How Well Does LCA Model Land Use Impacts on Biodiversity?—A Comparison with Approaches from Ecology and Conservation

Curran, Michael; Souza, Danielle Maia de; Antón, Assumpció; Teixeira, Ricardo F. M.; Michelsen, Ottar; Vidal-Legaz, Beatriz; Sala, Serenella; Canals, Llorenç Milà i

doi:10.1021/acs.est.5b04681

Cited by 106 publications

(89 citation statements)

References 74 publications

(390 reference statements)

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“…Although LCA characterization models of biodiversity impacts still need refinements (Curran et al, 2016(Curran et al, , 2010, this approach was found to be the most relevant for the purpose of our study.…”

Section: Models For Assessing Business Impacts On Biodiversitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Detecting unsustainable pressures exerted on biodiversity by a company. Application to the food portfolio of a retailer

Wolff

Gondran²,

Brodhag³

2017

Journal of Cleaner Production

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SummaryCompanies are called by institutional organizations to assess their impacts on biodiversity and to take actions to achieve collectively conservation objectives. This paper presents a method to assess whether the pressures exerted by a business and its value chain on biodiversity are compatible with biodiversity conservation. The absolute environmental sustainability assessment framework is used to compare relevant life cycle assessment midpoint and endpoint indicators to the ecological budgets assigned to the company. This approach is illustrated based on the case study of a mass-market retailer with a focus on the pressures exerted by its food portfolio at the agricultural production step. The results indicate that several pressures driving biodiversity loss are not sustainable. The study also highlights the prominent weight of a few product categories in the ecological burden. These findings have implications for mass-market retailers as well as their food value chains and open research perspectives to make such an approach fully operational.

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Section: Models For Assessing Business Impacts On Biodiversitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Detecting unsustainable pressures exerted on biodiversity by a company. Application to the food portfolio of a retailer

Wolff

Gondran²,

Brodhag³

2017

Journal of Cleaner Production

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“…Assessment of both current and future biodiversity loss associated with company decisions will require greater supply chain transparency to enable companies to verify the sources of their commodities, to identify where and within which boundaries impacts will occur, and decision-making tools which leverage the data, science and models. These models and underlying data must be open and readily accessible by businesses if they are to be deployed widely [79].…”

Section: Further Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Challenges of Applying Planetary Boundaries as a Basis for Strategic Decision-Making in Companies with Global Supply Chains

et al. 2017

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Abstract:The Planetary Boundaries (PB) framework represents a significant advance in specifying the ecological constraints on human development. However, to enable decision-makers in business and public policy to respect these constraints in strategic planning, the PB framework needs to be developed to generate practical tools. With this objective in mind, we analyse the recent literature and highlight three major scientific and technical challenges in operationalizing the PB approach in decision-making: first, identification of thresholds or boundaries with associated metrics for different geographical scales; second, the need to frame approaches to allocate fair shares in the 'safe operating space' bounded by the PBs across the value chain and; third, the need for international bodies to co-ordinate the implementation of the measures needed to respect the Planetary Boundaries. For the first two of these challenges, we consider how they might be addressed for four PBs: climate change, freshwater use, biosphere integrity and chemical pollution and other novel entities. Four key opportunities are identified: (1) development of a common system of metrics that can be applied consistently at and across different scales; (2) setting 'distance from boundary' measures that can be applied at different scales; (3) development of global, preferably open-source, databases and models; and (4) advancing understanding of the interactions between the different PBs. Addressing the scientific and technical challenges in operationalizing the planetary boundaries needs be complemented with progress in addressing the equity and ethical issues in allocating the safe operating space between companies and sectors.

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“…This is in line with a need to incorporate potential effects at the landscape level, a consideration of scale that is commonly ignored in LCA (Milà i Canals and de Baan 2015). The growing interest for impacts on ecosystem services and biodiversity, and the use of LCA to inform policy makers and other stakeholders, justify exploration of possible links between landscape and conservation ecology approaches and the LCIA methods, which to some extent is already happening (Curran et al 2016). …”

Section: Research Needs and Outlookmentioning

confidence: 99%

Environmental impacts of food consumption and nutrition: where are we and what is next?

Nemecek

Jungbluth

Canals³

et al. 2016

Int J Life Cycle Assess

164

106

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Purpose This article introduces the special issue "LCA of nutrition and food consumption" and 14 papers selected from the Ninth LCA Food Conference in San Francisco in October 2014. Literature overview The scientific literature in the field of food LCA has increased more than ten times during the last 15 years. Nutrition has a high contribution to the total environmental impacts of consumption. Agricultural production often dominates the impacts, but its importance depends on the type of product, its production mode, transport, and processing. Local or domestic products reduce transports, but this advantage can be lost if the impacts of the raw material production are substantially increased. Diets containing less meat tend to be more environmentally friendly. Several studies concluded that respecting the dietary recommendations for a healthy diet would reduce the overall environmental impacts in the developed countries, although this is not a universal conclusion. Contribution of this special issueEight papers analyze the environmental impacts of catering and in-house food consumption and impacts on sectoral and national levels; four papers presents tools and methods to better assess the impacts of nutrition and to implement the results in practical decisionmaking. Finally, two contributions analyze the impacts of food waste and reduction options. Communication of the environmental impact assessment results to stakeholders including policy-makers and consumers needs additional efforts. Research needs and outlook (i) Development of holistic approaches for the assessment of sustainable food systems, (ii) assessment of land use related impacts and inclusion of ecosystem services, (iii) exploration of LCA results for policy support and decision-making, (iv) investigation of food consumption patterns in developing and emerging countries, and (v) harmonization of databases.

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How Well Does LCA Model Land Use Impacts on Biodiversity?—A Comparison with Approaches from Ecology and Conservation

Cited by 106 publications

References 74 publications

Detecting unsustainable pressures exerted on biodiversity by a company. Application to the food portfolio of a retailer

Detecting unsustainable pressures exerted on biodiversity by a company. Application to the food portfolio of a retailer

The Challenges of Applying Planetary Boundaries as a Basis for Strategic Decision-Making in Companies with Global Supply Chains

Environmental impacts of food consumption and nutrition: where are we and what is next?

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