France has appealed to the World Bank to hold the line on climate financing in the face of resistance from Washington. The country's Development Minister, Eleonore Carroix, told the BBC she was urging the bank to resist pressure from the United States and others and to stick with its target of devoting 45 percent of its annual lending to climate-related projects.
The plea landed at a pointed moment. With deadly heatwaves gripping much of Europe and sharpening public focus on climate change and the emissions targets needed to limit temperature rises, Carroix cast the lending goal as central to that effort, arguing that the world is still working on climate change and the future and that the World Bank's money is part of how it gets done.
At the heart of the appeal is a tug-of-war over the direction of one of the world's most powerful lenders. By singling out pressure from the United States, the minister framed the 45 percent target as something that could be watered down if the bank bends to its critics, and made clear that France wants it defended rather than quietly dropped.
Carroix tied the argument to a wider point about why investment matters, using the disasters now in the headlines. She noted that powerful earthquakes in countries such as Chile and Japan tend to cause fewer casualties because those nations are better equipped, whereas what the world has just watched is buildings falling down where preparation was lacking.
She drew a sharp contrast with Venezuela, where back-to-back earthquakes have killed hundreds. Over decades of Chavism and then Nicolas Maduro's rule, and even through the current transition, she argued, the country has not invested in its people or in its infrastructure, leaving it far harder hit than a better-prepared nation would have been.
Taken together, the minister's message linked the two strands of her interview: that spending on climate resilience and development is not charity but protection, and that institutions like the World Bank should keep channelling money toward it even when major shareholders push the other way. For France, the fight over the 45 percent target is a test of whether that logic survives the current political pressure.