Key UN Climate Conference Begins In Canada

The gathering of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is expected to draw up to 10,000 participants from governments, businesses, and science and environmental groups.
 
Its challenge will be to lay out plans for replacing the UN's Kyoto Protocol, which runs out in 2012.
 
Under President George W. Bush, the United States, the world's biggest polluter, did not adhere to the Kyoto treaty. That 1997 deal was aimed at curbing rising emissions of heat- trapping pollution blamed for global warming.
 
(compiled from agency and RFE/RL reports)