ENVIRONMENTAL campaigners labelled the Cop27 summit today as “yet another monumental failure” to tackle the climate crisis.

The conference did agree a deal to set up a landmark fund to help support almost 200 countries that have been worst hit by climate change.

But activists blasted richer countries for not doing more to limit carbon emissions.

War on Want executive director Asad Reham said: “The US, EU, UK and others came to the summit with empty words, hollow promises and a refusal to take responsibility for having set the planet on fire and destroying millions of lives and livelihoods.”

Britain’s representative at the talks, Tory MP and Cop26 president Alok Sharma, appeared to recognise that not enough had been done to limit the rise in emissions to 1.5°C, saying the policy was “on life support.”

He said: “All of us need to look ourselves in the mirror and consider if we have fully risen to that challenge over the past two weeks.”

The target comes from the Paris Agreement, the global treaty on climate change negotiated in 2015. 

In Paris there was a strong and ultimately successful push by nations such as low-lying islands to include the 1.5°C target in the deal because they felt letting temperatures go any higher would threaten their survival.

But Labour shadow climate change secretary Ed Miliband was highly critical of the most recent talks, saying: “Yet again we hear the unmistakable sound of the can being kicked down the road on the necessary actions to keep global warming to 1.5°C — and as a result it is now at grave risk.

“Too many countries were clearly resistant to what is required, including on fossil fuels.”

Scottish Green Party spokesman Mark Ruskell MSP said the lack of any phaseout of fossil fuels means the summit will be remembered “as yet another monumental failure.”

And Friends of the Earth Africa’s Babawale Obayanju said: “The fact that the outcome only talks about ‘phasedown of unabated coal power’ is a disaster for Africa and for the climate.”

But for the first time the main carbon-emitters did agree to pay into a new “loss and damage” fund to help the countries most affected by climate change.

A transnational committee will report to next year’s climate meeting in Dubai to get the funding operational.

Antigua and Barbuda’s Molwyn Joseph, who chairs the organisation of small islands, said: “The agreements made at Cop27 are a win for our entire world. 

“We have shown those who have felt neglected that we hear you, we see you, and we are giving you the respect and care you deserve.”

The deal “responded to the voices of the vulnerable, the damaged and the lost of the whole world by establishing a fund for the lost and the damaged,” Pakistan’s Environment Minister Sherry Rehman said. 

But climate activists insisted that many developed nations had been blocking and delaying the new fund for years.

The Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice said: “It is time for developed countries to finally step up and deliver on this fund because an empty fund is an empty promise made at the expense of millions all over the world.”

Friends of the Earth International programme co-ordinator Sara Shaw was relieved the fund had been won after decades of struggle but said: “Right now it is an empty fund and we have a huge challenge ahead to ensure that developed countries contribute to it, in line with justice and equity.” 

Harjeet Singh, of the environmental group Climate Action Network International, said the new fund had effectively “sent a warning shot to polluters that they can no longer go scot-free with their climate destruction.”

Some climate experts hailed the new fund as historic.

Environmental think tank World Resources president Ani Dasgupta said: “This loss and damage fund will be a lifeline for poor families whose houses are destroyed, farmers whose fields are ruined, and islanders forced from their ancestral homes.”

And Maarten van Aalst, climate scientist of the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, said there were “quite a few positives to celebrate amidst the gloom and doom” of not cutting emissions fast enough to limit warming to 1.5°C.

But Martin Kaiser, the head of Greenpeace Germany, described the agreement as a “small plaster on a huge, gaping wound.”

Lidy Nacpil, of the Asian Peoples Movement on Debt and Development, said the win on loss and damage was “overshadowed by a lack of progress on fossil fuel phaseout and the continued inclusion of false solutions, which means more loss and damage.”

Former Irish president Mary Robinson, chair of the The Elders group, said “none of this changes the fact that the world remains on the brink of climate catastrophe.”

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has admitted that “more must be done” to tackle climate change and “there can be no time for complacency.”

He added: “Keeping the 1.5 degrees commitment alive is vital to the future of our planet.”