Environmental Implications of Food Waste: A Study on South-Asian Countries

Abstract

Food waste (FW) is widely recognized as a serious threat to global food security, the economy, and the environment. FW is a major contributor to the three global crises of climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution and waste because it complicates waste management systems and worsens the magnitudes of food insecurity. If it were a nation, food loss and waste would be the third-largest source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions as revealed by the Food Waste Index Report of 2021 by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). The growing countries in the South Asian region are not an exception to this major problem. Under this backdrop, the present study is aimed at investigating the long-term relationships as well as short-term causal interplays between FW and GHG emissions for the South Asian countries from 1990 to 2018. Employing time-series cointegration and Granger causality techniques, the results show that there is long-run relationship between these two variables in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka, and the results of the Granger causality test demonstrate that GHG is significantly influenced by FWs in Bangladesh, India, and the Maldives. So the governments in these countries should plan for minimizing the magnitudes of FWs so far as the goal of reaching sustainable development is concerned.

Citation

De, B., Hussain, I. and Das, R.C. (2023), "Environmental Implications of Food Waste: A Study on South-Asian Countries", Dinçer, H. and Yüksel, S. (Ed.) Renewable Energy Investments for Sustainable Business Projects, Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 45-58. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-80382-883-120231004