The lat­est round of Unit­ed Nations cli­mate talks, COP27, end­ed over the week­end, two days lat­er than orig­i­nal­ly planned, with a mixed bag to show for the effort. While a deal was bro­kered on one of the “thorni­est” issues fac­ing nations—how to pay for the dam­ages of cli­mate change—the talks failed to achieve sub­stan­tive progress on emis­sion reduc­tions.

Mul­ti­ple nation­al and inter­na­tion­al out­lets report­ed on the con­clu­sion of COP27, includ­ing the Asso­ci­at­ed Press, Reuters, and Vox. None of the media cov­er­age emerg­ing from COP27 flinch­es from the lack of tan­gi­ble progress of emis­sion reduc­tions includ­ed in the Sharm el-Sheikh Imple­men­ta­tion Plan.

Unit­ed Nations Cli­mate Change also released a press release focus­ing specif­i­cal­ly on the cre­ation of a “loss and dam­age” fund for vul­ner­a­ble coun­tries. “Gov­ern­ments took the ground-break­ing deci­sion to estab­lish new fund­ing arrange­ments, as well as a ded­i­cat­ed fund, to assist devel­op­ing coun­tries in respond­ing to loss and dam­age. Gov­ern­ments also agreed to estab­lish a ‘tran­si­tion­al com­mit­tee’ to make rec­om­men­da­tions on how to oper­a­tional­ize both the new fund­ing arrange­ments and the fund at COP28 next year. The first meet­ing of the tran­si­tion­al com­mit­tee is expect­ed to take place before the end of March 2023,” accord­ing to the press release.

“Par­ties also agreed on the insti­tu­tion­al arrange­ments to oper­a­tional­ize the San­ti­a­go Net­work for Loss and Dam­age, to cat­alyze tech­ni­cal assis­tance to devel­op­ing coun­tries that are par­tic­u­lar­ly vul­ner­a­ble to the adverse effects of cli­mate change.”

The lega­cy of COP27 will be known offi­cial­ly as the Sharm el-Sheikh Imple­men­ta­tion Plan. The plan assumes that a glob­al trans­for­ma­tion to a low-car­bon econ­o­my will require an annu­al invest­ment of $4–6 tril­lion. “New pledges, total­ing more than USD 230 mil­lion, were made to the Adap­ta­tion Fund at COP27. These pledges will help many more vul­ner­a­ble com­mu­ni­ties adapt to cli­mate change through con­crete adap­ta­tion solu­tions,” accord­ing to the press release.