France's top diplomat, who will preside over December's Paris summit tasked with signing a climate rescue pact, has warned of looming planetary "catastrophe" if negotiations fail.
Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius's remarks came as separate reports warned of the devastating effects of global warming on the poor and those living in megacities around the world.
"It is life on our planet itself which is at stake," Fabius told journalists on Sunday as ministers and climate envoys from 70 countries met for pre-summit talks to iron out tough political questions.
With the key UN conference just three weeks away, he also announced that Russia's President Vladimir Putin would attend the November 30 opening.
Russia, a major oil producer, is seen as a deal-maker or -breaker in the years-long attempt to negotiate the world's first truly universal pact to curb climate-altering greenhouse gas emissions.
"There is absolute urgency," said Fabius, to achieve the UN goal of limiting global warming to two degrees Celsius over pre-Industrial Revolution levels.
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On Tuesday, 4 June, seven foreign ministers, 19 ambassadors, several ministers and more than 200 experts met in Berlin to act on climate security risks at the Berlin Climate and Security Conference. "Achieving the international climate targets is the new imperative of our foreign policy”, the German Foreign Minister, Heiko Maas, said in his opening speech. This is the aim of the Berlin Call for Action which was presented at the conference.
Governments must invest new effort and money to prevent climate change from driving new conflicts, according to a diplomatic statement drafted by the German foreign office.
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