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

GROUP 2, SESSION A: CARBON OR WATER FOOTPRINTS, SOIL, BIODIVERSITY 8 th Int. Conference on LCA in the
Agri-Food Sector, 1-4 Oct 2012
712
40. Proposal of a unified biodiversity impact assessment method
Jan P Lindner 1,* , Tabea Beck 2 , Sebastian Schwarz 3 , Ulrike Eberle 4 , Martin Blumberg 5
1 Fraunhofer IBP, dept. GaBi, Germany, 2 University of Stuttgart, LBP, dept. GaBi, Germany, 3 Five Winds
International, 4 Corsus – Corporate Sustainability, Germany, 5 brands & values GmbH, Corresponding author.
E-mail: jan-paul.lindner@ibp.fraunhofer.de
Driven by the insight of society that biodiversity is worthy of protection, the decrease in habitats and species
recently became a central topic in environmental policy. The European Union aims to study and to stop anthropogenic
loss of biodiversity. In Germany this EU target led to the National Strategy on Biological Diversity
(BMU 2007). Among others, one consensus point in environmental policy is that private and public actors
need instruments to identify the “biodiversity performance” of product systems and services.
A team under the lead of the GaBi department at Fraunhofer Institute for Building Physics (IBP) launched a
project in 2012 to develop a method for the assessment of the biodiversity impact of product systems. Regarding
future application the crucial point is that this tool has to be broadly accepted by scientific and economic
actors. Thus, knowledge and experience of the LCA community must be involved in the development
of the method.
It is suggested that the assessment method includes a preliminary quick check to decide on the extent to
which the full method should be applied (Fig. 1). Criteria may be land requirement or activities in biodiversity
hot spots. The biodiversity impact assessment method fits in the general land use impact assessment
framework described in Milà i Canals et al. (2007). There, the impact of a land using process is defined as:
Impact = affected area × duration of impact × quality change of the area
The biodiversity impact assessment method reflects the quality axis for the impact category “biodiversity”. It
is loosely based on the method proposed by Michelsen (2008) in that it employs region-specific characterisation
models and allows aggregation across regions through weighting factors. Biodiversity is described by
means of a multidimensional potential function (Fig. 2). Setting the parameters of the function sets the biodiversity
value for a certain process at a certain place. Comparison to the biodiversity value under given reference
conditions allows the calculation of the quality change for the equation above. The form and parameters
of region-specific biodiversity potential functions are derived from literature research about the state of the
regional ecosystem(s), national/regional conservation goals, as well as expert judgement. Weighting factors
for the aggregation across regions e.g. in global supply chains (Fig. 1) are derived from globally agreeable
descriptors for biodiversity and/or ecosystem quality.
The proposed method allows relatively precise and accurate biodiversity impact assessment at the price of
relatively high data acquisition. In the unified method, the detailed procedure described above is used for the
most relevant elements of a product system, as determined by the quick check. A broad-brush impact assessment
method is applied to fill in the blanks for less relevant elements of the product system.
References
BMU, 2007. National Strategy on Biological Diversity. Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation
and Nuclear Safety (BMU), Public Relations Division, Berlin.
Michelsen, O., 2008. Assessment of Land Use Impacts on Biodiversity. Proposal of a new methodology
exemplified with forestry operations in Norway. Int. J. LCA 13 (1), 22-31.
Milà i Canals, L., Bauer, C., Depestele, J., Dubreuil, A., Freiermuth Knuchel, R., Gaillard, G., Michelsen, O.,
Müller-Wenk, R., Rydgren, B., 2007. Key elements in a framework for land use impact assessment within
LCA. Int. J. LCA 12 (1), 5-15.