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G7 says nature talks a success as climate sidelined for US / Photo: © AFP
G7 says nature talks a success as climate sidelined for US
Environment ministers from G7 nations said progress was made at a two-day meeting in Paris despite climate change left off the agenda to avoid friction with the United States.
The Group of Seven skirted any direct mention of global warming to appease its largest and most powerful member, which has shunned global climate action under President Donald Trump.
France's ecology minister Monique Barbut said they chose to focus on areas that would attract consensus among all G7 members rather than provoke divisions.
"Climate change, as I said quite frankly, was not directly among these priorities," Barbut told reporters as the meeting closed in the French capital.
"That is why we chose not to address this fundamental issue, because if we had, we would have risked some partners leaving the negotiating table and thus achieving nothing at all."
She said this "pragmatic" approach had resulted in the adoption of seven declarations by member states France, Italy, Japan, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany and the United States.
"This is significant given the current challenges to environmental multilateralism. We consider these results exceptional," Barbut said.
In his second term as president, Donald Trump -- a sceptic of climate change -- has pulled the United States from the Paris Agreement and the bedrock treaty underpinning global climate action.
The decision to avoid the topic in Paris was criticised by climate activists, who accused the group of wealthy industrialised economies of bowing to pressure.
But Japan's Environment Minister Hirotaka Ishihara said the agenda focused on common challenges and Washington's representative "engaged with our discussions together".
"We didn't feel that pressure whatsoever," he told reporters.
- 'Important' talks -
The United States dispatched Usha-Maria Turner, an assistant administrator at the US Environmental Protection Agency, to the talks.
The other G7 nations were represented at the ministerial level, and Armenia, Kenya, South Korea and Mongolia also sent high-level representatives.
When approached by AFP on Thursday during a ministerial visit to the Fontainebleau forest south of the French capital, the US representative declined to comment.
Canada's Minister for Environment, Climate Change and Nature, Julie Dabrusin, said protecting nature and the climate "went hand in hand" and the Paris meetings canvassed both themes.
"The conversation is deeply intertwined. And I think that they were important conversations for us to have," she told AFP on Friday on the sidelines of the closed-door talks.
Barbut said seven declarations were agreed on subjects ranging from ocean conservation to security and the environment, natural disasters, and the health of water resources.
Italy's Minister for Ecological Transition, Gilberto Pichetto Fratin, said there was "total convergence" from all G7 nations on the presence of so-called "forever chemicals" in water.
Ministers also took the first concrete step to establishing a new alliance for funding biodiversity.
France hopes to announce in June a $600 million euro ($701 million) fund to support conservation in more than 100 national parks in Africa, with most of the money coming from philanthropic donors.
O.Anderson--SFF
