IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/sustdv/v27y2019i5p846-859.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

On the role of regional hubs in the environmental sustainability of humanitarian supply chains

Author

Listed:
  • Mohammad Hossein Zarei
  • Ruth Carrasco‐Gallego
  • Stefano Ronchi

Abstract

In spite of strong commitment of humanitarian and development communities with the protection of our planet, expressed through the Sustainable Development Goals in the Agenda 2030, environmental sustainability still remains an overlooked aspect in humanitarian supply chains (HSCs). Using a collaborative mixed‐methods research with an international humanitarian organization, this paper sheds light on the causes of unsustainable operations in HSCs and investigates the impact of regional hubs on the environmental sustainability. First, an in‐depth focus group was conducted involving the organization's employees and the research team to identify the main causes contributing to unsustainable HSC in the organization. Five categories of causes were identified, namely, supply chain configuration (SCC), transportation, donors, material and waste, and humanitarian specificities. Then, based on respondents' prioritization, SCC was selected as the most important category. Carbon footprinting for three SCC scenarios was conducted: the current SCC and two conceptual SCC with two hubs in East and West Africa with different replenishment windows. The results reveal that the SCCs with hubs outperform the current SCC in terms of carbon footprint. Finally, the challenges of implementing the conceptual SCCs and possible solutions to address them were discussed through follow‐up individual interviews.

Suggested Citation

  • Mohammad Hossein Zarei & Ruth Carrasco‐Gallego & Stefano Ronchi, 2019. "On the role of regional hubs in the environmental sustainability of humanitarian supply chains," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(5), pages 846-859, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:sustdv:v:27:y:2019:i:5:p:846-859
    DOI: 10.1002/sd.1945
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/sd.1945
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/sd.1945?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Piera Centobelli & Roberto Cerchione & Eugenio Oropallo & Wael Hassan El‐Garaihy & Tamer Farag & Khalid Hassan Al Shehri, 2022. "Towards a sustainable development assessment framework to bridge supply chain practices and technologies," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(4), pages 647-663, August.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wly:sustdv:v:27:y:2019:i:5:p:846-859. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)1099-1719 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.