LCA Food 2012 in Saint Malo, France! - Manifestations et colloques ...

PARALLEL SESSION 2A: LAND USE 8 th Int. Conference on LCA in the
Agri-Food Sector, 1-4 Oct 2012
humans. Bridging environmental, economic sciences and decision-making policies, they have become a very
dynamic area of research, particularly in ecological economics (National Research Council, 2004).
On one hand, the LCIA methodology becomes more comprehensive in regards to relevant pathways
linked to land use, but on the other hand, this development can potentially reduce the capacity of LCA to be
used as a decision support system, as it can increase up to seven the number of land use indicators required.
This project aims therefore to develop a method to convert impact indicators in monetary value using
economic valuation as a common thread to normalise (and possibly aggregate) the new midpoint indicators
to a single area of protection representing ecosystem services loss.
2. Methods
2.1. Economic valuation: conversion from functional indicators to loss of natural capital of ecosystem
services
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The method consists of converting each midpoint i from physical to monetary units:
CF’i = CFi · MF · (1-AC)
with CF’ being the caracterisation factor expressing the loss of natural capital of ecosystem services in
$/(m 2 .year), CF the regular characterisation factor in physical unit/(m 2 .year), MF the monetary factor in
$/physical unit and AC the adaptation capacity (dimensionless). The monetary factor describes the cost of
the compensation technology while (1-AC) describes the fraction of the ecosystem service that cannot be
compensated by humans and thus leads to the exposure to the potential impact. AC is determined by linear
correlations with the country gross national product (GDP)..If a country has the capacity to adapt, the value
of AC is 1, and there is no impact (Boulay et al., 2011).
The monetary factor values for BPP and CSP are respectively estimated with productivity loss using FAO
data (FAOSTAT, 2012) and social cost of carbon (Ackerman and Stanton, 2010). The monetary factors for
the other regulation services are estimated through current and potential compensation costs, as they are considered
essential and to be replaced in the very short term. It is assumed that current productions systems and
their operating mode (including their relationship with ecosystem, ecosystem services and benefits) are
sought to be kept in their current state (conservative approach).
Mechanical and physicochemical water purification potentials (WPPs) correspond to the natural equivalent
of primary and secondary & tertiary water treatment, respectively. Current world water qualities from
Boulay et al., (2011) are extrapolated without this natural filtration to identify the potential compensation
technology required. The corresponding costs are calculated with the Water Treatment Estimation Routine
(WaTER) from US-EPA (1999). The economic values for FWRP are estimated using urban water supply
prices (UNESCO, 2009) and the values for ERP are based on the World Overview of Conservative Approaches
and Technologies database (Centre for Development and Environment et al., 2012).
The values calculated aim to estimate and to represent the natural capital provided by ecosystem services
by assessing the estimated cost if humans had to produce them by themselves. Corresponding to the “use
value” in the total economic value theory (Freeman, 2003), it is a low-estimate of the ecosystem services
value.
2.2. Spatial considerations and final converted characterisation factor (CFs’) calculation
a. Since LCA assesses spatially-global product systems, physical midpoint CFs were developed in the
LULCIA project at the world scale. Because land use is by nature a local impact category, spatial variability
prevails and this is why they are also regionalised. Each midpoint has a different spatial variability (or resolution,
see table 1). In the same way, spatial-dependant economic values were used for the monetary factors
and the local availability of the compensation systems is taken into account when possible.
b. Each of the six midpoints was developed for different land type uses (or land covers, representing human
activities): grasslands, forests, permanent crops, farmlands, fallow grounds, artificial, urban areas, water
related areas and “others”. A harmonisation was made to create common land covers and geographic information
system (GIS) software was used to design common biogeographical areas (see table 1).
c. Finally, all the converted midpoints indicators (in 2.1) of the same land cover were summed into a single
indicator standing for the potential damage costs due to the loss of natural capital of ecosystem services
that originates from the considered land use cover.