary financing for it. Long-term facilitator besides investment.
He added that the rapid pace of urbanization while preventing randomness and reducing unemployment requires huge investments in infrastructure and technology, and the spread of disputes and conflicts and the consequent appalling human losses require strengthening the foundations of governance and establishing the rules of justice and social security systems.
And he stressed the need for the world to benefit from the lessons of the Corona pandemic to deal with the outbreak of infectious epidemics and endemic and chronic diseases through early preparation for them and finding ways of prevention and treatment, and he also stressed the need to deal flexibly with the continuous change in the global economic center of gravity and its shift towards the east due to the relative weight of the population and sectors. Economic activity, and ways of interacting with this change with regard to the flow of trade, investment and work, as well as activating monetary and public financial policies and coordinating them to counter the turmoil of major commodity markets such as food, energy, gold, ores, and the related financial exchanges and shares of traded companies, and the volatility of bond and debt markets and the return on them.
Mohieldin said that mastering the sciences of the new industrial revolution and keeping pace with it with an advanced structure of the digital economy and the developments of information technology and artificial intelligence is necessary to deal with what is called the fourth industrial revolution and its impact on labor markets, trade, capital and income distribution.
Mohieldin noted the importance of investing in ways to deal with the aforementioned obstacles in order to strengthen the chances of progress in the race of nations in light of the transformation the world is going through towards a new world order that must be more just and efficient than its predecessor.
