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Evaluating holistically environmental impacts of land planning policies implies to take into account several aspects, intimately related both to territorial features and to production-consumption patterns, which have a specific local character and a potential impact at different scales. To address these challenges, life cycle thinking and assessment methods are crucial. Indeed, beyond the traditional application of Life Cycle Assessment as a product-oriented methodology, a new LCA-based approach called "territorial LCA" has gradually emerged to assess geographically or administratively defined systems. This paper aims to analyze how this new LCA-based approach differs from conventional LCA, highlighting main differences and added values. Territorial LCAs can be divided into two main approaches, i.e., i) type A, which focuses on the assessment of a specific activity or supply chain anchored in a given territory, and ii) type B, which attempts to assess all production and consumption activities located in a territory, including all environmental pressures embodied in trade flows with other territories. These two approaches are described and compared according to the four LCA phases to highlight differences and similarities with conventional LCA. This comparison is based on a detailed case study analysis for each territorial LCA type and it shows that most of the differences are in the goal and scope definition, especially for the territorial LCA of type B where the functional unit definition is no more the starting point of the assessment. Concerning territorial LCA of type A, there are no main divergences with conventional LCA as territorial contextualization already exists in some LCA applications, even if not systematically applied. Improvements in the application may entail a comprehensive contextualization of the four LCA phases, developing the synergies with the use of Geographic Information System (GIS) tools. Other specific challenges affecting both type A and B are related to i) territorial unique intrinsic multifunctionality determined by all human activities located within its boundaries, ii) specific territorial characteristics (i.e., spatial variability and organization), and iii) multiscale issues and the consideration of interactions between territories.

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Insects are becoming part of the human diet in many regions of the world, either directly or indirectly, as livestock feed. Insects could become a significant feed ingredient if produced at industrial scale, but it is a challenge. Such an emerging sector would result in substantial social effects. One innovation of the DESIRABLE project is exploring potential social consequences induced by industrial scale development of insect production in France for feed, under several production and marketing assumptions. First, this paper explains how the stakeholders and researchers involved in the project built and selected some framework scenarios, which depict upstream (production and meal processing) scenarios. Downstream scenarios were designed based on interviews with specialists in poultry, trout, and feed production markets, that allowed to proposing plausible scenarios for marketing. The potential outlets are more or less narrow market ‘niches’: feed for laying hens to produce organic eggs, or for farmed trout eating insect meal. Second, the method for evaluating social effects linked with the emergence of the new insect’ industry, a social life cycle analysis in four detailed scenarios. The main positive social effects of the four detailed scenarios result from job creation in the insect production sector, while effects on other feed-ingredient suppliers are few. Negative effects result from the allergy risk for employees and potential disturbance to nearby neighbourhoods, but the latter can be easily managed by carefully choosing the locations. In the two scenarios with integrated bio refinery, exists a major risk that could stop the industrial project: activists could use environmental or animal-welfare concerns to oppose the bio refinery, because of agricultural land and water preservation and/or opposition to industrial scale insect production. Nevertheless, insect meal can help preserve fishery resources by providing a constant substitute for fish meal.