François Guillot, AFP | A French environmental activist stands near the Eiffel Tower during a 2007 protest in Paris

Tens of thousands took to the streets around the world Sunday in an international day of action over climate change.

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Organisers estimated that over 310,000 people, including United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and US senators were expected to join the People's Climate March in New York, ahead of Tuesday's United Nations hosted summit in the city to discuss reducing carbon emissions that threaten the environment.

Organisers said some 550 busloads had arrived for the rally, which followed similar events in countries including Britain, France, Afghanistan and Bulgaria.

"Today I am marching for my children. I am marching so they can live in a world without worrying about the next big storm destroying their community," said Bill Aristovolus, the superintendent of an apartment building in New York City's working-class Bronx borough.

A crowd chanting slogans, which included US senators Bernard Sanders of Vermont and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, lined up along a mile (1.6 km) long stretch along New York's Central Park, bearing signs reading "stop tar sands" and "keep the oil in the ground."

Marchers carried pictures of sunflowers and, at the rally's head, a banner reading "front lines of crisis, forefront of climate change."

'Silent tragedy'

In Paris, activists said the mobilisation would act as a reminder to Socialist President François Hollande and his government of the huge responsibility they will shoulder when France hosts the Climate Conference in 2015.

“The climate crisis is already upon us and feeds the economic crisis. This is a silent tragedy, which kills tens of thousands of people every year”, said environmental activist and political figure Nicolas Hulot, who joined the march.

Organisers have billed the event as the largest gathering focused on climate change since 2009, when tens of thousands of people gathered in Copenhagen in a sometime raucous demonstration that resulted in the detention of 2,000 protesters.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP, REUTERS)

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