Paris, Nov 28: Paris will play host to a long-awaited UN climate conference under tragic circumstances that none could have foreseen.
But delegates to the two-week talks starting Monday insist they won’t let the November 13 attacks that killed 130 people in the French capital distract them from the task at hand: crafting a landmark deal to fight global warming.
If anything, some say, the bloodshed could make countries more determined to reach a deal to address a problem that’s widely seen as a factor that contributes to conflict.
The French organisers say more than 140 leaders including presidents Barack Obama of the US, Vladimir Putin of Russia and Xi Jinping of China have confirmed they’re attending the start of the conference.
The stepped-up security measures in Paris, a state of emergency throughout France has been extended for three months, mean that shuttling them around the city will be a major logistics challenge.
Citing security concerns, French authorities have stopped several events that were scheduled to take place outside the conference centre, including a big march that environmentalists had planned for Sunday.
The negotiations themselves, however, are set to go ahead as planned amid tight security in the hermetically sealed conference centre in Le Bourget, just north of Paris.
