BERLIN — More than 2,500 anticoal demonstrators protested in the western German town of Kerpen on Sunday and at a nearby surface-mining site before an upcoming global climate conference in Bonn.

The Dpa news agency reported that a large group of the initial protesters split off to march on the mining site behind a banner reading ‘‘We Are Nature Defending Itself.’’

Riot police scuffled with some of the demonstrators but there were no major incidents reported.

German leader Angela Merkel has been dubbed the ‘‘Climate Chancellor’’ for her ambitious targets for renewable energy, but Germany still gets about 40 percent of its electricity from coal-fired plants.

Before the 2017 UN Climate Conference that begins Monday, many protesters have been urging her to move faster to wean the country off coal.

Last year, the election of President Trump shocked participants in a United Nations conference in Morocco, where delegates from more than 190 countries had gathered to push forward with a landmark climate accord signed in Paris in 2015.

The concern was that if the United States backed out of the deal, as Trump promised, other countries would follow. But although Trump has moved to withdraw from the international agreement, other nations have held firm to their pledges to slash their greenhouse gas emissions.