Representatives from 200 nations have gathered in Katowice in southern Poland for the two-week summit which seeks to implement commitments made in Paris in 2015.
Sir David Attenborough addressed the meeting on Monday, warning that climate change was the biggest threat the world has faced for thousands of years.
Christian Aid's Joe Ware told Premier that acting on climate change was a matter of justice for poor nations.
He said: "The great cruel aspect of climate change is that it is hurting the poorest first and worst and it is the poorest who have done the least to contribute to the problem."
He said poor nations wanted to do their bit by leapfrogging to renewable forms of energy and not repeating the dependence upon fossil fuels of the richer nations.
It is the first major meeting to be held since the landmark Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report on limiting global temperature rise to 1.5C came out in October.
The IPCC stated that to keep to the 1.5C goal, governments would have to slash emissions of greenhouse gases by 45 per cent by 2030.
But a recent study showed that CO2 emissions are on the rise again after stalling for four years.
Paul Cook, Head of Advocacy at Christian charity, Tearfund told Premier of the significance of the meeting.
He said: "This is a really critical issue because this is where the global climate change agreements that were made in Paris three years ago start to get implemented and so this really affects every single person on our planet."
Delegates are being warned that this is the last generation that can prevent dangerous rises in temperatures - and the first to feel their consequences.
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