ABSTRACT
Economic and social development and the environment have to live together; you can no longer have one at the expense of the other. Rather our aim has to be a world where everyone can live well and within the sustainable limits of our planet. Cold chain sits at the nexus of this challenge. How do you create the local and global, temperature-controlled “field to fork” connectivity to feed 10 billion people sustainably, most of whom will be born into low-income countries and communities, from hundreds of millions of small-scale farmers whose livelihoods and well-being are often dependent on only 1 to 2 hectares, as well as ensure they are climate change adaptation ready and resilient, all without further warming the planet? Cold chains are currently largely dependent on fossil fuels and conventional technologies which are typically energy-intensive and highly polluting, and the demand is expected to grow significantly. Unless appropriately designed to minimise cooling demand, and avoid the use of fossil fuels and high-Global Warming Potential refrigerant technologies, business-as-usual (BAU) growth in the cold chain to reduce food loss, and improve food security and livelihoods for rural populations and smallholder farmers will create significant greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and pollution compromising economic, environmental, social and political goals, targets and commitments. In this chapter, we will explore how sustainable cold chains can only be introduced effectively and efficiently if the entire system is designed cohesively and with an integrated system approach from the outset, rather than piecemeal technology deployments along the cold chain, which often can only solve singular aspects of the problem but disregard the essential cold connectivity and ignore the end outcomes and bigger picture goals. We will look to overview what is required alongside technology and who will need to be engaged to drive change, including policy, creative and collaborative models for finance and business, training and capacity building, as well as platforms to provide full end-to-end digital connectivity across the entire supply chain. We will also explore more strategic and step-change approaches to sustainable cooling and cold chain, such as community cooling hubs, that can facilitate meeting the current and future needs with the lowest whole life cycle cost, the greatest energy system resilience and with minimal environmental impact.
