This contribution provides selected insights on how policy planning established itself through Climate Change Development Reports (CCDRs) and National Cooling Action Plans (NCAPs) and remains relevant today, in the spirit of the Kigali anniversary and of this International Special Issue.[1]
I focus on selected achievements and hurdles, and on how they were overcome. I start with the beginning: NCAPs were developed under the Montreal Protocol’s Kigali Amendment and the Paris Agreement and established a policy framework to guide regulatory measures, incentives, and investment strategies. CCDRs were proposed and developed at the World Bank in 2019, to look at the national growth strategies and simulate carbon taxes, subsidy removals, climate impact on fiscal stability and GDP.[2] As potential twins, NCAPs provide targeted roadmaps and CCDRs evaluate broader economic, physical, and climate-related risks.
At the present, a few policy successes and hurdles can be singled out. The first accomplishment is their validation, as CCDRs have become a permanent core diagnostic tool[3]. Despite increased policy uncertainties, their rollout is being expanded. Correspondingly, driven by the Global Cooling Pledge and frameworks like the UNEP Cool Coalition, NCAPs have become established policy documents focused on integrating passive cooling, appliance efficiency, and HFC phase-downs into updated national climate commitments (NDCs 3.0).
It should be noted that criticisms were raised, at inception and during the formation of the tools. For example, CCDRs were insufficient in advising and supporting the private sector, they lacked of realistic proposals for financing needed investments and gave insufficient attention to public sectors indebtedness, domestic capital and financial markets, the limitations of green finance instruments.[4] Similarly, NCAPs were criticized for neglecting enforcement or aspects of supply chain and workforce gaps. Yet, policy planning outlived criticisms and severe obstacles. In the case of CCDRs, obstacles ranged from political gridlock to funding cuts, from public resistance or backlash to energy shocks and COVID-19. The pandemic itself spurred a global recession with massive poverty inversion in Africa, severe budget diversions and climate de-prioritization. For refrigeration and sustainable cooling, the pandemic reshaped policy, temporarily stalling climate diplomacy (e.g. COP26 and NDC reporting) and integrated climate goals into pandemic economic bailouts (e.g. the EU pioneered this approach with the NextGenerationEU). At the time when CCDRs were being rolled out, massive public debt accumulated by African governments to manage the COVID recession left a lasting hangover on climate plans, creating an architectural disconnect policy planning. The resulting debt servicing costs crowded out the capital needed to invest in climate adaptation, including refrigeration and cooling, as I saw first-hand, for example, in the case of Somalia (World Bank, 2026).
Policy planning outlived criticisms and severe obstacles through flexible design, coalition-building, and strategic adaptation; NCAPs and CCDRs have become a permanent core diagnostic tools that help measure drops in emissions and incentivize energy-efficient cooling systems. For example, the Vietnam CCDR explicitly demanded strict energy efficiency standards tailored directly to cooling devices and consumer appliances.[5] Several CCDRs emphasized policy reforms towards space cooling and natural ventilation.[6] The Brazil CCDR integrated cooling directly into its economic and labor assessments, linking temperature deviations directly to immediate drops in industrial and economic output,[7] showing the absolute necessity of scaling up clean and highly efficient cooling technologies to buffer the private sector against a 2% to 3% drop in localized capacity utilization during extreme heat period. Yet, more needs to be done particularly for the private sector in emerging markets- where recent data continue to reveal that few firms are taking measures to adapt.[8] Finally, at the frontline of the policy agenda on jobs, many CCDRs discuss the importance of active labor market policies in facilitating the job transitions in the face of shifting demand.[9]
[1] For a complete overview of the policy planning, national strategies and international commitments, including NDCs, NAPs, LT-LEDS, heat action plans, energy plans and other climate strategies, I refer to UNEP 2025, 5.1 Global Cooling Policy and Legislative Landscape. United Nations Environment Programme (2025). Global Cooling Watch 2025: The free degrees: How sustainable, passive-first cooling can save lives, money and food. Nairobi
[2] As seen by the author himself, through the conception, formation and development of Climate Change Development Reports
[3] As the World Bank’s Climate Change Action Plan was extended
[4] World Bank. 2023. Creating an Enabling Environment for Private Sector Climate Action: An Evaluation of World Bank Group Support, Fiscal Years 2013–22
[5] Ref.
[6] Tunisia CCDR isolates space cooling and water pumping as compounding drivers of national energy demand and advocates for aggressive building codes. The Central Asia Regional CCDR Frameworks highlight the importance of decentralized, low-tech adaptation alongside high-tech policies, and champions municipal-level physical interventions, such as widespread urban tree planting and the modification of local dwelling construction guidelines to maximize passive cooling and natural ventilation. Ref.
[7] Ref.
[8] In the Arab Republic of Egypt, for example, only 9 percent of firms invested in cooling technologies, indicating a lack of awareness, incentives, or resources for climate adaptation. Alsharkas, Zeina, Jean Michel N. Marchat, Enrique Aldaz-Carroll, and Ana Goicoechea. 2026. Competing in the Face of Climate Risks: Evidence from Firms and Policy Priorities in MENAAP. Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan, and Pakistan Development Report. Washington, DC: World Bank
[9] Jobs in a Changing Climate Insights from World Bank Group Country Climate and Development Reports covering 93 economies, World Bank, 2026 and Development Committee. 2025. “Foundations for Growth and Jobs.”, Prepared for the October 16 Development Committee Meeting.
Marco Boggero