Climate Cooling Initiative Launches Global Effort to Advance Nature-Based Cooling

Climate Cooling Initiative connects science, restoration, finance, policy, and implementation to strengthen Earth's nature-based climate-cooling systems.

San Francisco Bay Area, United States (PRUnderground) September 23rd, 2026

Climate Cooling Initiative brings together science, restoration, finance, policy, and implementation to protect, restore, and strengthen Earth's nature-based climate-cooling systems.

The Climate Cooling Initiative (CCI) today announced the launch of a new international effort to protect, restore, and strengthen Earth's nature-based climate-cooling systems at consequential scale. CCI is grounding its efforts in a significant new synthesis paper Cooling Climate Quickly: A New Perspective Yields New Options which attributes a significant amount of global warming to the loss of healthy, functioning ecosystems, which in turn clarifies options for quickly restoring that cooling function.

For decades, climate action has focused primarily on reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. That work remains essential. But reducing emissions alone does not address another critical part of the climate system: the loss and degradation of forests, wetlands, soils, grasslands, and other ecosystems that naturally help cool the planet.

Healthy ecosystems regulate water and energy flows, generate clouds and rainfall, moderate temperatures, store carbon, and support resilient landscapes. Protecting and restoring these systems can strengthen the planet's natural cooling capacity while the world continues the essential work of reducing greenhouse-gas emissions and atmospheric greenhouse-gas concentrations.

The Climate Cooling Initiative is working to make this opportunity visible, measurable, financeable, and actionable--connecting what is already working, accelerating promising approaches, and demonstrating measurable climate-cooling impact.

"Our goal is to establish nature-based climate cooling as a recognized and measurable component of global climate action," said Jon Schull. "Reducing emissions remains essential. At the same time, protecting, restoring, and strengthening Earth's nature-based climate-cooling systems gives us an opportunity to act now on the living systems that regulate heat, water, energy, clouds, and rainfall."

Initial priorities include strengthening the scientific foundation for nature-based climate cooling; identifying where protection and restoration can have the greatest impact; helping promising approaches move from science and demonstration toward implementation; improving measurement and verification of climate-cooling processes and outcomes; developing financial and investment pathways; advancing enabling policy; and building broader understanding of the role living systems play in regulating climate.

The Initiative's long-term ambition is not simply to slow the rate of warming, but to help bend the curve toward actual cooling. The goal is to help slow the rate of warming over the coming decade, move the climate toward stabilization, and work toward a sustained decline in mean land and ocean temperatures--while building the scientific, financial, policy, and implementation capacity required for measurable climate cooling at consequential scale.

The Climate Cooling Initiative is supported by a growing number of partner organizations including 1000 Landscapes for 1 Billion People, Biodiversity for Livable Climate, The Biomimicry Institute, Buckminster Fuller Institute, Climate Foundation, Conservation Biology Institute, EcoRestoration Alliance, Lo-TEK Institute + Lo-TEK Office, and WeForest.

About Climate Cooling Initiative

CCI brings together scientists, Indigenous leaders, restoration practitioners, policymakers, funders, businesses, and partner organizations working across disciplines and geographies. Rather than creating a new centralized system, the Initiative is designed to connect and strengthen existing knowledge, organizations, projects, tools, networks, capabilities, and resources and help move effective approaches toward implementation at consequential scale.

Media Contact:
The Climate Cooling Initiative
Full Name: Dr. Stuart Cowan
Title: Executive Director, Buckminster Fuller Institute
Direct Phone Number: +1 (503) 724-3329
Email Address: [email protected]
Organization Website with paper and short film: ClimateCoolingInitiative.earth

Original Press Release.