PARIS, France (AFP)— French President Emmanuel Macron said Friday that the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East should not distract the world from tackling climate change and poverty.

In an op-ed published in the newspaper Le Monde, Macron proposed a new global climate pact and reiterated his calls to reform global financial governance to better involve emerging countries.

The French president is keen to move on with his reform agenda after months of wrangling over controversial immigration legislation, whose passage in parliament sparked a political crisis this month.

He said Russia’s war in Ukraine and the Israel-Hamas conflict “must not make us deviate from our priorities”.

“We must accelerate the ecological transition and the fight against poverty at the same time,” Macron said.

“No country will agree to lead its population into a social and economic deadend to protect the planet.”

Macron has made tackling climate change a key plank of his policies.

Nearly 200 nations meeting at the UN’s COP28 climate summit in Dubai agreed earlier this month to a first-ever call for the world to transition away from fossil fuels.

Macron said it was up to developed G7 countries as well as China to lead the way to help wean the world off fossil fuels.

“We must exit coal in 2030, exit oil in 2045 and exit gas in 2050,” he wrote.

He said the financing of renewable energies but also of nuclear energy in emerging countries should be accelerated.

Macron also called for reform of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

“Eighty years after its creation, this financial architecture is undersized compared to the size of the world economy and population,” he said.

“It is also largely fragmented, because we have not opened the door to emerging and developing countries in the governance of these institutions.”