What role does AFD Group play in international environmental negotiations?

Addressing climate change and biodiversity loss is a priority of French foreign policy. In these areas, AFD Group, led by Agence Française de Développement (AFD), has a distinctive role within Team France, the network of French institutions working internationally.

Combining financing, expertise, and a presence on the ground, AFD Group supports French diplomacy by fostering dialogue and building trust. It strengthens France’s influence, builds lasting partnerships with countries in the Global South and Overseas France, demonstrates that proposals can work in practice, and helps develop ambitious standards and advance scientific knowledge.

1. It delivers on France’s environmental commitments

With €6.8 billion in climate finance in 2025, excluding Overseas France, AFD Group accounted for nearly 90% of the volume announced by France, making it the main vehicle for delivering on the country’s commitments.

The Group also contributes to France’s international objective of rebalancing climate finance to increase support for adaptation, in response to calls from countries in the Global South. Adaptation accounted for more than 42% of the AFD Group’s climate finance in both 2024 and 2025.

This role in delivering on commitments is particularly evident in initiatives backed by French political and financial support. Under the Just Energy Transition Partnerships (JETPs), for example, AFD has translated France’s commitment to South Africa into action: the €1 billion in financing announced by the French president had been fully committed by the end of 2025. AFD financing has also enabled substantial progress in support and funding for Vietnam and Indonesia.

AFD Group thus plays a key role in putting France’s international commitments into practice. Through its financing, expertise, and ability to bring stakeholders together, it turns policy priorities into concrete results, strengthening France’s credibility, reliability, and influence in international forums.

2. It builds long-term partnerships between France and partner countries

AFD Group helps sustain France’s engagement over time by building trusted relationships with partner countries through projects, a local presence, and technical cooperation. Its ability to work over the long term with government departments, local authorities, public and private companies, development banks, and civil society organizations ahead of negotiations is an asset for French diplomacy. It allows France to draw on years of cooperation with the stakeholders involved.

In India, for example, AFD Group supports the authorities on issues directly relevant to climate negotiations, including the energy transition, sustainable urban development, biodiversity, and climate change adaptation. At COP21 in 2015, this long-standing relationship led France and India to jointly launch the International Solar Alliance. The alliance helped secure India’s signature of the Paris Agreement.

AFD Group can therefore connect France’s diplomatic objectives with countries’ priorities. It provides negotiators with a detailed understanding of local conditions and, where possible, financial and technical solutions that make negotiated commitments achievable and ready to implement.

3. It demonstrates what works in practice

The results of projects financed by AFD Group give French negotiators concrete examples to support their positions, demonstrate the feasibility of their proposals, and establish the conditions needed to put them into practice.

In 2025, for example, AFD committed financing to the Ocean 30x30 project to prepare the creation of one of the first marine protected areas on the high seas, between the Crozet Islands and South Africa’s Prince Edward and Marion islands. The project provides a practical example of how to implement the new UN High Seas Treaty, championed by France, which entered into force on 17 January 2026.

More broadly, AFD has invested over €4 billion in support of oceans since 2020. This provides a wealth of experience to draw on in international discussions about marine conservation, protected areas, and sustainable resource management.

4. It helps France shape standards and build coalitions

AFD Group helps develop shared frameworks and methodologies, including common principles for alignment with the Paris Agreement, in multilateral forums and coalitions of public development banks. Through its climate and environmental requirements, and its support for partners’ and clients’ capacity to meet them, the Group drives far-reaching changes in operational practices, strengthening France’s influence on international standards.

AFD initiated the Finance in Common (FiCS) coalition, which brings together the world’s 550 public development banks. Through this coalition, AFD progressively promotes France’s climate and biodiversity ambitions and standards. Members have since made several commitments both to increase the volume of climate finance and to improve the quality of financing.

In climate negotiations, AFD Group also contributes its practical expertise in climate finance to Team France. Climate finance is central to the climate COPs. French ministries and AFD have notably worked together on proposals for the structure of the Green Climate Fund and the Fund for responding to Loss and Damage.

5. It advances scientific knowledge and counters disinformation

By financing research on climate and environmental issues, AFD Group helps advance knowledge and promote climate information integrity, a priority France will champion at COP31 in Antalya.

Support for research helps document the impacts of climate change, inform public policy choices with objective evidence, and underpin action with robust data. This leaves less room for unsupported claims or arguments that challenge established evidence.

The Group also supports research into how disinformation spreads and gains legitimacy, and the most effective ways to counter it, including fact-checking, media literacy, and public awareness. It develops tools to better anticipate disinformation risks in the sectors it supports, such as health, water, energy, agriculture, and climate. It also supports partnerships with specialist organizations such as QuotaClimat, civil society organizations, and independent media actors, including Reporters Without Borders.

By improving access to reliable information and strengthening societies’ ability to resist information manipulation, AFD Group helps reinforce the credibility of climate action.