Cold-chain systems typically use high-GWP (Global Warming Potential) refrigerants and grid electricity based on fossil-fuels, off-grid diesel-based generation and transport. The urgent challenge is delivering social and economic benefits by expanding cold-chain capacity quickly and affordably, while ensuring minimal pollution and adverse environmental effects.

The organizations of the United Nations system are committed to enabling events at which everyone can participate in an inclusive, respectful and safe environment.

UN system events are guided by the highest ethical and professional standards, and all participants are expected to behave with integrity and respect towards all participants attending or involved with any UN system event.

This document aims to initiate a discussion on gender mainstreaming in the work of the ozone treaties. It begins by providing a brief overview of international instruments on gender and the 2030 Agenda, to which the parties’ implementation of the ozone treaties has over the years made significant contributions. The 2030 Agenda clearly acknowledges the link between environmental protection and gender equality: Sustainable Development Goal 5 (SDG5) is aimed at achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls, and gender-related aspects are present within several other goals as well.

Recalling decisions VII/11 and XXI/6, in which the Meeting of the Parties requested all parties to urge their national standards-setting organizations to identify and review their standards for laboratory and analytical procedures that mandate the use of Montreal Protocol controlled substances with a view to adopting, where possible, laboratory and analytical products and processes that do not use controlled substances,

Recalling also decisions VII/11, XI/15, XVIII/15 and XIX/18, by which the Meeting of the Parties eliminated specific uses from the global exemption for laboratory and analytical uses,

1. To extend the global laboratory and analytical-use exemption until 31 December 2021, under the conditions set out in annex II to the report of the Sixth Meeting of the Parties and decisions XV/8, XVI/16 and XVIII/15, for the controlled substances under the Montreal Protocol in all annexes and groups except Annex C, group 1;

2. To request the Technology and Economic Assessment Panel to report no later than 2018 on the development and availability of laboratory and analytical procedures that can be performed without using controlled substances under the Montreal Protocol;

3. To encourage parties to continue to investigate domestically the possibility of replacing ozone-depleting substances in laboratory and analytical uses and to share the resulting information;

Annex II : Conditions applied to exemption for laboratory and analytical uses

The Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer is a global agreement to protect the Earth’s ozone layer by phasing out the chemicals that deplete it. This phase-out plan includes both the production and consumption of ozone-depleting substances. The landmark agreement was signed in 1987 and entered into force in 1989. 

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When did we realize ozone depletion was an issue, and how did we fix it? By 1985, the globe had already seen advancements in the scientific understanding of ozone depletion and its impacts on human health and the environment. It was then that the Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer was created in response. This agreement is a framework convention that lays out principles agreed upon by many parties. It does not, however, require countries to take control actions to protect the ozone layer. This would come later in the form of the Montreal Protocol. 
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