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Beating the Heat: A Sustainable Cooling Handbook for Cities was launched on November 3rd 2021 at COP26 by the Cool Coalition, UNEP, RMI, Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy (GCoM), Mission Innovation and Clean Cooling Collaborative.

The new guide offers planners an encyclopaedia of proven options to help cool cities. The guide’s 80 supporting case studies and examples demonstrate the effectiveness of the strategies outlined and can help cities find an approach best suited to their unique contexts.

An estimated 14 percent of the total food produced for human consumption is lost, while 17 per cent is wasted. This is enough to feed around 1 billion people in a world where currently 811 million people are hungry and 3 billion cannot afford a healthy diet. The lack of effective refrigeration is a leading contributor to this challenge, resulting in the loss of 12 percent of total food production, in 2017. Moreover, the food cold chain is responsible for 4 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, including from cold chain technologies and food loss and waste due to lack of refrigeration.

This report explores how food cold chain development can become more sustainable and makes a series of important recommendations. These include governments and other cold chain stakeholders collaborating to adopt a systems approach and develop National Cooling Action Plans, backing plans with financing and targets, implementing and enforcing ambitious minimum efficiency standards.

The Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer – a universally ratified multilateral environmental agreement – can contribute to mobilizing and scaling up solutions for delivering sustainable, efficient, and environmentally friendly cooling through its Kigali Amendment and Rome Declaration. Reducing non-CO2 emissions, including refrigerants used in cold chain technologies is key to achieve the Paris Agreement targets, as highlighted in the latest mitigation report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

At a time when the international community must act to meet the Sustainable Development Goals, sustainable food cold chains can make an important difference.

At the 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28), the Cool Coalition launched the Global Cooling Pledge. Currently boasting over 70 country Signatories and 80 non-state supporters, the Pledge represents the world’s first collective commitment to reducing cooling-related emissions by 68% by 2050, while also expanding equitable access to cooling. It is anchored in the science of the Global Cooling Watch and lays out 14 national targets, including National Cooling Action Plans, passive and nature-based solutions, building energy codes, higher efficiency standards, and refrigerant phase-down.

The Global Cooling Watch is UNEP's biennial publication on sustainable cooling. The inaugural edition on 2023 presents a data-driven roadmap to achieve near-zero emissions from cooling. It models realistic, high-impact pathways across key sectors and lays out three major pillars for action: passive cooling, energy efficiency, and refrigerant transition. Released in support of the Global Cooling Pledge, the report calls on governments to accelerate solutions that reduce emissions and expand access.

The UN Secretary-General's Call to Action on Extreme Heat brings together the diverse expertise and perspectives of ten specialized UN entities (FAO, ILO, OCHA, UNDRR, UNEP, UNESCO, UN-Habitat, UNICEF, WHO, WMO) in a first-of-its-kind joint product, underscoring the multi-sectoral impacts of extreme heat. In support of the Call to Action, the Global Heat Health Information Network launched a set of Heat Action profiles, mapping heat-related work across 16 UN and international organizations.