The COP27 climate conference was a mixed bag. On the one hand, developed countries finally agreed to set up a loss and damage fund to compensate developing countries for the climate chaos that industrialised countries have mainly caused—although there is no money in it, for now.
On the other hand, the target of limiting the rise in global temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels is barely alive. COP27 failed to achieve any major breakthroughs in areas such as phasing out fossil fuels. But that wasn’t really the expectation at what was dubbed an “implementation COP”, where the focus was on how to turn pledges and commitments into real-world actions and solutions.