H.E. Yasmine Fouad

Minister of Environment, the Arab Republic of Egypt

Dr. Yasmine Fouad was appointed Minister of Environment of the Arab Republic of Egypt on 18 June 2018. She was previously Assistant Minister of Environment since 2014. Dr. Fouad holds MSc in Environmental Science and PhD in Political Science - Euro Mediterranean Studies. She has more than 20 years’ experience in Environment and International cooperation, working in Government, UN organizations, NGOs and Universities. As Minister of Environment, she leads a transformational change in environment sector in Egypt by creating more business oriented enabling environment, through 1) leading the processes of developing the Waste Management Law (202/2020), 2) leading the development and implementation of National Solid Waste Strategy; 3)developing waste to energy as new economic instrument; 4) participating in progressing the first governmental green bonds in Egypt and Middle East; 5) co-leading mainstreaming environmental sustainability aspects into national investment plans, as well as 6) improving Greater Cairo air quality and supporting construction of waste management infrastructure. Dr. Fouad’s work paved the way to the creation of environmental sensitive practices among current and future generations. She led designing, developing and launching several environmental initiatives that aim at raising awareness and ensuring youth involvement, such as the presidential initiative “Live Green” for three years (2020-2023). Dr. Fouad has clear milestones at the international level. She has played a crucial role in advancing the biodiversity Agenda, and leading the development of the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework, in her capacity as the President of the 14th Conference of the Parties of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD COP14) since November 2018. To this connection, she has initiated the Egyptian Initiative, - adopted at the CBD-COP14 in November 2018 – that aims at ensuring synergies among the three Rio Conventions (Climate Change, Biological Diversity and Desertification) - to ensure sufficient financial resources to tackle those related challenges. For Climate Change, she co-led the climate finance negotiation track during UNFCCC COP 24 (Katowice, Poland, December 2018), that resulted in developing the finance part of the Paris Agreement Work Programme successfully. In previous positions and assignments, she had supported 1) the Earth Institute in designing a Centre of Excellence for Adaptation to Climate Change; 2) AMCEN President in leading and managing the two climate change initiatives (African Adaptation Initiative (AAI) and African Renewable Energy Initiative (AREI)); 3) Nile Basin Discourse -a regional NGO- in supporting the impact of climate change on water resources in the Nile Basin. At the Academic level, she has been selected as a lead author to chapter four of the IPCC Special Report on “Climate Change, Desertification, Land Degradation, Sustainable Land Management, Food Security and Greenhouse Gas Fluxes in Terrestrial Ecosystems” in 2017.