The UN’s annual climate change summit has opened with hosts Egypt billing it as the world’s “watershed moment” on climate action.
More than 120 world leaders are heading to the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.
About 30,000 people will attend the two-week summit, known as COP27, though some activists are staying away over concerns about Egypt’s rights record.
The past year has seen extreme weather regularly linked to climate change.
The summit will open with welcome speeches from the UN’s new climate change chief, Simon Stiell, and Egyptian Foreign Affairs Minister and COP27 President-Designate Sameh Shoukry.
Mr Stiell was previously a senior government official in Grenada, the low-lying Caribbean nation where climate change is an existential threat.
Mr Shoukry said last week that the conference would be “the world’s watershed moment on climate action”.
There will also be key addresses from diplomats and scientists including Hoesung Lee, chair of the IPCC, the United Nations body for assessing the science related to climate change.
COP27 will really begin in earnest on Monday with a World Leaders’ Summit, when heads of state and government leaders deliver five-minute addresses outlining what they want from the meeting.
PM Rishi Sunak is expected to urge world leaders to move “further and faster” in transitioning to renewable energy.
He will also tell leaders not to “backslide” on commitments made at last year’s COP26 summit in Glasgow.
At that meeting, there were powerful speeches from people like Barbadian PM Mia Mottley, who told an enrapt audience that temperature rises of “two degrees is a death sentence” for island nations.