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

KEYNOTE SESSION 8 th Int. Conference on LCA in the
Agri-Food Sector, 1-4 Oct 2012
carbon and nitrogen cycles (Sutton et al., 2011). Accounting for such multiple loops would require complex
‘cradle to cradle’ (McDonough and Braungart, 2002) approaches that may render even more complex the
attribution of the environmental burden.
Recently approaches aiming at including natural resources, such as land and water, into the LCA methodology
have been proposed (e.g. Garrigues et al., 2012; Pfister et al., 2009). First, it is crucial to consider soil
quality in the environmental assessment of agriculture and forestry products given its major role for plant
productivity. Refining soil quality impacts in LCA requires the estimation of soil properties, functions and
processes (e.g., erosion, compaction) on a regional, or even local, basis given the large spatial variability of
soil properties. Developing robust impact indicators for individual soil processes before attempting to aggregate
them into a single indicator has been proposed as a way to make progress (Garrigues et al., 2012). Second,
Pfister et al., (2009) presented a regionalised approach for assessing water-use related environmental
impacts within existing LCA methods, using the example of worldwide cotton production. Their method is
based on the watershed level, at which hydrological processes are connected, and on the use of the virtual
water concept, which describes the amount of water that is lost by evapotranspiration during agricultural
production in a given region. Not surprisingly, impacts from water consumption in the cotton industry were
found to be highly variable ranging from high damage levels (e.g. 77% in Egypt) in dry areas to virtually no
impact in areas with ample water resources (Pfister et al., 2009).
Bridging the gap between LCA and natural capital assessment can be seen as a key target for future research
on the environmental sustainability of food systems. Such an approach focuses on inputs from nature
rather than on emissions to nature. A step in this direction was proposed by Zhang et al., (2010b) through the
development of an Ecologically Based LCA (Eco-LCA) that includes a large number of provisioning, regulating,
and supporting ecosystem services as inputs to a life cycle model at the process or economy scale.
Including an ecosystem service like grassland soil carbon sequestration (Soussana et al., 2007, 2010) into a
LCA has led to significant changes in the estimate of GHG emissions from European livestock systems
(Weiss et al., 2012). However, further progress is needed in order to regionalise ecosystem services prior to
their inclusion in a LCA framework. Such a regionalisation has already been attempted through the development
of a first atlas of ecosystem services at the scale of Europe (Maes et al., 2011).
Finally, spatial issues like indirect land use changes and temporal issues, such as irreversible environmental
changes, are not yet tackled by LCA methodologies and this may be required to match the criteria of
holistic environmental assessments.
4.2 Squaring the circle: diets, health and life cycle assessment
The DUALINE study (Esnouf et al., 2011) has analysed some of the research needs for assessing the environmental
sustainability of diets and their impacts on health and food security. There are several dimensions
to the nutritional impacts of diets (e.g. calories, proteins, essential amino-acids, micronutrients, etc…)
(Sands et al., 2009) and, moreover, diet impacts on health may also vary according to a number of other
drivers, including lifestyles and physical activity (HDHL JPI, 2012).
A well-known value established by the World Health Organization in LCA models, which has been applied
to water use (Pfister et al., 2009) and air pollution (Sutton et al., 2011), could be used for the health
effects of diets. The disability-adjusted life year is a value that expresses the number of years a person’s
healthy life will be shortened as a result of disease or premature death. Provided that an increased understanding
of the consequences of diets for chronic diseases and for premature deaths can be developed for a
given population (e.g. according to age and gender structure and to physical activity levels) in a given region,
this index could be used to standardize the impacts of diets on health. If at all possible, given the many potential
interactions across nutrients within diets, the individual contribution to this index of food products
could also be calculated.
Yet, assessing the environmental impacts of aggregated diets from the life cycle of individual products is
also challenging. First, a consumption based approach would be required whereas most life cycle studies
start from the cradle of individual products. Second, fully assessing the complex product mix along the long
supply chains characterising Western diets and food systems may seem out of reach. Finally, how to reconcile
health oriented and nature capital oriented LCAs is still an open question.
5. Conclusions
Judicious use of the European land resources supported by agricultural sciences could adapt production to
climate change, lower emissions, and eliminate net imports thus contributing to increasing global food security.
Europe is well placed to address these issues since it recognizes the significance of global climate
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