Paris climate summit opens with call for ‘finance shock’

Paris climate summit opens with call for ‘finance shock’

PARIS — The leaders of France and Barbados joined forces on Thursday to push for an overhaul of the international financial system at a summit aimed at tackling poverty and climate change.

French President Emmanuel Macron, who is hosting the two-day conference in Paris, invited Barbadian Prime Minister Mia Mottley to co-headline the event which seeks to improve the lending system for developing countries mired in poverty and threatened by planet-heating emissions.

In his opening remarks, Macron told delegates that the world needs a "public finance shock" — a global surge of financing — to fight these challenges, adding the current system was not well suited to address global challenges.