Elementary, my dear Watson10 December 2010
I never thought I'd find myself drawing parallels between a UN climate summit and a detective novel.
Yet the plot is becoming thicker by the minute on the penultimate day of negotiations here in Cancun.
Reports have leaked out from various sources suggesting that rich countries have been pressuring key African leaders to do their bidding. Essentially, this means getting them to take a lead in getting the Copenhagen Accord implemented.
The Accord, lest we forget, was thrashed out in an atmosphere of fractious disarray at the Copenhagen climate summit last December. This proved, should any more evidence be needed, that bedlam is a far from ideal environment to make successful progress on tackling climate change.
The Accord's system of voluntary pledges of emissions cuts is extremely weak. And those currently on the table could mean an increase in global temperatures of up to 5 degrees C.
The consequences for Africa - widespread droughts, shifts in weather patterns and the decimation of farming - would be calamitous.
So it's odd that African leaders, including the Ethiopian president and Kenyan prime minister, have suggested weakening the cuts agreed by all African countries earlier this year.
Surprising, you might say. Likewise, perhaps it was coincidence that the Kenyan leader suggested a new set of targets under the Kyoto Protocol wasn't essential to securing a deal to tackle climate change. This was a startlingly similar position to the bombshell dropped by Japan earlier in the talks.
Yet Wikileaks has suggested the USA leaned heavily on Ethiopia to sign up to the Accord. And it's rumoured the Kenyan prime minister's speech was drafted by his Japanese economic advisor, rather than Kenyan negotiators.
Our campaigners are working hard to separate fact from fiction. But in the meantime, we need your help to support countries such as Bolivia and Tuvalu that are holding out against a bad deal.
Please take a minute to tell the Presidents of Bolivia and Tuvalu they're not alone.
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.
