By Zeke Turner

BERLIN—The German government is postponing approval of a wide-ranging set of measures to combat climate change less than a week before a high-profile international meeting on combating global warming.

The decision, announced Wednesday, marks the latest embarrassment for a country that once pioneered the fight against global warming but has since seen its environmental credentials tarnished.

Germany’s planned strategy—a set of measures to cut greenhouse-gas emissions—is intended to ensure that Europe’s largest country meets its pledge at the United Nations’ climate summit in Paris a year ago. Berlin had hoped to have the blueprint ready for the U.N. climate summit in Marrakesh, Morocco, next week, but it has become bogged down in bickering between the parties in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s left-right coalition in Berlin.

While the postponement won’t have an immediate impact on the implementation of the 190-country Paris deal, experts said a weak showing from Germany at the Marrakesh meeting could have a corrosive effect. Environment Minister Barbara Hendricks told a group of regional newspapers on Wednesday that the plan wouldn’t be ready until December.

“Germany has long been one of the climate leaders within the European Union and also internationally,” said Robert Falkner, an associate at the London School of Economics and Political Science’s Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment. “When it comes to Morocco…countries will be looking at how they’re developing,” he said.

The fight against climate change has long been a priority of Ms. Merkel, herself a former environment minister and an early backer of an international agreement on emissions. But Germany’s reputation as a climate champion has suffered as the country has struggled to cut carbon dioxide emissions after Ms. Merkel’s 2011 decision to speed up a nuclear-energy phaseout, and amid her government’s robust lobbying for the country’s all-important car manufacturers.

“I would like for this plan to be concluded promptly,” Ms. Merkel said at a news conference in Berlin on Wednesday. “We in the government agree unanimously that we need such a plan,” she said.

The government’s plan “wasn’t discussed today because, obviously, it wasn’t ready to be passed,” said a spokesman for Ms. Merkel after the government’s cabinet meeting.

The plan—which was drafted by Germany’s environment and economics ministers, both members of the center-left Social Democrats—has drawn a string of objections from the agriculture and traffic ministers, who belong to the center-right Christian Social Union and have called for it to be renegotiated.

“High-quality groceries can’t be produced with zero emissions,” Agriculture Minister Christian Schmidt said, criticizing the plan’s tough rules for farmers.

In addition to imposing drastic emission limits on farmers, the plan proposes to phase out combustion engines by 2030. This has drawn objections from the transport ministry, whose spokesman said Wednesday that fighting climate change “requires realistic objectives.”