About four hundreds of climate change campaigners coming from a cross sector of society in Cambodia on Monday gathered at Public Park in Phnom Penh downtown, calling on the world leaders to reach fair, ambitious and binding global climate deal at Copenhagen and sending a powerful message to these leaders that "Time to Act is Running Out."

They also demanded rich countries to take their fair shares in tackling the climate crisis. The participants also organized a tcktcktck Human Countdown as a part of an international campaign of the Global Climate Change Alliance.

This striking event came amidst the UN climate conference where heads of state and representatives from 192 countries are negotiating the future of the planet.

"When climate change make seasons less predictable, storms more frequent and weather conditions more difficult to manage like what we recently experienced in Cambodia, it is the poorest people who suffer most and least prepared to adapt," said Brian Lund, east Asia Regional Director for Oxfam America.

"This undermines poverty alleviation efforts and the millennium development goals and leads to more migration, more conflicts and a less stable world," he said.

Cambodia is affected by the climate change mainly due to changing rainfall patterns, flood, storms and another extreme weather conditions which possess a real threat to people's livelihood, a press release of the event said, adding that it has negative impacts on agriculture threatening food security.

Cambodia is one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change impacts due to its low capacity and limited resources to address climate change.

(Xinhua News Agency December 14, 2009)