NEWS: COP21: Rallies call for Paris climate change action

Pairs of shoes have been symbolically placed on the Place de la République in Paris

Photo by Eric Gaillard/Reuters via The Guardian.

Nuns in South Korea rally. Phoyo by Photograph: Kim Hong-Ji/Reuters via The Guardian.

Photo by Hani Mohammed/AP via The Guardian.

Pope Francis shoes in Place de la République, Paris.

Emma Thompson and Dame Vivienne Westwood attend the London march

Photo by David M Benett/Dave Benett/Getty Images via The Guardian.

Berlin, Germany. Photo by

John Macdougall/AFP/Getty Images

via The Guardian.

Hundreds of thousands of people have marched worldwide to demand action to stop climate change, the day before a UN summit starts in Paris.

One campaign group says more than 570,000 protesters took part in marches on all the main continents.
Activists want action at the Paris talks to limit the rise in the average global temperature to 2C (3.6F) above pre-industrial levels.

Hundreds of pairs of shoes were left on Place de la Republique to remember those left frustrated in their plans to march. Among them were a pair donated by Pope Francis, who has called for urgent action on climate change.

Elsewhere across the world:

• an estimated 50,000 people took part in a march in central London, where opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn addressed crowds
• some of the earliest protests in the day took place in the Marshall Islands, a US territory in the Pacific Ocean threatened by rising seas
• in Kenya, a march took place across the equator
• a small group took part in a march across a glacier in the south of Chile

• the mayor of Sydney in Australia tweeted to say that there were "at least 45,000" demonstrators, making it the biggest ever such march in the city

Read more in BBC. E.T.P. 3'  and see photos from around the world The Guardian E.T.P. 3'