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to save the planet. the 27th edition of the u.n. conference of parties ended with no agreement to curb. is it enough? this is "inside story or cow hello, welcome to the program. -- inside story." hello, welcome to the program. delegates from low income countries say they are optimistic that despite no agreements at cop in reached on where money will come from, or agreements on how it will be distributed. there were no new commitments on curbing greenhouse gas emissions. some countries saying not enough

progress was made. first let's listen to what some leaders had to say. >> we recognize that there have been indications of disappointment in certain quarters where they have a higher degree of ambition. but that disappointment should be put in context. i think the level of ambition of all the parties is equal. so i think it is important during the year until we hand over to the emirates, i will be an advocate for the preservation of the 1.5 or the increase of all ambition within the capabilities that are available. >> top 27 concludes halfway between the paris climate agreement and the deadline.

we need all hands on deck. this includes the ambition to end the suicidal war on nature that is fueling the climate crisis. >> the european union came here for strong language and we are disappointed we didn't achieve this. i strongly urge us all to roll up our sleeves and show to the world that the fight or ambition for a better future is not yet over. >> this is the first year after the implementation of the paris agreement was agreed upon and it marks the 30th anniversary of the signing of the united nations framework convention on climate change. therefore egypt has set the theme of the conference is delivering to stress implementation and that all parties need to deliver on their promises and egypt is a developing nation. this year's conference is held in a developing country and reached an achievement in the establishment of the loss damage fund.

it could be seen as a highlight. the conference decided to establish a global adaptation framework. all strongly urged by developing countries. >> alright, let's go ahead and bring in our guests. from brussels, from nairobi, and from the u.k. a warm welcome to you all. thank you so much for joining us today. how significant is it that this loss in damage fund was set up during cop 27 and do you think that it actually will help developing nations cope with climate change going forward?

>> there is no question that the setup of the fund is tremendous progress when you look at the totality of the efforts made over the last many years in relation to the climate crisis. but we need to remember that this is only a fund. there is no money in it just for now and probably not for another year or so as the committee works on the detail. that's number one. more importantly i think that the fund, when and if it becomes operational, it is supposed to help developing countries to mitigate the climate crisis. flooding, droughts, famine. it is supposed to do that in theory but a lot of the details are not there yet. we will have to wait until the committee actually finishes its work in about a year time. >> fact of the matter is, as you said, there is no money in the

funding. it was a bucket that was set up that is still empty and there have been other times when funds were set up. i believe there was adaptation fund where developing countries were supposed to get $100 billion per year and i don't think they are getting anywhere near that if anything at all. is there any sense of when these funds might start being available to these countries? >> well it's very difficult to imagine that this fund will receive the amount of money that it was supposed to be receiving considering the fact that a lot of these countries, the big emitters, for example the united states and other big countries, are democracies and the power of the purse rests with congress and the u.s. and they will be facing a divided congress. with republicans in charge of the lower house of the congress i cannot foresee them approving money for united nations funding

and they have already criticized it. the same can be said about other western democracies. i think it's always expected out of these international conferences to lay out very lofty goals and ultimately falls significantly short and unfortunately this sounds like the same old, though i don't want to preclude the possibility of it actually being worked out. >> sharon, i saw you reacting to some of that, i want you to jump in, but from your perspective, was enough accomplished? >> not nearly enough, not in terms of climate change now. flooding, tap, flooding, all this is doing is knocking off the damage that has been caused. it's not really putting enough investment into what's going to happen.

what we are seeing is this kind of evolving situation where climate change becomes worse and will become worse when these nations are already there. we are just mitigating against what has happened, investing in and keeping the infrastructure there to keep doing what we are doing. it's a business as usual case and i think a lot more urgency needs to be done right now. especially for those countries that are going to lose all ability to live where they live. it, it, there's a real urgency from the date of right now, the people who are affected right now. >> from your perspective on cop 27, what were the successes and failures? >> a major success we need to

celebrate is the agreement of all countries to answer other country's requests to create a fund. this is important to recognize, even as we have been saying, there is a lot of work to be done in terms of making it operational but i think it is important to lytic clean that all countries agreed to deliver. i think this needs to be highlighted. of course, we are worried about the work and we will keep up the pressure to make sure that the fund receives all the procedural details needed over the next year. i think it as -- it is as important to say that as a society we do recognize this also as an important success of a global organization as they

have been doing around the financial endeavors of this facility and overall i do agree also that in this cop 27, there is a gain to the fade in delivering the concrete steps for the climate crisis we are facing today. it is a missed opportunity to do this summit with a firm commitment that goes higher and higher in terms of targets and financial engagement and commitment. >> sharon, i saw you nodding along and i wanted to give you an opportunity to add. >> it's not just about that funding, that kind of emergency response funding. it's about the investment there

in making things fair, equitable, and accessible. that will be the challenge to do it at the speed that we need to do. in the meantime at the moment, we are losing species. losing to climate change, it has a bigger impact than just economic. and we are still investing around the world in fossil fuels. this can't be right. we are talking about billions of pounds in aid to combat climate change but we are also spending money on, you know, working the other way with fossil fuels. we need to really take this seriously. there needs to be a serious leadership role. we are just not quite there. we need that one voice, globally , in order to be taken seriously.

>> we were speaking earlier about the fact that there were a lot of decisions to be made when it came to setting up a loss of damage fund and it seems as though the negotiators have essentially kicked the can down the road and said that will most likely be decided next year before cop 28. at least the more difficult decisions. i want to ask you, what are some of these more difficult decisions? i want to ask that because clearly it was difficult getting to even this point so what is even more difficult that it couldn't be agree to this year? >> well, a number of things. first of all, the amount of money that needs to go into the fund needs to be determined. and where it will come from. we know the 20 largest economies around the world are responsible for roughly 80% of greenhouse gas emissions. we also know that this is a very unique situation with china,

currently the largest emitter of greenhouse gas emissions, is in fact considered and classified by the u.n. as a developing country and not a developed country. when you are classified like that that are a large emitter of greenhouse gases, how much are you going to contribute? those details need to be worked out. also, loss and damage entails inherent liability and similarly big countries like the u.s. are avoiding being in a situation where they are trapped in some sort of perpetual legal liability for greenhouse gas emissions. it is going to be quite complex before we arrive at a sensible and even then i think it will be much less then what people have in mind today. >> sharon was talking about what was needed now, for the world to speak with one voice when it comes to action that needs to be

taken to combat climate change going forward. that said, cop 27, there was a lot riding on that and yet still you see there were a lot of divisions among the participating nations. have cop gatherings served much of a purpose over the years? have they been able to accomplish much since they started holding them decades ago? >> i think it's not enough is the answer. but we need to highlight and point out that we don't have an alternative. what we have today is this, the only space where all countries who are rich countries can make polluters and those most impacted can be held around one table to take these decisions. not enough is my short answer but at the same time this is something we should protect and strengthen to make sure that climate action is faster and

able to deal with the urgency that we see. the way to do that is we need to make sure these spaces lead to decisions. adaptation, mitigation. not putting one another in competition. i also think the most important thing to make these successful in the future is to protect the space from the interests of fossil fuels. making sure that the space remains democratic. remains led by governments and delegates and also ensuring that civil society as it was, in terms of making sure that there is experience, expertise, and communities on the ground that are a part of the conversation

in order to influence the decisions we want to see coming out of these. >> how long have poorer and developing countries been seeking this type of help from richer countries? how big of a win -- we can talk more about whether or not this money is actually put aside. but just the fact that they got to this point, how big of a win is that for the poorer and developing countries that they even got this? >> well in one sense there's been a kind of mission agreement and that's a massive achievement but looking back in indirect ways, climate change had been starting to have an impact white slowly but also not just climate change. the actual impact of energy exploitation and the energy market, it has had an impact internationally on some nations

more than others with complex issues around things like deforestation, loss of the amazon. massively complicated issues around the need for energy coupled with economic complexity around the needs of other countries to develop income. it's a complex picture. in the mix as well are the social positions within those economies. so that's a tricky question to answer. but i think what is needed and one of the things that hasn't really been addressed in any of the cops is anything like the accountability that we need. what is the consequence of nothing happens? if nothing happens, nothing happens in there is no consequence for that economy kicking the can down the road. i think what would have been nice to see is more

accountability and consequence for the nations that don't pull their collective weight to address the problem. that's something that i think needs to be embedded in future cops, to have these specific targets. >> let me just ask, when it comes to the kind of pressure that activists and ngos were able to put on participants in cop 27, was that different this year than it has been in previous years? >> i think so. there was a real sense of urgency. in terms of a public voice and the voice of those organizations doing the campaigning, i think there is a real frustration coming through at the lack of, the lack of urgency and the lack of action. i think that voice is going to

become louder and i think that's something that we, if people are not feelinlistened to, they protest. they campaign. that is something we will be getting more of and then things will start to really change. >> i saw you reacting quite a bit to what sharon was saying. would you like to jump in? >> i think that the voice of civil society and activism was quite strong at this cop, with a presence that we had at the venue. but what is important to light is that it's a voice that is getting stronger. it's not only one country or another. it's extremely important as a voice to support it in and around the next one to make sure that the decisions around the

loss and damage funds are taken quickly with all the steps that are needed to make that operational. i also think that this is something we need to think through more as a civil society organization to link up all of these pressures to the pressures that each and everyone has in their own country. i think that accountability, as sharon said, is key for the improvement of this process. as well as monitoring, monitoring the seasons and the steps that have been taken and the pledges that have been begun . allow me to mention as an example many european countries that put forward some financial places in the first week of the call, for sure to align around the decision around the loss of damage fund. now we need to make sure that this financial commitment is

well channeled through the right schemes to make it operational. >> one of the more unexpected things that happened was the announcement between u.s. and china where they would resume cooperating as they combated climate change. from your perspective, did that give more momentum to what was going on with cop 27? did it help these processes along? >> no question that the u.s. and china are the largest economies and by definition the largest emitters of greenhouse gas emissions to this day. their cooperation is critical to the success. but mohamed i think we need to remind ourselves that the overarching objective of these international dialogues in the environment is to reach the 1.5 degrees celsius levels in terms

of greenhouse gas emissions. now the commitment to that objective remains critical. even after decades of negotiations a lot of countries are willing to do it but as my colleague said, the monitoring of aspects of it remains incredibly weak. more importantly, a lot of western countries are seeing the resurgence of far right politicians and climate deniers who don't even believe that we are spinning into a climate crisis. even in the u.s. and western europe, so on and so forth. i suspect that unfortunately that new reality will have adverse impact on negotiations in the coming years. especially if more far right politicians come to power in western democracies. >> we were talking there about the goal of keeping warming to

preindustrial levels. based on what you've seen, is that something that is still achievable? also there has been a recommitment that the globe needs to cut greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030. do you think that is something that is still achievable? >> it's great that we are still seeing investment in fossil fuels with these targets. the amount that we have to cut co2 by, i don't think that given current progress in climate change now, it's not achievable if we just carry on with business as normal. not even the targets that we have. we will miss it dramatically. we need investments in technology. carbon negative, we need to be proactive about that and that's a huge step forward over what's been promised.

so just in the acceleration of the targets of we have. i think that this brings together the power of the ipcc, where the scientific community comes together to present the evidence to make decisions. but we are now beyond thinking in terms of just economic terms. if we think about climate change just economically and keep pushing the can down the road on economic decisions, with these cut politicians who are not on board with the urgency and the seriousness -- in europe it's easy to ignore the impacts when we don't particularly see much flooding or don't see the extremes the way the other nations see them. it's easy to deny, i think.

in terms of our agriculture and costs, import export in human migration, we are going to see a rise. it's a very serious, very serious situation. >> we have run out of time, we will have to leave the conversation. thank you so much to all of our guests and thank you for watching. for further discussion you can go to our facebook page. you can also join the conversation on twitter. for me and the whole team here, goodbye for now. it'so;o;ó7ó7kxq#qqqcccwgcg/g'■ wo