Yasmine Fouad

Dr. Yasmine Fouad is the Minister of Environment of the Arab Republic of Egypt. Her expertise is in Environment and International cooperation with more than 18 years of experience working in Government, in UN organizations, NGOs and Universities. She holds her MSc in Environmental Science and PhD in Political Science / Euro Mediterranean Studies. She has gained an extensive experience in climate change issues through her diversified work with academic, government and non-government organizations and International organizations. In this context, she supported the Earth Institute in designing a Center of Excellence for Adaptation to Climate Change and supported the AMCEN President in leading and managing the two climate change initiatives, mainly the African Adaptation Initiative (AAI) and African Renewable Energy Initiative (AREI). Moreover, she supported the Nile Basin Discourse – a regional NGO- in designing a proposal and policy paper on the impact of climate change on water resources in the Nile Basin. Throughout her position as Assistant Minister of Environment, she supported the Minister of Environment in preparing the Africa portfolio for the President of the Arab Republic of Egypt in his capacity as Coordinator of the Committee of African Heads of States for Climate Change (CAHOSCC) from 2015-2017. She has represented the AMCEN President in the Steering Committee of the Clim-Dev Africa and has been a co-chair of the NEPAD Regional Flagship Programmes Steering committee and the Lima Climate Finance meeting in 2015. In addition, she supervised the work of the climate change projects in Egypt and co-chaired the Climate Change and Environment sub-group with the AfD to oversee the work of the development partners in climate change in Egypt. She acted as Egypt GCF National Foal point and established a national participatory consultative mechanism for preparing a project pipeline to be submitted to the GCF. She has been selected as a lead author for chapter four of the upcoming IPCC Special Report on “Climate Change, Desertification, Land Degradation, Sustainable Land Management, Food Security and Greenhouse Gas Fluxes in Terrestrial Ecosystems.” Moreover, she has led a multi-stakeholder task force on preparing the Environment pillar of the National Sustainable Development Strategy 2030 while mainstreaming climate change aspects within the strategy. Her expertise is demonstrated through her proven record in overall supervision and management of AMCEN, Sustainable Development and Climate Change portfolios. She gained a wealth of coordination, management, and operations experience through seven years of working in two GEF/UNDP cross-cutting capacity development projects in Egypt. She participated as an expert in the Capacity Development Regional Arab and African Initiatives, such as scorecard exercises with the UNDP Bratislava Regional Center.