Perspectives on the Application of LCA to Social Systems

Abstract

Objective. LCAs started to measure the “cradle to grave” environmental impact of wider range of human activities and economic systems including different processes and technology systems. Since the 1990s, the LCA standard (ISO 14040) has been developed with a view to establishing a basic method applicable to industrial products and consumer goods intended for the mass market. On the other hand, the concept and method of LCA have been extended to apply to non-consumer goods such as buildings and civil infrastructures which are public or semi-public goods. In the late 1990s, Imura and others developed “Infrastructure LCA”, targeting urban infrastructures such as subways, roads, harbors, waste water treatment plants, and municipal solid waste collection and treatment system. They conducted case studies to quantify the energy and raw materials consumption and different types of emissions pertinent to the construction, operation and maintenance of urban infrastructures, but the integrated analysis of environmental implications and social and economic functions of infrastructures was not fully developed. This paper tries to explore a framework of applying LCA to social systems consisting of technological systems to support human life and economic activities in cities.
Results and Discussion. In conducting LCA, the term “social system” refers a social organism consisting of a set of “technology systems” providing various social and public services, which are put in motion by material and energy metabolism of the society. On the other hand, in sociology, “social system” is synonymous to “social structure” which refers to entities or groups in definite relation to each other, and it also means social institutions and norms embedded in the society. The technology systems and embedded institutions altogether shape the behavior of actors within the social systems. Based on these considerations, this paper focuses on the human activities in cities and classifies the LCA of social systems to three layers. The first is the holistic analysis of cities which comprises a number of “technology systems” such as transportation, telecommunication and information, water, electricity supply, waste collection and disposal, and other systems, and we call it “LCA of cities”. The second is the LCA of different technology systems as mentioned above. The last is the LCA of specific infrastructures such as roads and railways which comprises transportation system. Here, infrastructures and certain products, e.g., roads and cars are closely linked and their LCAs should be conducted jointly, and we call this “extended infrastructure LCA”.
Conclusions. Modern cities are functioning thanks to a set of technology systems comprising a variety of social infrastructures and products. Innovation in products such as cars or mobile phones is coupled with transformations in technology systems such as transportation or communication and information systems, and they bring about major or even drastic changes in society together with changes in material and energy metabolism. Focusing on cities, this paper presents a general framework of LCA applicable to social systems. It discusses three stratifications of LCAs with different purposes and approaches. The next important step is to conduct more case studies to promote the application of LCA to social systems.