World Ozone Day 2026: Global action for a cooler planet, through the support of the Multilateral Fund

Each year on September 16, the world marks World Ozone Day, commemorating the 1987 signing of the Montreal Protocol, one of the most successful international agreements ever reached. This year's theme, “Global action for a cooler planet,” points to how far that agreement has grown: from an initial focus on chemicals that depleted the ozone layer to a broader mandate covering gases that drive global warming. Behind much of that progress sits the Multilateral Fund, the financing arm that has turned the Protocol's commitments into results on the ground. This year's observance also falls just weeks ahead of another milestone: on 15 October, the Kigali Amendment, which extended the Protocol to cover hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), marks its own tenth anniversary.

A legacy worth celebrating

For nearly forty years, the Fund has supported the phase-out of ozone-depleting substances across the developing world. Its record is substantial: more than 10,000 projects have been approved in 144 countries, backed by US$ 4.5 billion in contributions since the Fund's founding. Between 1995 and 2021 alone, those projects are estimated to have helped avoid 51.1 gigatonnes of CO₂-equivalent emissions, a scale of climate benefit delivered at a fraction of the cost of comparable efforts in other sectors.

It is this track record, built up over decades, that World Ozone Day is designed to celebrate: coordinated, well-funded international action can deliver measurable environmental results and change people’s lives over the long term, well beyond any single agreement or amendment.

Extending the mandate: HFCs and the Kigali Amendment

Part of that legacy is more recent. In 2016, the Kigali Amendment added HFCs, potent greenhouse gases widely used as refrigerants, to the substances covered by the Protocol. The Fund has since become the main financing channel helping developing countries meet their HFC phase-down obligations, largely through Kigali HFC Implementation Plans (KIPs) for the manufacturing and the servicing sectors. 

To date, 91 developing countries have had the first stage of their KIPs approved, backed by a combined US$ 174.5 million in funding. With the Amendment's tenth anniversary arriving this October, that body of work offers an early look at what a full decade of implementation can achieve.

A model worth marking

The decades of work behind these numbers including the projects completed, the emissions avoided, the countries supported and the collaborative approach that has driven the Ozone community are exactly what World Ozone Day marks. As the world marks this year's Day under the theme of global action for a cooler planet, the Multilateral Fund's steady, project-by-project support celebrates this multilateralism’s success.