Four Working Group Meetings on Egypt’s Sustainable Consumption & Production (SCP) Action Plan

As mandated by the EC-UNEP SWITCHMED Project, designing a national action plan for Sustainable Consumption & Production (SCP) has been put into action. The EEAA and CEDARE held the first round of the working group meetings addressing the four main national strategic priority sectors: the solid waste working group meeting on May 31^st, the energy working group meeting on June 21^st, the water working group on June 24^th, & the agriculture working group on July 5^th, 2015 at the Environmental Cultural and Educational Center.

Sectors’ policy makers, experts and stakeholders shared viewpoints, insights and visions that lead to the integration of the SCP concept in the policies and activities of each sector. Also descriptions of potential projects, suggested budgets, time frames and stakeholders were presented and discussed. The related ministries, in turn, will be reviewing the presented projects whereas additional projects are still expected to follow before deadlines. It is noteworthy that the SCP National Action Plan joining the 4 sectors will be launched in a joint workshop in September 2015, as it will be later presented to a Donors’ Round Table Meeting by the end of the year.

The EC-UNEP funded multi‐component SWITCH‐Med programme will assist the 10 ENPI South target countries of the southern Mediterranean to develop and implement policies to SWITCH to sustainable pattern of consumption and production (SCP) promoting it among consumers, small and medium‐sized enterprises and Mediterranean policy‐makers. According to the agreement signed by UNEP and CEDARE in June 2014, Egypt is one of the countries covered by the project based on CEDARE’s ‘Green Economy Scoping Study for Egypt’ launched in cooperation with UNEP.