Paris (France) (AFP) – A meeting of G7 nations on the environment begins in Paris on Thursday but climate change has been left off the agenda to avoid a row with the United States.
The office of France's ecology minister Monique Barbut said the two-day meeting would focus on "less contentious issues" in an effort to appease the largest and most powerful G7 member.
"We chose not to address the climate issue head-on... because the United States' positions on this subject are well known," the ministry said.
"We wanted to prioritise G7 unity, particularly to protect this forum."
President Donald Trump's administration has withdrawn the United States from global agreements on climate change and weakened environmental protections since he returned to office in 2025.
France, Italy, Canada, Japan, Germany and the United Kingdom are sending their environment ministers to the meeting of the Group of Seven industrialised economies.
Washington will be represented by Usha-Maria Turner, assistant administrator for the Office of International and Tribal Affairs at the US Environmental Protection Agency.
Barbut's office said attendees would discuss themes including ocean conservation, biodiversity funding, and the transformation of dry areas into desert.
Activists were critical of the decision to leave climate off the agenda.
Gaia Febvre from activist group Climate Action Network said "a G7 moving at the pace of the United States cannot claim to respond to the crises of the century".
"By yielding to pressure, it weakens collective action and renounces its potential leading role," she told AFP.
It takes place just days before more than 50 countries meet in Colombia for the first-ever global conference dedicated to phasing out fossil fuels, the main driver of climate change.
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I don't think you quite understand what they are saying.
This just means they won't talk much about in this G7 meeting and instead focusing on other issues. That doesn't mean the other 6 can't discuss it amongst themselves later.
See it from their point of view, why waste 2 days of leaders meeting on something you know one country in particular is just going to reject instantly. They already know the US position. There's no need to discuss it further here.