It’s a potentially historic event being held in extraordinary circumstances.
Nearly 150 world leaders are expected to descend on Paris for the start of the United Nations climate change summit, which begins Monday in the French capital, with the aim of reaching a landmark global deal on limiting greenhouse gas emissions.
The leaders of the United States, China and India — the world’s top three carbon-emitting countries — are among those scheduled to attend the opening day of the event, known as COP21.
It’s being held amid heavy security after the deadly terrorist attacks that struck Paris two weeks ago. French authorities have clamped down on public demonstrations in the aftermath of the attacks, blocking environmental campaigners’ plans for a big march on Sunday in Paris to highlight the climate change issue.
Refusing to be muted, some activists covered the city’s Place de la Republique with shoes to symbolize the steps that marchers were being prevented from taking.
Protesters upset with those restrictions, among other things, clashed briefly with police Sunday. They threw shoes, tear gas, bottles and candles that police said were taken from memorials for victims of the attacks.
Paris Police Chief Michel Cadot said taking the candles and using them against police showed “an extreme lack of respect to those events.”
Officers responded with tear gas and 100 demonstrators were arrested, according to police.
There were no immediate reports of injuries.
Demonstrators marched in other cities around the globe.
Obama to meet Chinese President
French President Francois Hollande is meeting with several world leaders Sunday ahead of the start of the two-week conference, including U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Ban’s office released a statement praising Hollande and France for going ahead with the meeting despite the attack. He said he and the French President had agreed that “failure to reach an agreement was not an option and would have disastrous consequences.”
U.S. President Barack Obama is due to arrive in Paris late Sunday and meet with Xi the following morning.
“Clearly, U.S. cooperation with China is absolutely essential to successful efforts to combat climate change,” White House deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes said in a briefing last week. “I think the two leaders meeting at the beginning of this process, as the two largest emitters, sends a strong message to the world about their shared commitment to combat climate change and to achieve an ambitious agreement.”
More than 40,000 delegates from 195 countries are attending COP21, which has the goal of achieving a legally binding agreement to keep global warming below what most scientists say is the critical threshold of 2 degrees Celsius of warming.