France urges World Bank not to scrap climate target

France's development minister issued an eleventh-hour plea to the World Bank on Thursday, urging it to resist pressure from its largest shareholder, the United States, and stick with a climate finance target due to lapse at the end of the month.

U.S. President Donald Trump's administration has demanded the World Bank abandon ​a target to devote 45% of its annual lending resources to climate-related projects, and focus instead on core development lending, including ⁠a return to fossil fuel projects.

The Climate Change Action Plan, or CCAP, has already been extended by a year but looks sets to lapse without a clear replacement, something many European and other World Bank shareholders are worried about.

"As shareholders, countries of these institutions, it is, of course, our responsibility to ensure that their operations remain sufficiently ambitious when it comes to climate finance," France's development minister Eleonore Caroit said at a London Climate Action Week event.

"And this is, of course, the case where other shareholders have different views on climate, as it is the case now," she added, referring to the U.S. administration of Donald Trump.

A group of 19 of 25 World Bank shareholders signed a statement last October calling for continued support of the bank's climate goals, but the directors representing the U.S., Japan, India, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Kuwait declined to sign.

In response to the French plea, a World Bank spokesperson said: “On our Climate Change Action Plan, we're in active conversation with our shareholders about what comes next — focusing together on what matters most to our clients: smart development and real outcomes."

FRANCE WILL KEEP ADVOCATING

Caroit, whose train to London from Paris was delayed by track issues caused by record European temperatures, said supportive shareholders would "remain extremely attentive" on what happens next.

"We will continue to ensure that the direction that the World Bank Climate Change Action Plan takes is the right one, and this is something that we've been advocating for in Washington, and will do so in Bangkok in a few months," she said, referring to the World Bank and IMF annual meetings in mid-October.

She highlighted how U.S. opposition had stalled progress on other global environmental initiatives, including the plastics pollution treaty since Trump's return to office.

"We shouldn't abandon. We should continue to be focused with the countries that want to continue and ensure that this produces results," Caroit said.

With climate-related disasters expected to become more frequent because of global warming, she added: "We need to send a strong signal to all countries and to all economic actors, in particular, in a time of backlash, so to speak, in certain countries."

-Reporting by Marc Jones; editing by Barbara Lewis and Deepa Babington/Reuters