L’EEgypt hosts the COP for nearly two weeks 27, the 27th United Nations climate change conference. Representatives of more than 190 countries are thus expected in Sharm El-Sheikh from 6 to 18 November 2022. A choice of host country that raises questions, while a EEgyptian who is campaigning for the environment could end up in prison. And that theEtat, which is now trying to create an “ecological” image, is far from being exemplary.
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To cope with demographic pressure, theEEgypt has launched a policy of new towns across the country, including one personally desired by President Al-Sissi: the new capital, built at 50 km from the center of Cairo, in the middle of the desert. A titanic project, with little-known environmental consequences. And who, at the time of the Cop, is a scarecrow for some.
In short, futuristic towers, made of glass, which grow in the middle of the desert, as President Al-Sissi personally wanted. The new capital has been under construction since 2016. Researcher Sandrine Gamblin is already working there: her university has moved there.
“It’s quite impressive because it comes out of nowhere and at the same time, every week something is happening around, she indicates. We are going to have a road that is finally paved, and after the asphalt, the green spaces.”
“It’s a vision, to which we subscribe or not. Me, I don’t get tired of it.”
Sandrine Gamblin, researcherat franceinfo
This new city does indeed have detractors. It has already cost billions and was designed without extensive environmental reflection, says urban planner Galila El Kadi. “There was no impact study: none, laments the latter. The environment is not taken into account at all! There are no solar panels in any of the new towns, even the most recent ones, even though we have I don’t know how many days of sunshine a year! They could have at least done that! At the highest level ofEtat, they don’t care…”
If theEEgypt has promised that 42% of its electricity will be produced in 2035 thanks to renewable energies, in particular solar energy, the country produces and exports on the other hand gas, a fossil energy that Europeans have coveted, particularly since the beginning of the war in Ukraine.