The UN Climate Change Conference opened in Paris (СОР 21) on November 30.

The conference is attended by leaders and representatives from almost 150 countries, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, British Prime Minister David Cameron, Chinese President Xi Jinping, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and others. 

"The world is facing two major threats — terrorism and climate change," Rossiya Segodnya reported, quoting Manuel Pulgar Vidal, Peruvian Minister of Environment, who chaired the previous climate conference.

At the opening ceremony, Laurent Fabius, Foreign Minister of France, said that France will do whatever it can to achieve compromise at the conference. "The entire world is watching us, there are great expectations," he said.

The heads of states are expected to reach an agreement on restrictions of carbon dioxide emissions which are causing global warming.

At the 20^th climate conference in Lima in December 2014, representatives of 196 countries, members of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, confirmed the text of an agreement that should become the basis for the Paris treaty. It is expected to be signed at COP21 and in 2020 will probably replace the Kyoto Protocol that was adopted in Kyoto in 1997 and that amended the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

The conference will run from November 30 until December 11.