Sustainable Cold Chains: The Missing Link for Sustainable Development

Date: Saturday 12 November I Time: 15:30 – 17:30 I Location: COP27 Italy Pavilion

Event Language: English                               Location: COP27 Italy Pavilion

Organized by: UNEP Cool Coalition co-lead with Italy, FAO, Ozone Secretariat and the CCAC

Event 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 unprecedented pest outbreaks. Another significant, but rarely talked about stressor threatening our food security, are inefficient and insufficient cold chain systems.

Expanding global cold chains is vital for meeting several of the Sustainable Development Goals relating to poverty reduction, food security, health and wellbeing, and climate action. Lack of an effective cold chain is estimated to directly result in the loss of 526 million tonnes of food production, or 13% 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, most existing conventional cold chain technologies rely on either ozone depleting or global warming refrigerants and are energy intensive harming our climate. 

Acting on sustainable cold chain offers a multi-faceted win for people and the planet. Under the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, the Rome Declaration on the Contribution of the Montreal Protocol to Food Loss Reduction through Sustainable Cold Chain Development calls for cooperation and action at national and international level to promote sustainable cold chain development. More than 80 parties to the Montreal Protocol have signed the Declaration and other stakeholders are endorsing its principles. Now it is time to move from pledges to specific actions. 

A joint report of UNEP and FAO developed in the framework of the Cool Coalition and with the support of the Italian Ministry of Ecological Transition and other partners highlights the challenges  and opportunities for promoting sustainable food cold chain. The report outlines existing best practices and makes recommendations for governments and industry to accelerate sustainable cold chains development to ensure food security, mitigate of climate change and impacts of foods system and achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, and targets of the Paris Agreement, and the Montreal Protocol.

Objectives

• Present the recommendations from the joint UNEP-FAO report Sustainable Food Cold Chains: Opportunities, Challenges and the Way Forward developed in the framework of the Cool Coalition with support from the CCAC, OzonAction and Ozone Secretariat
• Discuss the need for a more holistic systems approach – in which policies, technologies, capacities and financing promote ‘field to fork’ connectivity through sustainable cold chain; 
• 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