Under inspection

7 December 2010

Our bus was pulled over, boarded and searched by armed Mexican police.

Our credentials were checked and triple checked, and following a delay of nearly an hour waiting on the dusty gravel by the roadside, we were allowed on our way.

And to top things off, armed police escorted us through the traffic for the rest of our journey.

This is just one visible sign of the preparations being made for the arrival of environment ministers from around the world tomorrow.

One big development here is that the Mexican Government has asked pairs of countries to co-chair a group of negotiators working on the five main areas of the talks where progress is needed.

The UK is one of them - so Chris Huhne will lead the British delegation, along with the Brazilians, to try and make progress on the thorny issue of the Kyoto Protocol.

Thorny because - as we've seen with Japan this week - rich countries always seem to get quite prickly whenever it comes to actually committing themselves to a new round of emissions reduction targets under the Protocol.

But all this means that there's an increasing chance of backroom negotiations, with some nations  - including many developing countries - not really being part of the decision-making proccess.

This could also be used as a way to force through more of the Copenhagen Accord into negotiations - including a weak system of voluntary climate pledges.

Consequently many countries would only offer emissions reduction targets that they felt were relatively easy to achieve - rather than the cuts needed - leaving the world in big trouble.

The pledges currently on the table would mean a global increase in temperatures of up to five degrees centigrade - which would be truly catastrophic.

This is in contrast to the current system, where emissions reductions are decided by the action scientists say is necessary - with the UN negotiations designed to share out how this should be achieved by diferent nations

All this means the Friends of the Earth team will be even more hawk-like in monitoring the talks over the next few days.

I'll keep you updated with the latest.

Henry Rummins is a communications and media officer at Friends of the Earth. He's reporting from the climate talks in Cancun as part of the Friends of the Earth International delegation.