Greening Agri-food Value Chains in Emerging Economies

Abstract

Emerging economies play an increasingly important role in global food security. They often rely on fossil fuels, lag behind on food governance and are characterised by subtropical climates, often requiring energy intensive irrigation and refrigerated storage. Mitigation options for agri-food value chains in emerging economies are novel and have substantial sustainability potential. The session on Greening Agri-food Value Chains in Emerging Economies at the 8th International Conference on Life Cycle Management showed the manifold challenges of emerging economies on their transition path to contributing to a sustainable global food system. LCA can support this path by identifying specific environmental hotspots in food value chains as well as by evaluating and prioritising potential solutions from an environmental perspective.