France said Sunday that it would ramp up foreign assistance, pumping in an extra four billion euros ($4.5 billion) per year starting in 2020. President Francois Hollande, announcing the aid boost at a United Nations summit on development, said the move would bring French aid to 12 billion euros annually. However, he did not specify how the assistance would be divided and whether it would go to fight poverty or climate change.
France has been seeking greater commitments by wealthy countries to nations hardest hit by rising temperatures and sea levels as part of year-end negotiations in Paris aimed at a new agreement on climate change. Hollande, meeting French ambassadors at a gathering in Paris last month, had said that France would boost aid but had not given a figure. He made the promise as he announced a new relationship between the French Development Agency and the Caisse de Depot, a public finance institution.