Montreal Protocol parties open Kigali meeting with a billion-dollar cooling bill to settle

The 38th Meeting of the Parties to the Montreal Protocol opened at 10 a.m. on 2 November 2026 at the Kigali Convention Centre in Rwanda, ten years after the Kigali Amendment was adopted in the same city on 15 October 2016. Delegates from governments, international organisations, industry and civil society are meeting through 6 November for a session that is part anniversary, part accounting exercise and, in practical terms, a negotiation over money.

The Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer is the treaty credited with pulling the world back from the brink of severe ozone depletion. Agreed in 1987, it phased out chlorofluorocarbons and related chemicals and is routinely described as the most successful environmental agreement ever concluded. In 2016 the parties attached a climate mandate to that ozone framework through the Kigali Amendment, which obliges countries to phase down hydrofluorocarbons, the refrigerants that replaced ozone-destroying chemicals but turned out to be potent greenhouse gases.

The amendment's arithmetic is the reason the anniversary carries weight. It targets an 80 percent cut in HFC consumption by 2047, and its implementation is projected to avoid up to 0.5C of global warming by the end of the century. More than 170 countries have ratified it. Those gains depend less on the text than on whether developing countries can afford the equipment, training and refrigerant management that the transition requires, which is why the Multilateral Fund sits at the centre of this year's agenda.

That fund has financed compliance since the treaty's early years. Parties agreed three years ago on a replenishment for 2024-2026 with a triennial budget just shy of US$1 billion, or US$965 million in the figure used during the negotiations. The number now on the table for 2027-2029 is substantially larger, and the distance between the low and high estimates is itself a subject of dispute.

Key Facts

The Ozone Secretariat of the UN Environment Programme said on November 2 that MOP38 runs from Monday 2 November to Friday 6 November 2026, with a preparatory segment from 2 to 4 November chaired jointly by Annie Gabriel of Australia and Igobe Mbulawa of Botswana, the co-chairs of the Open-ended Working Group. The high-level segment opens at 10 a.m. on Thursday 5 November, with statements from the president of the 37th Meeting of the Parties, a representative of UNEP and a representative of the Government of Rwanda. The meeting is scheduled to close by 6 p.m. Kigali time on Friday 6 November.

The provisional agenda is dense. It includes the 2027-2029 replenishment of the Multilateral Fund, including the supplementary report of the Technology and Economic Assessment Panel replenishment task force and an extension of the fixed-exchange-rate mechanism; further strengthening of Montreal Protocol institutions; the viability of Protocol operations; emissions of hydrofluorocarbon-23, known as HFC-23; enhancing regional atmospheric monitoring; and the status of ratification of the Kigali Amendment.

On the money, the Technology and Economic Assessment Panel estimates the total funding requirement for the 2027-2029 triennium at US$1.282 billion to US$1.361 billion under its low-end scenario and US$1.672 billion to US$1.755 billion under its high-end scenario. IISD's Earth Negotiations Bulletin reported on July 17, 2026, that the panel's May 2026 report covers HCFC phase-out, HFC phase-down, estimated funding for 2027-2029 and future triennia. The bulletin also recorded that several delegations, including Italy, called for the assessment to be based on historical data and actual HCFC and HFC consumption rather than solely on maximum permitted consumption levels.

The Environmental Investigation Agency said on October 29 that a decade on from Kigali, progress has been made but significant challenges remain, naming illegal trade, harmful industrial emissions, gaps in atmospheric monitoring and growing contamination from the persistent breakdown products of HFC replacements. The group is pressing at MOP38 for an ambitious replenishment, stronger licensing systems and enforcement against illegal trade, expanded atmospheric monitoring to identify unexpected emissions, and decisive action on HFC-23, a gas with a global warming potential almost 15,000 times that of carbon dioxide whose measured emissions continue to far exceed those reported by countries.

Rwanda's Ministry of Environment announced on September 24 that the meeting is expected to attract up to 1,000 participants, and that side activities would include a technical workshop at the African Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Cooling and Cold-chain, a series of Kigali Amendment at 10 events, an innovation exhibition at the convention centre and a partnership forum. Minister of Environment Bernadette Arakwiye said Rwanda was proud to welcome the world back to Kigali ten years after countries adopted the amendment there. Megumi Seki, Executive Secretary of the Ozone Secretariat, said the Protocol has demonstrated what sustained international cooperation can achieve and that returning to Kigali gives parties an opportunity to take stock of progress and strengthen implementation for the next decade.

Analysis

The most uncomfortable item on the agenda is HFC-23, a byproduct of HCFC-22 production that is also used in some refrigeration. Its warming potential is roughly 15,000 times that of carbon dioxide, and the gap between what countries report and what instruments measure is not a rounding error. It is a compliance problem that the treaty's reporting architecture was not designed to catch, and it survives precisely because the chemical is cheap to vent and expensive to destroy. A decade of Kigali implementation has made the accounting better without yet closing that gap.

The replenishment debate is where the anniversary meets hard budgeting. The panel's low-end scenario of US$1.282 billion to US$1.361 billion and its high-end scenario of US$1.672 billion to US$1.755 billion bracket a decision that will shape what developing countries can actually do between 2027 and 2029. The comparison with the US$965 million agreed for 2024-2026 is the political fact that matters, because a fund that grows modestly in nominal terms while the task expands will leave national ozone units choosing between enforcement and equipment. The contact group co-chaired by the Netherlands and the Maldives asked for additional analysis on low-volume-consuming countries, digital technology costs and refrigerant life-cycle management, which is a polite way of saying the existing formula may not fit the next phase.

The bigger picture here is that the Montreal Protocol is being asked to run a climate transition on an ozone budget. HFCs were introduced as the safe replacement for ozone-eating chemicals, so the treaty's own success created the emissions problem that the Kigali Amendment now has to solve. That inheritance means every dollar discussed in Kigali is doing double duty, protecting the ozone layer's slow recovery while buying down a greenhouse gas that would otherwise offset a meaningful share of the avoided warming. The institutional items on the agenda, from strengthening the Protocol's bodies to the viability of its operations, are not procedural housekeeping. They are the machinery that turns a pledge into verified tonnes.

The Environmental Investigation Agency's list of unfinished business is a useful corrective to anniversary optimism. Illegal trade persists, industrial emissions remain a problem, atmospheric monitoring has gaps, and the breakdown products of some HFC replacements, including PFAS, are creating a contamination issue that no one negotiated for in 2016.

Why It Matters

Cooling is no longer a luxury framing. Refrigeration and air-conditioning underpin food security, vaccine storage and the cold chains that hospitals and exporters depend on, and the transition away from high-warming refrigerants has to happen while access to cooling expands. That is the argument Arakwiye made in September, linking the HFC transition to health, agriculture and economic development. A replenishment that is too small does not pause the transition; it slows it in the countries with the least capacity to absorb the delay.

The climate stakes are quantifiable. Full implementation of the Kigali Amendment could avoid up to 0.5C of warming by the end of the century, and the Rwandan ministry notes that the benefit is larger when the refrigerant transition is paired with energy efficiency improvements in cooling equipment. Half a degree is the difference between two very different sets of climate outcomes, and it is being defended through a funding decision taken in a five-day meeting.

There is also a credibility dimension. The Montreal Protocol works because parties have repeatedly paid for compliance, and the Multilateral Fund is the mechanism that made universal participation rational for developing countries. If the 2027-2029 replenishment lands at the bottom of the assessed range, the treaty's most important asset, its record of delivered commitments, takes a hit at exactly the moment it is asking for faster HFC cuts.

Next Up

The preparatory segment continues through 4 November, with the high-level segment opening at 10 a.m. on Thursday 5 November. The decision on the 2027-2029 replenishment, along with the fixed-exchange-rate extension and the HFC-23 and monitoring items, is expected before the meeting closes by 6 p.m. Kigali time on Friday 6 November.

Whatever number emerges will set the terms for the next three years of implementation and for the first full decade of the Kigali Amendment's operation. The anniversary events in Kigali will be brief. The budget line will last longer.