Including Land Use Biodiversity Loss Indicators in LCA: State of the Art

Abstract

Different international organizations and initiatives stress the growing recognition that biological diversity is a global asset of tremendous value to present and future generations. In the frame of Life Cycle studies, numerous efforts have been done in order to provide good enough indicators to assess biodiversity loss. The increasing awareness of the importance to include biodiversity loss due to land use as impact category has also motivated the UNEP-SETAC life cycle initiative to build consensus and provide guidance on the use of specific impact indicators. The main goals of this paper are to introduce reader in the most common indicators to include biodiversity in LCA and to present the preliminary recommended method of the UNEP-Including SETAC life cycle initiative to include biodiversity loss in LCA. Finally, drawbacks and challenges of current methodology will be discussed. Although there is still a lot of work to be done, the path is clearly marked out and as far as more case studies could be included and local CFs（characterization factors）for specific activities could be developed, easier would be the inclusion of biodiversity assessment in LCA, and hopefully, this will lead to a better knowledge on how to preserve biodiversity.