The world’s wealthiest nations are demonstrating a "surge of solidarity" with those most vulnerable to climate change, said Cécile Duflot, president of the NGO Oxfam. Some 50 heads of state and government, representatives from international financial institutions, members of the private sector, climate experts and members of civil society will be attending the summit in Paris hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron on June 22 and 23. The objective of this ambitious conference is to "build a new contract between [the global] North and South", according to the Élysée Palace.  

Macron announced his intention to host this summit at the end of COP27 back in November, 2022. Environmentalists were not satisfied with how the climate negotiations had concluded. But in the final hours, a historic agreement was reached providing for the establishment of a fund to compensate for the effects of climate change suffered by developing countries. The initial aim of this week’s Summit for a New Global Financing Pact was to establish concrete measures to finance this fund. "From now on, the battle against poverty, the decarbonisation of our economy and the fight for biodiversity will be very closely linked," Macron said at the time.  

In the months since, the stakes have only heightened for countries in the Global South due to the combined fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, the climate crisis and galloping inflation. In the Palais Brongniart at Place de la Bourse, once the seat of the Paris stock exchange in the 2nd arrondissement (district), the hundreds of attendees will attempt to lay the foundations for an overhaul of the entire global financial system by adapting the post-war Bretton Woods institutions – the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank – to today's challenges. 

On Wednesday, 13 political leaders – including Macron, US President Joe Biden, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva – wrote that they are "urgently working to fight poverty and inequalities" in a contribution to French daily newspaper Le Monde.