GORD And Baladna Join Global Climate Action At COP27

Baladna Food Industries, a leading and largest dairy producer in Qatar, has joined forces with the Gulf Organisation for Research and Development (GORD) to explore synergies aimed at enhancing Qatar's food securing through sustainable innovations. To this end, a memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed on November 9, 2022 at the UNFCCC (COP 27) taking place until 18 November 2022 in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt. Areas of collaboration covered in the recent MoU include works on RDI activities to support sustainable solutions aimed at ensuring food security; capacity building through trainings and educational programs, and decarbonization initiatives aimed at achieving carbon mitigation. 
Signing the agreement was GORD's Founding Chairman, Dr. Yousef Alhorr and Wafaa Al Saffar, Sustainability Director at Baladna. Speaking at the MoU signing ceremony, Dr. Yousef Alhorr said,“As Qatar continues to make major strides towards self-reliance in food security, adopting sustainable farming and ecofriendly agriculture solutions is imperative for the nation's sustainable development. Baldana has remained a key player in strengthening Qatar's food security, all the while initiating a range of climate conscious projects. Our MoU with Baladna aims at pursuing more research to reduce carbon footprint by developing sustainable cooling technologies in agriculture in places like Qatar that have harsh climatic conditions. Our collaboration today provides an example for organizations across diverse sectors to explore synergies aimed at catalyzing climate action.”
Speaking on behalf of Baladna, Wafaa Al Saffar, Environmental, Social and Governance Director, said,“Today we are celebrating our partnership with GORD. We are privileged to be invited at COP27 to formalize this collaboration which we believe will be very crucial in strengthening Qatar's food security and ensuring its sustainable development. We are very pleased to work with GORD through the years, pushing our mutual agenda towards a sustainable future.” Giving details about specific projects of collaboration, she added,“Qatar has a very harsh climate which makes dairy farming very challenging. Through our MoU, Baladna and GORD will be collaborating on the development and application of GORD's novel cooling technology for climatizing barns.”
At COP27, Baldna is also joining GORD Pavilion as the Eco-Champion of Destination Green Program – a multistakeholder initiative gathering organizations to share their success stories in the field of sustainability by showcasing them at international platforms such as COP 27. The idea behind GORD's Destination Green is to widen the impact of the ongoing sustainability efforts by exploring cross-sector synergies and promoting stakeholder engagement beyond their field of business. Sharing details about Baladna's engagements at COP27, Francis Higgins, Corporate Communications Director, said,“Baladna is here at COP27 to share its unique story about how despite all odds it overcame a dire situation that Qatar faced with no dairy in the country due to blockade. Here in COP27's Blue Zone and Green Zone, we are listening to the talks to learn how we can do even more to address climate change and achieve sustainable development. We are also here to support GORD as our strategic partner. We have a multistakeholder partnership whereby Baladna has been able to reduce its climate impact.”

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