US must respect climate deal

French President Francois Hollande urged US President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday to respect a global agreement to limit climate change, saying the deal was irreversible and inaction on global warming would be disastrous.

Hollande told a UN conference on climate change in Marrakesh, Morocco, that the 2015 agreement to limit emissions "is irreversible in law and in fact. In addition, it is irreversible in our minds".

"The United States, the largest economic power in the world, the second largest greenhouse gas emitter, must respect the commitments it has undertaken," he said, to applause from an audience of about 80 national leaders.

Trump has called climate change a hoax and has said he wants to withdraw from the accord, which seeks to phase out world greenhouse gas emissions sometime between 2050 and 2100.

Hollande, an architect of the pact, said he would work with Trump, and that the agreement was in the interests of the American people, as well as US companies and cities that were trying to combat climate change.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon earlier said action on climate change has become "unstoppable" and predicted that Trump would drop plans to quit the global accord aimed at weaning the world off fossil fuels.

At the meeting of almost 200 nations in Morocco to work out ways to implement the 2015 Paris agreement to limit greenhouse gas emissions, Ban said US companies, states and cities were all pushing to limit global warming.

"What was once unthinkable has become unstoppable," he told a news conference of the Paris Agreement, agreed by governments last year, and which formally entered into force on Nov 4 after a record quick ratification.