Morocco’s King Represented at COP23 High-level Segment by Princess Lalla Hasna
King Mohammed VI has been represented by his youngest sister, Princess Lalla Hasna at the opening ceremony of the high-level segment of the 23rd Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP23) held Wednesday in Bonn.
Princess Lalla Hasna, who is the Chairwoman of the Mohammed VI Foundation for the Protection of the Environment, had earlier attended an informal meeting of heads of state and government that was chaired by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres.
The COP23 high-level segment opening ceremony was marked by the speeches of the UN Chief Guterres, the President of Germany Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Fiji’s Prime Minister and COP23 President Frank Bainimarama and President of the UN General Assembly Miroslav Lajcak.
The high-level segment resumed in the afternoon with addresses by several heads of state. Many of them, including President of France Emmanuel Macron, paid tribute to Morocco, which hosted COP22, for its unfailing commitment to preserve the environment and fight climate warming and its related changes primarily in Africa and island countries.
President Macron who hailed Morocco’s commitment and its tireless endeavors at the international level said “the fight against climate change is one of the major struggles of our time”.
The French President, whose country is hosting an international climate summit on December 12, also stressed the need to help the most vulnerable countries to manage the impact of climate change, calling for pooling energies and earmarking funding “to be at the rendezvous of the indispensable environmental transition”.
In keeping with the spirit of Marrakech, which hosted COP22, Fiji, as the President of COP23, places priority on the preservation of the multilateral consensus reached under the Paris Agreement for substantial reductions in carbon emissions.
Fiji ambitions to maintain the current momentum for the implementation of the Paris Agreement through a series of climate actions that require the involvement of all.
The target set by the Paris Agreement, namely keeping the global temperature rise to below 2º C, calls for coordinated international and regional strategies that cannot rely solely on nationally-determined contributions.
And Morocco has heeded the call and is building on the conclusions and recommendations of COP22. The Kingdom has thus put climate action in Africa at the heart of its overall climate strategy, and started launching several initiatives at COP22 to support climate adaptation and mitigate warming effects in the continent.
Morocco has launched the Adaptation of African Agriculture (AAA) initiative, which seeks to restore African ecosystem balance and enable countries of the continent to have access to climate funds.
In the same vein, Morocco and the World Bank agreed at the financial summit of COP22 to launch the “Green Growth Infrastructure Facility for Africa” tasked to spur green economy on the African continent and pull together environment-friendly private and public investments.
During the Africa Action Summit held in Marrakesh on the sidelines of COP22, King Mohammed VI stressed in a landmark speech that Morocco makes its expertise in renewable energies available to its African partners.
Morocco has actually planned to increase the share of renewable electricity generation to 52% by 2030, reinforcing thus its position as a continental climate leader.
It is to be recalled that during COP22 three commissions were set up under the effective chairmanship of King Mohammed VI, revolving around the Sahel, the Congo Basin, and the Island States regions.
Morocco also endeavors to gather support for least developed countries through advocating a speed up in delivering on the Paris Agreement notably in areas relating to fund-raising and capacity-building.
