Green recovery through sustainable supply chains: implications for Asian nations
Statistics show a substantially increasing trend of unexpected and catastrophic events that supply chains have experienced in the recent past. For example, 1,438 epidemics have been reported by the World Health Organization (WHO) between 2010 and 2018 (Hudecheck et al., 2020). The impacts of these significant outbreaks are more severe for their unique features, such as the long-term existence of the disruptions, ripple effect on other activities, i.e. disruption propagations, and high uncertainty and simultaneous impacts on supply, demand and infrastructure (Choi, 2020; Ivanov, 2020a; Paul and Chowdhury, 2021; Queiroz et al., 2020; Rahman et al., 2021a).
A recent global pandemic outbreak, known as the COVID-19 pandemic, affects both local and global supply chains significantly (Chowdhury et al., 2021). The current impact of this outbreak on supply chains is already very severe, and medium- to long-term effects are predicted to be higher than any other previous major outbreaks such as 2003 SARS and 2009 H1N1 (Haren and Simchi-Levi, 2020; Koonin, 2020). These disruptions have substantial negative consequences on the return on sales, return on profit, stock return, brand image, employment in the firms, buyers’ safety, environmental and social practices and overall supply chain sustainability performance (Hendricks and Singhal, 2005; Thun and Hoenig, 2011; de Sousa Jabbour et al., 2020). Moreover, the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic may go beyond the merely economic performance and affect supply chain viability (Ivanov, 2020b), posing the questions of supply chain resiliency, sustainability, recovery and reconfigurability (Paul et al., 2021a, b; Cheramin et al., 2021).
It is now essential to ask how green recovery, based on green innovation (Singh et al., 2020) and a focus on supply chains, can recover sustainably from such an extraordinary epidemic and pandemic. This special issue focuses on publishing high-quality research articles which explore different aspects of the sustainable recovery in supply chains during and post epidemic and pandemic outbreaks such as the COVID-19 pandemic.
Accordingly, this special issue published seven articles in the area of sustainable recovery in supply chains. The first article analyzed different strategies for green recovery in the context of the mining industry of India and found that strategies for eco-innovation practices, environmental awareness and education and training are the three primary strategies for green recovery (Marimuthu et al., 2021). The second article explored 13 critical sustainable recovery measures for transportation systems and found that efficient traffic management, sustainability-focused policies, sensitization of stakeholders, financial support and adoption of 4 R practices are important for a sustainable recovery in freight transportation systems (Dwivedi et al., 2021). The third article analyzed enablers, challenges and solutions for sustainable recovery for green entrepreneurs and found that technological innovation, technology expertise, convergence of virtual and physical spaces, collaboration rather than competition and benefits to underserved groups through transparency are the most critical enablers for sustainable recovery (Jha et al., 2021). The fourth article discussed the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on micro, small and medium enterprises. It explored that 20%–33% of enterprises had a plan to adopt “green” technology to mitigate the impacts (Laorden et al., 2022). The fifth article evaluated the measures to mitigate the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic through circular economy enablers and found that waste reduction and its transformation into a resource is the most important enabler for a sustainable and resilient supply chain (Agarwal et al., 2021). The sixth article analyzed the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on economic growth, logistics performance, environmental sustainability and quality management in the context of Asian countries and found that the COVID-19 pandemic had a substantial negative impact on business performances for all countries such as India, Iran, Indonesia, Philippines, Bangladesh and Pakistan (Ikram et al., 2021). The seventh article analyzed the key performance indicators (KPIs) of a healthcare supply chain and found that KPI-related strategies play a significant role in sustainable recovery from the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic (Rahman et al., 2021b).
