New York: Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida was among the national leaders absent from the Climate Ambition Summit 2023 held at the U.N. headquarters in New York on Wednesday.

The only leaders of the Group of Seven major nations who attended the event were German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

The meeting, hosted by U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, was held to encourage governments and companies around the globe to step up efforts to combat climate change.

A Japanese government official said that the absence of Kishida, who was in New York to attend U.N.-related events, was due to a “scheduling conflict.”

In his opening speech at the meeting, Guterres urged developed nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero as close as possible to 2040 and draw up plans to terminate coal-fired power generation by 2030.

Japan aims to achieve its net zero emissions goal by 2050, but it has no target for an exit from coal power.

JIJI Press