UNEP-SETAC guideline on global land use impact assessment on biodiversity and ecosystem services in LCA

作者：Thomas Koellner, Laura de Baan, Tabea Beck, Miguel Brandão, Bárbara María Civit, Manuele D. Margni, Llorenç Milà i Canals, Rosie Saad, Danielle Maia de Souza, Ruedi Müller‐Wenk · 发表于：The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment · 年份：2013 · DOI：10.1007/s11367-013-0579-z · 被引用次数：382 · 研究领域：Land Use and Ecosystem Services、Environmental Impact and Sustainability、Environmental and Social Impact Assessments

As a consequence of the multi-functionality of land, the impact assessment of land use in Life Cycle Impact Assessment requires the modelling of several impact pathways covering biodiversity and ecosystem services. To provide consistency amongst these separate impact pathways, general principles for their modelling are provided in this paper. These are refinements to the principles that have already been proposed in publications by the UNEP-SETAC Life Cycle Initiative. In particular, this paper addresses the calculation of land use interventions and land use impacts, the issue of impact reversibility, the spatial and temporal distribution of such impacts and the assessment of absolute or relative ecosystem quality changes. Based on this, we propose a guideline to build methods for land use impact assessment in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). Recommendations are given for the development of new characterization models and for which a series of key elements should explicitly be stated, such as the modelled land use impact pathways, the land use/cover typology covered, the level of biogeographical differentiation used for the characterization factors, the reference land use situation used and if relative or absolute quality changes are used to calculate land use impacts. Moreover, for an application of the characterisation factors (CFs) in an LCA study, data collection should be transparent with respect to the data input required from the land use inventory and the regeneration tim...