France, Oct. 6 -- Rich countries are pushing poorer nations further into debt by giving most climate aid as loans instead of grants, a report published on Monday warned. The money often ends up back in the pockets of donor countries while vulnerable nations struggle to respond to climate disasters.

The report, by the NGOs Oxfam and CARE, comes a month before the Cop30 UN climate summit in Brazil, where governments will debate how to raise 1.3 trillion dollars a year in climate finance by 2035.

France was singled out as one of the worst offenders.

It gave 7.2 billion dollars in climate funding in 2023, but 92 percent of it was in the form of loans rather than grants. The share of loans with ordinary market-level interest rates rose from...