Date: Tuesday 12 July 2022, 13:00 – 14:30 pm GMT+7 Duration: 90 minutes
Location: Rajadamnern Nok Avenue, Room C-4 UN-ESCAP, Bangkok, Thailand,
Organized by: Italian Ministry for Ecological Transition, UNEP, FAO, Cool Coalition, Ozone Secretariat, Climate & Clean Air Coalition
Session Description:
The crisis of climate change and the conflict in Ukraine are aggravating the stability of our food system. Growing stressors to our food system include increasing inequality, and a changing climate with greater incidences of heatwaves, droughts, floods, and an unprecedented locust outbreak. Another significant, but rarely talked about stressor threatening our food security, are inefficient cold chains.
Lack of an effective cold chain is estimated to directly result in the loss of 526 million tonnes of food production, or 12% of the global food supply. This amount would be sufficient to feed about 1 billion people in a world where currently 811 million people are hungry and 3 billion cannot afford a healthy diet. At the same time, refrigeration equipment used in the food cold chain is responsible for 1% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
The Rome Declaration on the Contribution of the Montreal Protocol to Food Loss Reduction through Sustainable Cold Chain Development calls for action at national and international level to promote sustainable cold chain development. While many countries have signed the Declaration, we now need to move from pledges to action. Scaling up action on sustainable cold chains is essential to ensure food security, address effects of climate change from the global food supply system and achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, the Paris Agreement, and the Montreal Protocol.
Objectives of the session:
- Demonstrate how ensuring a more holistic systems approach – in which policies, technologies, capacities and financing promote ‘field to fork’ connectivity through sustainable cold chain solutions – can help feed 10 billion people nutritiously, support the well-being of hundreds of millions of small-scale farmers and reduce food loss and waste, while avoiding direct and indirect GHG emissions.
- Enable the exchange of ideas and good practices, inspire commitments for transformative action on sustainable food cold chains at COP27 and beyond building on the Rome Declaration.
- Present the recommendations from Sustainable Food Cold Chains: Opportunities, Challenges and the Way Forward published by UNEP and FAO in the framework of the Cool Coalition.
