Abdullah Al Rushud

SHARM AL SHEIKH: Tokyo’s Governor KOIKE Yuriko told Arab News Japan her goal was to build a city in the future that uses hydrogen and has a population of 14 million people.

“All oil-producing countries, including Saudi Arabia, are working very enthusiastically on [hydrogen use],” she said at COP27.

Regarding the problem of COVID-19 and the role of Saudi Arabia, she said: “Today, the comings and goings of people have become more lively. And at a global scale, this problem of COVID-19 is very much accompanied by hardships. The virus does not understand national borders, does it? And then climate change is also a topic throughout the world, so it crosses national borders. Thereby, Arctic ice will melt, and hurricanes and typhoons will become violent. Therefore, we must cooperate worldwide and deal with climate change. Accordingly, I think it is very significant that Saudi Arabia can go ahead with extremely powerful initiatives. While we look at those countermeasures of the oil-producing countries so far, Tokyo has an economic scale that generally accounts for about 20 percent of Japan’s GDP.

How will we take smooth measures for everyday life and business activities in Tokyo and, moreover, take countermeasures against climate change? What sorts of challenges will the oil-producing country Saudi Arabia take on? And how can matters then be skillfully coordinated? I look forward very much to the answers.”

Governor Koike stayed in Egypt for five days and gave a speech at a COP 27 conference, whose topic was hydrogen energy. She gave the speech in front of students who are studying Japanese at her alma mater, Cairo University, where she had studied in the 1970s. She inspected a science and technology university established with Japanese assistance.

Speaking to Arab News Japan, Governor Koike said she studied at Egypt’s Cairo University in the 1970s.  

“There was also the war called the ‘6 October War.’ On the other hand, with the help of a great many of my Egyptian friends, I led a very meaningful life. Now, about the things I studied in those days. I studied the topic of population explosion, that is, that the population will explode in the future,” she said.

For five days beginning in November, Tokyo Governor Koike attended the international conference COP27 (the 27th Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change ), which discussed global warming countermeasures.