World leaders arrive in Egypt’s Sharm el-Sheikh for UN climate summit

SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt

World leaders began to arrive in Egypt’s Red Sea city of Sharm el-Sheikh on Monday to attend UN climate summit COP27.

Taking place from Nov. 6 to 18, the summit began with a speech by COP26 president Alok Sharma to mark the formal handover to Egypt.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres welcomed several leaders to participate in the global event, including UAE President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, French President Emmanuel Macron, Algerian President Abdelmajid Tebboune, Bulgarian President Rumen Radev and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

The summit is also being attended by Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who arrived in Egypt on Sunday for his first visit since 2018.

Egypt and Ethiopia are locked in a years-long dispute over a multi-billion dam project being built on the Blue Nile, a main tributary of the Nile River, which Cairo views as an existential threat to its water share.

According to Simon Stiell, chief of the UN Framework Convention on the Climate Change, 110 leaders and heads of states are expected to participate in COP27, in addition to thousands of representatives of civil societies.

Writing by Ahmed Asmar