By Nneka Nwogwugwu
The Egyptian government has appointed foreign minister Sameh Shoukry to lead the COP27 climate talks in Sharm El-Sheikh in November.
The country’s environment minister Yasmine Fouad, a climate scientist, will be Cop27 “ministerial coordinator and envoy”.
Their appointments were announced in a joint statement with the UK after they met with Cop26 president Alok Sharma.
While Shoukry has no significant experience or expressed interest in climate change, Fouad was lead author on a chapter of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s special report on desertification in 2017 and co-chaired finance talks at Cop26 in November.
Fouad has worked for UN organisations, NGOs and universities and is a veteran of the environment ministry, having become the deputy minister in 2014 and promoted to the top job in 2018.
Of the 26 Cop summits, 21 have been chaired by men. At every summit, there have been more male delegates than female.
Shoukry is a career diplomat who worked his way up to become then-president Hosni Mubarak’s ambassador to Washington in 2008, a job he held on to until 2012 despite the Arab Spring uprisings.
After Abdel Fattah el-Sisi seized power to become president in 2014, he brought Shoukry back into government as foreign minister.