How Qatar’s Food System Has Impacted By Blockade? A Global Trade and Supply Chain Analysis

Abstract

Due to the fact that most of the food in Qatar are imported from different countries around the world, and given the so-called GCC crisis in 2017, there is a strong need to focus on sustainability impacts of the embargo in term of food security, sustainability and climate impacts in Qatar. This thesis presents an analytical approach to analyze Qatar’s food trade for the period between 2013 and 2018. Furthermore, measuring and managing the CO2 emission and equivalences from freight transport operations for the period 2015 to 2018. The carbon footprint was calculated using the transport CO2 emission analysis and a global Multi-Region Input-Output (MRIO) analysis. The data was carefully stored on a database using MySQL. Then, the data was retrieved using the data visualization tool, the Microsoft Power BI. The results indicate that imported food to Qatar was highly dependent on Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates over the past years. However, there was a huge reduction in the supply chain from those countries after the embargo. Consideration of the supply chain design network that takes global CO2 emission into account is important. There was a significant change in trade data. On the other hand, the total amount of carbon footprint decreased from 2015 to 2018 with around 320,000 tons of CO2 emission. The consumption of MRIO-Raw milk and MRIO-Dairy decreased as well from 2015 to 2018. However, the CO2 emission using the air mode increased sharply from 2015 to 2017