'Climate change top challenge'

SEOUL: UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said yesterday that climate change is the greatest challenge facing a world beset by crises and called on governments to reach a deal on the environment at a meeting in Denmark later this year.

Ban said the world has "less than 10 years to halt (the) global rise in greenhouse gas emissions if we are to avoid catastrophic consequences for people and the planet."

The Copenhagen meeting is meant to negotiate a new UN-brokered climate treaty to succeed the 1997 Kyoto Protocol that expires in 2012. Ban called it a "once-in-a-generation opportunity."