Big climate conference in Netherlands

Representatives from more than one-hundred and fifty countries have begun meeting in the Netherlands to discuss international action to combat global warming.

In two weeks of talks on the United Nations convention on climate change, they will try to agree how to implement a three-year-old accord on cutting so-called greenhouse gas emissions, which many scientists say cause global warming.

The Dutch environment minister Jan Pronk who's chairing the meeting said that what was a suspicion about global warming a decade ago was now a practical certainty.

The head of an international panel of scientists looking at climate change warned that temperatures in some areas could increase by as much as ten degrees centigrade in the next century, leading to widespread droughts and starvation.

In other regions he said there could be widespread flooding.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service