The World Bank on Tuesday announced that from 2019 it will stop financing projects exploring and extracting oil and natural gas.
The announcement was made at the One Planet conference in Paris being hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron, The Washington Post reported. About 164 world leaders, government members, business executives and prominent personalities are attending the summit. The conference has been organised to celebrate the second anniversary of the 2015 Paris climate treaty.
However, the World Bank said that under exceptional circumstances it would consider funding upstream gas projects in the poorest of the countries “where there is a clear benefit in terms of energy access for the poor and the project fits within the countries’ Paris Agreement commitments”.
Macron, meanwhile, told CBS News that the United States’ decision to leave the treaty was a mistake. The French president added that he would not agree to Donald Trump’s demand for US’ terms to be renegotiated.
“It is extremely aggressive to decide on its own just to leave, and no way to push the others to renegotiate because one decided to leave the floor,” Macron said. “I am sorry to say that. It does not fly.”
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