LONDON, October 18 (RIA Novosti) - An international environmental forum bringing together the world's biggest greenhouse gas-emitting countries opened on Sunday in London in an effort to bridge divides over tackling climate change, the BBC reported.
The Major Economies Forum on Sunday and Monday will aim to make progress on protecting forests and providing funds to help poor countries adapt to climate change, the BBC said.
Ministers from 17 major economies are hopeful that the discussions at the forum will increase chances of agreeing a new climate treaty at a UN summit in Copenhagen in December, the BBC said.
The Major Economies Forum brings together such developing countries as China and India, and also industrialized nations such as the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Japan, the BBC said.
At the highest-level conference on climate change held on September 22 at the United Nations, the UN secretary general said that humanity had less than 10 years to prevent irreversible climate change, and joint action was required to limit harmful emissions.
"Greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise. We will soon reach critical thresholds, consequences that we cannot reverse. The world's leading scientists warn that we have less than ten years to avoid the worst-case scenarios projected by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC]," Ban Ki-moon said.
The Copenhagen summit in December will aim to negotiate a replacement for the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, some elements of which expire in 2012.
