Administrator Samantha Power Interview with Sky News Arabia at COP28

SAMI AL KASMI: Samantha Power, good to have you this morning. You just came back from Cairo. What are the major discussions you conducted with the Egyptian officials? 

ADMINISTRATOR SAMANTHA POWER: Well, as you know, Egypt has built a kind of humanitarian hub over the last month to ensure that the maximum amount of humanitarian supplies get into Gaza. Most of the population in Gaza is entirely dependent, right now, on humanitarian aid. So I visited the hub in El-Arish to look at what we can do together to support the Egyptians, and to support our humanitarian partners, to get far more food, medicine, shelter, psychosocial support into people who are suffering so much inside Gaza. 

I saw lines of maybe 200 or 300, trucks, drivers of trucks who’ve been sleeping in their cars for three days. And you just think to yourself, the contents of that truck should be in Gaza right now. So those blockages, those bottlenecks, which involve the inspection as well in Israel, because those trucks have to go to Israel to be inspected. And that takes time, and then you have more and more backed up, we have to work those things through. 

And we had a humanitarian pause, which very, very sadly is not happening right now. But the number of trucks that we got in during the pause – we should be getting in that number and many more, even after the pause. And that requires cooperation, not only from the Egyptians, who are housing all of these supplies, but also from Israel, being prepared to allow humanitarians to move more freely after inspection into Gaza. But also, to make sure that the bombing doesn't affect civilians who are coming to try to get access to these supplies.

AL KASMI: Has the U.S. efforts to allow humanitarian aid trucks to reach Gaza bore any fruits?

ADMINISTRATOR POWER: Yeah, I think, if you look at the beginning, right after the terrorist attack, you see that nothing was going in. And during the pause, we got up to about 250 trucks a day. But civilians, anyone in the world, shouldn’t be dependent on a truck. So we need commercial access to resume. We need the number of trucks to go in now, even after the pause – we hope there can be another pause – but until then, we need the number of trucks to be the same as it was, at least, in the pause. Because we are now at 100 trucks a day and that is not enough. People will die of disease, they will not have access to water, they will not have access to vital medicine if we cannot increase the flow much more substantially.

AL KASMI: It’s not enough, but the UN says that humanitarian aid is very scarce. What prevents this aid from reaching the needy and saving lives? 

ADMINISTRATOR POWER: Well, this hub in Egypt needs to be expanded. Donors, countries that have resources, need to be providing, actually, more humanitarian aid, more money. The UN issued an appeal, and it's only one-third filled. So two-thirds of what the UN says it needs has not been provided by the richer countries. 

I announced an additional $21 million yesterday, so that's something, but it's not enough. We need every country to do more. And then on the Israeli side, there needs to be much faster inspection. The trucks need to be able to move much more quickly into Gaza. And the security of the people who are providing this assistance needs to be guaranteed. Right now, so many aid workers have been killed in bombings – more than in the history of the United Nations. So there absolutely have to be protections for humanitarians, and for civilians in their homes, in hospitals, and when they go to try to collect humanitarian assistance.

AL KASMI: The U.S. advised Israel to do more to minimize the civilian casualties. Do you think that Israel will respond to such calls?  

ADMINISTRATOR POWER: Well, here, I would quote, Secretary Austin, our Defense Secretary who fought ISIS, in Mosul, among other places. And what he has said for many, many weeks, privately, to his Israeli counterparts, and then said publicly over the weekend, is that without putting civilian protection at the center of your war effort, without making civilians the center of gravity, and protective space the center of gravity, you can have a tactical victory, but you will end up in strategic defeats. 

And so the main reason, of course, to protect civilians is that every life is precious, and no innocent civilian should be targeted in warfare, but as well, the Israeli objective of defeating Hamas and neutralizing terrorist movement is only going to be achieved with the civilian population better protected in this war. Far too many civilians have died in this conflict so far. 

AL KASMI: 60 days of war, isn’t it time to end this human tragedy in Gaza by implementing a ceasefire inside of truce? 

ADMINISTRATOR POWER: Well, I would say that the humanitarian pause that occurred for a week gave us a taste, of course, of hostages finally being able to be reunited with their families, but also, people being able to walk the streets without fear of bombing and poor access to food and medicine and shelter. 

We are very, very eager to see another pause in place so that more humanitarian aid can flow so that more hostages can be released. And the United States is working actively for that. The challenge right now is that many of the Hamas leaders who are behind murder, and kidnapping of Israelis are still at large. And so again, a humanitarian pause is vital, but it's also vital that Hamas not be able to do again what it did on October 7.

AL KASMI: John Kerry said a few days ago that the U.S. and China came to understandings and agreements on climate change. Will this step pave the way for extra agreements on this issue? 

ADMINISTRATOR POWER: Well, first, let me say that what the United States and China agreed to is very important. China, for the very first time, has agreed to make lowering its methane emissions part of its national climate plan – they had never done that before. And the world is gradually starting to recognize that methane creates 87 times more warming than carbon emissions. It is an incredibly dangerous form of emission. So that is a very important step by the PRC. 

That said, it has to provide a foundation for more action by each of our countries, because we know that we are right now on a trajectory that would cause hundreds of millions of people to suffer from extreme heat, displacement, to need humanitarian assistance. And the United States and China are two of the three largest emitters in the world. And so we really hope that that will be the first step and then we can see many, many other steps taken.

AL KASMI: Washington allocated donations worth $1 billion to motivate those working to phase down emissions. Is such a contribution sufficient? And what should other countries do to keep pace with these efforts?

ADMINISTRATOR POWER: I think, first of all, this year, we are actually investing about $9.5 billion in climate finance, that is a combination of investments in renewables that will lower emissions, in methane reductions for example, as well. But it is also what USAID does, which is work on climate adaptation. We know that even if we halted temperature rise right now, we're already seeing flooding, wildfire, drought, and massive loss of livelihood and income. And so this $9.5 billion, also includes more than $2 billion in investment in helping very vulnerable communities withstand the effects of climate change. 

But $9.5 billion is very substantial, especially compared to where we have been in the past, but it is very small next to the degree of need, particularly, again, in developing countries, and in countries that have no margin, no insurance, no disaster resilient infrastructure. When they get hit by climate emergencies, by natural disasters, it kills so many more people and takes me so many more jobs than it does even in our advanced economy, where we know the damage is severe. 

So, I think $9.5 billion is really important, and it shows seriousness and commitment. But we also recognize the gap between what governments are doing collectively and what communities we've worked in are doing.

AL KASMI: Samantha, how is your Agency supporting the global communities affected by climate change?

ADMINISTRATOR POWER: Well, USAID does work in two areas. First, many of the countries we work in actually emit a fair amount of carbon, or they emit methane, for example, through agriculture. So bringing online more solar, more wind, more renewable sources of energy, will affect our overall objective to lower carbon emissions. Working with farmers to lower methane emissions, again, because of the role of methane plays in warming will be very, very important. 

But for us, we also recognize that the number one cry that we hear from countries that we work in right now, in the poorest communities in the world, is around adaptation. And so there we are – farmers are planting their seeds, like they have many generations, and then the floods, or the drought is coming and it's destroying their income. So, for example, we are providing the farm farmers with flood insurance, so that they can guard against that kind of risk. We're providing farmers with seeds that are drought resistant, that are more likely to produce crops in extreme heat than last generation’s seeds were able to do. So that's just one example of – we know flooding is coming, we know drought is coming, so what can we as a development agency do with the farmers that we've been working with for many years, to make sure that they are prepared. 

And that is, here at COP, one of the things we're doing is trying to get the private sector more interested in investing, in helping countries prepare for the increase in temperature and the effects of that increase that are already walloping these countries, and undermining broader successes that we have been having in health, in agriculture, in other economic growth. And so it isn't enough for just USAID or donors to be doing this work, we actually need companies to see that they will make a return on their investment by investing in technology, in insurance, food security, in disaster resilient infrastructure. 

And so right here at COP, we are actually seeing a tripling of the number of companies who are engaging with USAID to make these adaptation investments. So, again that’s significant, but we know much more needs to be done.