The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Cool Coalition formally unveiled the Cool Champions Evaluation Committee for 2026–2027, bringing together experienced experts from academia, government, international organisations, and the sustainable development community. The establishment of the Committee marks a key step in the implementation of the Cool Champions initiative and the advancement of the Global Cooling Pledge targets.
Leadership in the cooling sector has matured significantly over the past decade. As sustainable cooling has moved from a technical niche into a central pillar of climate action, public health, urban resilience, and development planning, the focus has rightly expanded beyond solutions alone to how those solutions are governed, implemented, and scaled. At the centre of that shift sits leadership: the individuals who translate policy into delivery, coordinate across institutions, and ensure that cooling responds to real-world needs.
Recent global recognition has helped bring that leadership into sharper focus. The inclusion of sustainable cooling in the 20th UNEP Champions of the Earth awards through the selection of Supriya Sahu, Additional Chief Secretary for Environment, Climate Change and Forests in the Government of Tamil Nadu, marked an important milestone for the sector. It reflected not only the growing visibility of cooling within the international environmental agenda, but also the reality that effective cooling outcomes are driven by people, not technologies alone.
At the same time, such recognition has highlighted a gap. Cooling leadership is advancing across regions and contexts, yet there has been no dedicated, recurring mechanism to identify, assess, and elevate that leadership in a systematic way. This is the gap the Cool Coalition set out to address through the creation of the Cool Champions initiative.
The Cool Champions initiative
Cool Champions is an annual initiative designed to recognise leadership in sustainable cooling across policy, planning, implementation, and innovation. Its objective is to identify leaders whose work demonstrates impact, coherence across climate and development priorities, and the ability to deliver results at scale. The initiative is anchored in the Global Cooling Pledge, the world’s first collective commitment to reduce cooling-related emissions by 68% by 2050 while simultaneously expanding equitable access to cooling, and is designed to support its implementation by elevating leadership that is delivering on these goals.
Each year, the Cool Champions initiative will recognise three distinct Cool Champions, reflecting the diversity of leadership driving sustainable cooling globally:
one from a developed Global Cooling Pledge country or city,
one from a developing Global Cooling Pledge country or city, and
one individual leader not formally affiliated with the Pledge, selected for demonstrable impact and leadership in advancing sustainable cooling.
This structure ensures balanced representation across development contexts while recognising both institutional and individual leadership shaping the sector
The Cool Champions Evaluation Committee
The Cool Champions Evaluation Committee is responsible for reviewing submissions, applying agreed evaluation criteria, and selecting Cool Champions through a transparent and balanced process. Its role is to safeguard the integrity of the initiative, ensure diversity across geographies and sectors, and maintain a consistent standard of excellence from one selection cycle to the next. Committee members serve a two-year term, covering two full cycles of the initiative, thereby providing continuity and allowing space for renewal.
The Cool Champions Evaluation Committee consists of:
The establishment of the Evaluation Committee marks a transition from concept to implementation. With governance and evaluation structures now in place, Cool Champions moves beyond a one-off recognition model toward a standing mechanism that can support learning, visibility, and leadership in the cooling sector over time.
Submissions for Cool Champions will open on 12 January and close on 9 March. The inaugural cohort will be announced on World Environment Day 2026, and formally introduced during the Global Cooling Pledge Focal Points Meeting 2026.
As cooling continues to shape climate resilience, health, and development outcomes worldwide, recognising leadership is no longer optional. With Cool Champions, the UNEP Cool Coalition aims to ensure that leadership in sustainable cooling is identified, assessed, and elevated with the same rigour that the sector now applies to solutions themselves.
