UN climate meeting in Poland to open following weekend protests

A UN climate conference in the southern Polish city of Katowice is to open officially on Monday against a backdrop of warnings about the planet's rising temperature.

For two weeks, representatives from just under 200 states are to take part in the annual gathering, which this year is to focus on fleshing out the rules for financing and implementing the 2015 Paris agreement.

The Paris pact provides an outline for countries working together to limit the earth's warming to between 1.5 and 2 degrees Celsius.

Most efforts to prevent the planet heating up relate to stopping the release of greenhouse gases as soon as possible. Burning coal, oil and gas releases carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas.

However, the measures promised so far worldwide to reduce harmful greenhouse gases are far from sufficient to meet this goal.

The meeting, known as COP24, was preceded by demonstrations demanding climate protection in various European cities.

Over the weekend, tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets in Berlin, Cologne and Brussels to demonstrate for a change of direction in energy policy.