G7 environmental talks in Paris showed that multilateralism can still deliver – as long as the most controversial issues are kept off the table, the French environment minister said Monique Barbut said.
Barbut admitted that confronting the climate issue head-on would have risked “pushing some partners away from the negotiating table and ultimately achieving nothing.”
Amid concerns over US cooperation, the focus of the two-day talks shifted to ocean conservation, desertification and biodiversity financing – the topics of three COPs planned in the coming months.
By the end of the discussions on Friday, seven statements had been approved: on desertification, dirty environmental results, illegal fishing, marine protected areas, biodiversity financing, real estate elasticityAND water pollution.
“In the background of the current challenges to environmental multilateralism, these results are remarkable”, said Barbut.
“We never imagined that Americans would agree to the inclusion of PFAS in the Actions of the Water Coalition to address water pollution,” she told reporters. “They did, and it was handled in an extremely constructive way.”
Barbut highlighted the launch of the Nature and People Finance Alliance to increase public and private finance, and the Marine Protected Area Managers Alliance to improve management practices and develop new funding.
Avoidance as multilateralism
However, this approach to consensus-based diplomacy has left some blind spots.
Nor deep sea mining – which the EU and US are into separated – nor the international treaty to combat plastic pollution – whose negotiations have stuck – was discussed at the working session on ocean protection.
And Barbut ruled out the possibility that the G7 alliance on biodiversity financing could lead to a common position at the next COP on biodiversity, to be held in Yerevan, Armenia, from October 19 to 30.
“The idea is to try to get people who didn’t talk much to each other – because they were more or less competitors – to engage in conversation with each other, in a relaxed environment without any pressure,” said the French minister. Euractiv.
However, the issue of compensation for the Global South was one of the key sticking points at the last COP on biodiversity, in Colombia, in 2024.
The 2026 G7 Summit will be held in Évian-les-Bains, France, from 15 to 17 June 2026.
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Paris launches ocean protection alliance at G7 summit
France has successfully launched an alliance for marine protected areas during a two-day G7 Environment…
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