Latest news with #ICLEI
Egypt Today
18 hours ago
- Business
- Egypt Today
Environment min. to MENA: We work to add other Egyptian cities to ICLEI network
File- Egyptian Minister Yasmine Fouad during the press conference on June 1, 2025- press photo CAIRO- 9 June 2025: Minister of Environment Yasmine Fouad said her ministry is working to add other Egyptian cities to the Local Governments for Sustainability (ICLEI) global network after the Red Sea resort city of Sharm El Sheikh was designated as Egypt's first green city few days ago by the network. In statements to MENA on Monday, Fouad said that Sharm El Sheikh joined the ICLEI network, thanks to its sustainable development strategy, citing the injection of investments worth EGP 800 million in the new and renewable energy sources in the city to produce 51 megawatts of clean energy, the establishment of 145 kilometers of bike lanes, the introduction of a public bike-sharing system and robust solid waste management systems. She added the next phase will focus on activating the Sustainable Environmental and Social Strategic Development Strategy (SESSDS), through banning the use of single-use plastic in 50 hotels, empowering local community initiatives, especially in protected areas and coastal areas, and expanding partnerships with the private sector and international supporters.
CairoScene
a day ago
- General
- CairoScene
Sharm El-Sheikh Joins Global ICLEI Network as Egypt's First Green City
Sharm El-Sheikh launched 39 sustainability projects, including solar and green transport initiatives. Jun 09, 2025 Sharm El-Sheikh has officially joined ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability – becoming the first city in Egypt to be part of the international network dedicated to sustainable urban development. This step recognises the city's progress in implementing environmental reforms since 2018, when it hosted the UN Biodiversity Conference, and more recently, the 2022 UN Climate Change Conference (COP27). As part of preparations for COP27, nearly 39 environmental projects were carried out under presidential directives to transform Sharm El-Sheikh into a comprehensive green city. These included infrastructure upgrades such as 145 kilometres of bike lanes, the introduction of a public bike-sharing system, and the expansion of electric and solar-powered public transport. Renewable energy investments reached EGP 800 million, resulting in a solar power production capacity of 51 megawatts. Community-led waste management programmes were also introduced to encourage recycling and reduce overall consumption. Preservation efforts have extended to Ras Mohammed National Park, where biodiversity protection programmes are being updated to safeguard over 3,000 marine species. Behavioural change has also been identified as key to the city's green transformation, with public campaigns promoting reduced resource use and wider adoption of clean energy. While Sharm El-Sheikh is the first Egyptian city to join ICLEI, El-Kharga in the New Valley Governorate was previously recognised as a green city by the Arab League. Egypt's broader sustainability strategy is expected to bring more cities into international sustainability networks in the near future.
See - Sada Elbalad
2 days ago
- See - Sada Elbalad
Sharm El-Sheikh Becomes 1st Egyptian Green City to Join Global ICLEI Network
Ahmed Emam Egypt marked a significant milestone in its environmental journey as Sharm El-Sheikh was officially declared the first Egyptian green city to join the ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability, a global network dedicated to sustainable urban development. The announcement was made by Minister of Environment0 Yasmine Fouad during a high-level ceremony attended by South Sinai Governor Khaled Mubarak, UNDP Deputy Resident Representative Guemar Dieb, and Eng. Mohamed Aliewa, Director of the Green Sharm Project. Fouad described Sharm El-Sheikh's inclusion in ICLEI as the culmination of a years-long transformation, positioning the city as a national and regional leader in environmental sustainability. She traced the city's green journey back to 2018, when Egypt hosted the UN Biodiversity Conference, which brought international attention to the rich ecosystems of South Sinai and highlighted the country's commitment to integrating local communities in the management of natural reserves. Momentum grew further when Sharm El-Sheikh hosted the COP27 UN Climate Conference in 2022. Under President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi's directive, the city underwent sweeping upgrades, implementing nearly 40 environmental projects to prepare for the summit and to serve as a model for sustainable tourism. The minister emphasized that the success of sustainability initiatives hinges on public participation, noting that 'the human being is the foundation of sustainability.' She called on citizens to adopt eco-friendly habits such as recycling, resource conservation, and the use of renewable energy, stressing that environmental change begins with individual choices. The city's green credentials include major investments in solar power, sustainable transport, and waste management. Among the standout achievements are the installation of solar panels generating 51 megawatts of electricity, the construction of 145 kilometers of bicycle lanes, and the implementation of shared bike systems and electric buses. Community engagement has also played a vital role, particularly in solid waste management and biodiversity protection. Governor Khaled Mubarak hailed the ICLEI membership as a national accomplishment and a direct result of Egypt's strategic vision for sustainable development. He underscored that the green transformation of Sharm El-Sheikh aligns with South Sinai's sustainable development strategy, endorsed by President El-Sisi in 2024, which aims to position the city as a global hub for green tourism. 'Sharm El-Sheikh is no longer just a tourist destination; it is becoming a blueprint for how cities in the region can thrive economically, socially, and environmentally,' Mubarak said. He pointed to the 'Green Sharm' initiative as a turning point, driven by five integrated pillars: clean energy, waste reduction, sustainable transport, water conservation, and biodiversity. He also highlighted future plans, including a ban on single-use plastics in 50 hotels, increased support for local initiatives, and expanded partnerships with the private sector and international donors. So far, the city has attracted more than \$19.7 million in green financing, with further investments expected. In turn, Eng. Mohamed Aliewa, head of the Green Sharm project, described the city's ICLEI membership as a pivotal step toward its transformation into a sustainable city. He noted that Sharm El-Sheikh is now the fourth Arab city to join the international network. Aliewa also unveiled an online portal listing all certified green hotels, dive centers, and eco-friendly facilities — a tool designed to guide tourists seeking sustainable travel options. UNDP Deputy Resident Representative Guemar Dieb praised the city's achievement and Egypt's broader commitment to sustainability. He described Sharm El-Sheikh's transformation as a model for international green development, noting that the city's hosting of COP27 brought global attention to its environmental efforts and solidified its status as a beacon of climate leadership. Dieb applauded Fouad's role as Egypt's ministerial envoy to COP and her efforts in coordinating across government agencies to raise environmental standards in the city. 'Sharm El-Sheikh's success is a testament to what's possible when leadership, vision, and international cooperation come together,' he said. read more Gold prices rise, 21 Karat at EGP 3685 NATO's Role in Israeli-Palestinian Conflict US Expresses 'Strong Opposition' to New Turkish Military Operation in Syria Shoukry Meets Director-General of FAO Lavrov: confrontation bet. nuclear powers must be avoided News Iran Summons French Ambassador over Foreign Minister Remarks News Aboul Gheit Condemns Israeli Escalation in West Bank News Greek PM: Athens Plays Key Role in Improving Energy Security in Region News One Person Injured in Explosion at Ukrainian Embassy in Madrid News China Launches Largest Ever Aircraft Carrier Sports Former Al Zamalek Player Ibrahim Shika Passes away after Long Battle with Cancer Lifestyle Get to Know 2025 Eid Al Adha Prayer Times in Egypt Sports Neymar Announced for Brazil's Preliminary List for 2026 FIFA World Cup Qualifiers News Prime Minister Moustafa Madbouly Inaugurates Two Indian Companies Arts & Culture New Archaeological Discovery from 26th Dynasty Uncovered in Karnak Temple Business Fear & Greed Index Plummets to Lowest Level Ever Recorded amid Global Trade War Arts & Culture Zahi Hawass: Claims of Columns Beneath the Pyramid of Khafre Are Lies News Flights suspended at Port Sudan Airport after Drone Attacks News Shell Unveils Cost-Cutting, LNG Growth Plan
Egypt Independent
6 days ago
- Politics
- Egypt Independent
Sharm El Sheikh designated as Egypt's first green city by ICLEI
Sharm El Sheikh has officially become Egypt's first city to be recognized as a 'Green City' by the global Local Governments for Sustainability (ICLEI) network. This significant achievement was announced by Minister of Environment Yasmine Fouad, alongside South Sinai Governor Khaled Fouda and UNDP Deputy Resident Representative Gimar Deeb. The designation marks the culmination of Sharm El Sheikh's extensive journey towards environmental sustainability, which gained momentum after Egypt hosted the UN Biodiversity Conference in 2018 and was solidified by the UN Climate Change Conference (COP27) in 2022. Guided by presidential directives, approximately 39 projects transformed the city into a comprehensive green model. Key initiatives contributing to this status include substantial investments (LE800 million) in renewable energy (51 megawatts, solar installations across hotels and remote areas), the establishment of 145 km of cycling paths and sustainable transport, and robust solid waste management systems that engage the local community, including converting used cooking oil into biodiesel. The city also focuses on water desalination in Nabq Protectorate and biodiversity preservation, including coral reef monitoring. Though Sharm El Sheikh is the inaugural Egyptian city to join the ICLEI, El-Kharga City's prior designation as a green city by the Arab League highlights Egypt's expansive dedication to sustainable development. Governor Fouda emphasized that COP27 was a critical turning point, solidifying Sharm El Sheikh's identity as a green tourism destination. The 'Green Sharm' project specifically targets energy, waste, transport, water, and biodiversity, including a ban on single-use plastics in 50 hotels by 2025/2026. This comprehensive strategy, supported by over $19.7 million in funding, aims to make Sharm El Sheikh a global model for sustainable tourism, promoting a healthy environment, a promising economy, and a responsible community. The Green Sharm Project Manager and the UNDP representative both lauded Sharm El Sheikh's inclusion, emphasizing it as a clear demonstration of Egypt's dedication to green transformation and its positive impact on the city's tourism appeal in addition to its role as a global symbol post-COP27.
National Observer
28-05-2025
- Politics
- National Observer
A weaponized AI chatbot is flooding city councils with climate misinformation
Ilustration by Ata Ojani. Keep climate a national priority — donate today Goal: $150k $141k One morning in October of 2024, Fredericton city councillor Margo Sheppard received an email with the subject line: 'The Real Policy Crisis: Prioritizing 'Nature' Over People.' It was polished — almost algorithmically smooth — and it calmly urged her to reconsider Fredericton's net-zero policies. Over the next month, a flood of similar emails followed, all aimed at getting Fredericton to abandon global climate targets. Sheppard is used to emails from organizations on all kinds of issues, but not this many, not on this issue — and not so well crafted. She grew suspicious. 'If we're getting them in Fredericton,' Sheppard thought, 'councillors all across the country must be getting them too.' She was right. Thousands of councillors in more than 500 municipalities have received these emails, according to KICLEI, the group behind them, whose name mimics the international environmental network ICLEI. Screenshots of KICLEI's internal database show the email addresses of local officials nationwide. An investigation by Canada's National Observer has now traced the digital infrastructure behind KICLEI's campaign: a custom AI chatbot designed to express fears about United Nations control using moderate, civic language — messaging that is now shaping real decisions in town halls across Canada. At least 14 municipal halls have received KICLEI presentations, with Thorold, Ont., already voting to withdraw from Canada's flagship municipal net-zero scheme, Partners for Climate Protection. This month, Lethbridge, Alberta, voted to cut its governmental emissions reduction target in half. These decisions followed receipt by the town councillors of letters, presentations and reports from KICLEI members. Some of these materials contain misinformation, according to three climate scientists interviewed by Canada's National Observer. The consequences for the communities and climate action are significant — but climate plans might be just the first target. These AI-enabled tactics could scale, according to Shane Gunster, an expert in environmental communication at Simon Fraser University, who warned that artificial intelligence 'enables the cost of misinformation to come close to zero.' The chatbot's instructions tell it to 'de-emphasize the climate catastrophe narrative,' to focus on 'real pollution, not CO2.' The bot is told to frame these arguments in the most reasonable possible way. The Canadian Civic Advisor KICLEI ('Kicking International Council out of Local Environmental Initiatives') was founded in 2023 by Freedom Convoy activist Maggie Hope Braun with a singular aim: to convince towns and cities to quit the voluntary net-zero program Partners for Climate Protection, due to its ties to the UN through its co-organizer, ICLEI Canada. To achieve this, it has created its own custom AI chatbot: the 'Canadian Civic Advisor,' powered by OpenAI's ChatGPT. Internal instructions accessed by Canada's National Observer show that the chatbot produces tailored scripts, petitions, reports and even speeches for council chambers. The messaging is often framed to resonate with municipal officials' duty to represent local interests. The chatbot's instructions tell it to 'de-emphasize the climate catastrophe narrative,' to focus on 'practical environmental protection measures' and 'real pollution, not CO2.' The bot is told to frame these arguments in the most reasonable possible way, 'emphasizing collaboration' and 'encouraging diplomacy and mutual understanding between citizens and elected officials.' One prompt instructs the chatbot to draft critiques of a local Climate Action Plan based on KICLEI's centralized materials. The latest version is provided with KICLEI's Substack posts and scientific positions — content that, according to some of the scientists cited, contains climate misinformation. Output of the Canadian Civic Advisor, shared by Maggie Hope Braun on Facebook with the prompt 'Write a letter to the council in Peterborough to withdraw from PCP' Many advocacy groups use AI but the potential for it to amplify inaccurate information is 'disturbing,' even if real constituents are sending the messages, according to Gunster. He argues that the chatbot allows KICLEI to centralize local messaging and make it maximally persuasive for policymakers. 'You can tailor that communication so specifically to a particular region, to a particular individual, to a particular value set,' said Gunster. It is the first case Gunster has seen of AI being used to target municipal governments in Canada. KICLEI founder Maggie Hope Braun refused Canada's National Observer's interview requests, choosing instead to respond to written questions. She rejected concerns that KICLEI's chatbot was amplifying misinformation, describing it as 'democracy in action.' She explained the chatbot helps citizens who are genuinely concerned about global agendas to 'understand local policy and draft respectful, informed communications.' Braun published her responses online, with reworded versions our original questions. 'A gross misrepresentation of our work' Since April 2024, KICLEI has published 172 Substack posts — about one every two days — which are sent to councillors across Canada. Titles include 'Extreme Weather Events Are Not Increasing: Separating Fact from Fiction' and 'CO2 Is Not the Primary Driver of Climate Change.' Three prominent climate scientists told Canada's National Observer that some of these posts contain misinformation about their research. In March, 2024, Braun gave a deputation to Thorold, Ont.'s city council where she claimed that there is only a 0.3 per cent consensus among climate scientists that humans are the primary driver of climate change. In reality, the consensus is around 99.9 per cent, according to a 2021 review of over 88,000 papers. The 0.3 per cent statistic is attributed to a 2013 study by John Cook, an expert on climate misinformation at the University of Melbourne, who spoke to Canada's National Observer from his office in Melbourne, Australia. 'It's a gross misrepresentation of our work, clearly designed to mislead the public,' Cook said. The figure comes from a widely-debunked paper that he claims distorted his data to 'minimize the consensus as much as possible' by counting only studies that used very specific language. Using this methodology, he argues, 'you would say that there's zero per cent consensus that the Earth is revolving around the Sun.' Thorold councillors ultimately voted 7–1 to withdraw from the Partners for Climate Protection (PCP) program. Canada's National Observer covered this decision in a recent investigation into an anonymous oil and gas ad campaign targeting the same town. The motion to withdraw from PCP was introduced by councillor David Jim Handley, listed as a KICLEI member on Facebook. He described KICLEI's role in shifting council opinion as 'instrumental' and described Maggie Hope Braun as a 'catalyst' who guided his thinking. 'You could replicate it, easily,' he said. 'You gotta find one city councillor that's on your side.' At least 14 other municipalities — primarily in Ontario and Alberta — have received KICLEI presentations. Among them is Lethbridge, Alta., which voted on May 13, 2025, to cut its 2030 operational greenhouse gas reduction target in half. This decision followed a presentation from a KICLEI member, coordinated emails from constituents, and an unrelated staff recommendation. The scale of KICLEI's email campaign is even greater. Maggie Hope Braun recently claimed in an interview with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy that KICLEI is sending reports to 8,000 elected officials. Screenshots reveal an internal KICLEI database, packed with the email addresses of mayors, councillors, clerks, and chief administrative officers nationwide. One of KICLEI's published reports, 'CO2 is not the Primary Driver of Climate Change' cites the work of NASA atmospheric scientist Andrew Lacis on the logarithmic impact of CO2, claiming 'this diminishing effect challenges the assumption that rising CO2 levels alone will result in catastrophic global warming.' Lacis says this is 'disinformation.' Far from rising CO2 not being a concern, he explained that CO2 accumulates in the atmosphere, causing a 'virtually permanent increase' in the Earth's heat absorption. That drives long-term global warming and may trigger powerful feedback loops which pose 'an existential threat.' The same KICLEI report cites Kevin Trenberth, a prominent climate scientist at the US National Center for Atmospheric Research, to claim that 'water vapour is far more influential [than CO2] in regulating global temperatures.' This is not accurate, according to Trenberth: 'Water vapour is an important feedback but not a cause or primary driver,' he said. 'If there is no CO2 then there is no water vapour.' In her emailed response to Canada's National Observer, Braun rejected the concerns of the three scientists, calling them a 'disagreement over interpretation.' She denied that KICLEI's reports contain misinformation or disinformation. 'Our references to water vapour, CO2 forcing, and consensus data are grounded in published research,' she said, despite being informed that the authors of those peer-reviewed studies directly contradict her assertions. A firehose of emails Councillors in several provinces say they feel overwhelmed by KICLEI's outreach. Late in 2024 in Simcoe County, Ont., local officials described a 'firehose' of correspondence, according to Adam Ballah, policy and communications lead at the Simcoe County Greenbelt Coalition. 'It makes their jobs really difficult, having to wade through this stuff,' Ballah explained. In response, he wrote a detailed blog post rebutting KICLEI's claims. In one municipality, Tiny Township, a KICLEI deputation told councillors that the costs of the PCP program were 'unsustainable.' Alarmed, councillors ordered a review — which found the township was paying $12,700 a year. Tiny Township has reached Milestone 3 of the PCP program, creating a Climate Action Plan, which gives it access to grants from the Green Municipal Fund. KICLEI estimates that implementing all five milestones costs between $8 million and $212 million dollars, including up to $50 million for a '15 Minute City Model.' The Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM), which co-organizes the PCP program, did not provide alternative figures when asked directly. Instead, it released a statement from its President Rebecca Bligh, saying 'to combat misinformation spread by KICLEI, FCM is proactively communicating results and progress.' In New Brunswick, Fredericton councillor Margo Sheppard attempted to block incoming KICLEI emails but was advised by the city solicitor that they couldn't be filtered. She reported the messages as spam to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) — but never received a response. The CRTC declined to comment on the complaint, or whether they had received it. 'It's very distressing,' said Sheppard. 'I don't have time in the day to research people who are peddling misinformation or disinformation.' She was surprised to find out that KICLEI is using AI. 'I wouldn't know how to detect it,' she said. Whether or not we can detect it, AI has entered the conversation — and local councillors like Sheppard, once peripheral to digital politics, are now on the front lines of a new era of persuasive misinformation. 'This is the beginning,' Sheppard said. 'We're in for a deluge.' Rory White is an independent investigative journalist who builds technical systems to uncover coordinated campaigns targeting democratic processes. He has contributed to a Bellingcat investigation by geolocating sports betting operations in Russia, and published research analyses in The Lancet Psychiatry and Nature Mental Health. He holds a Masters in Data Science from the University of British Columbia and an in Biomedical Sciences from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. 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