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

GROUP 6, SESSION B: METHODS, TOOLS, DATABASES 8 th Int. Conference on LCA in the
Agri-Food Sector, 1-4 Oct 2012
173. Consistent inclusion of deforestation in food life cycle assessment
Sebastien Humbert * , Vincent Rossi
Quantis, Parc scientifique EPFL, Bât. D, 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland, Corresponding author. E-mail: sebastien.humbert@quantis-intl.com
Deforestation is recognised as being one of the major cause of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and destruction
of ecosystems. It is also recognised that the majority of deforestation of natural ecosystems is associated
with agriculture and agroforestry. On a world scale, GHG emissions from deforestation associated with agriculture
and agroforestry are of the same order of magnitude as all other GHG emissions associated with agriculture
and agroforestry production systems. The sector of food and beverage is rapidly incorporating the
method of life cycle assessment (LCA) to address issues such as labelling, “food eco-design” but also to
inform consumers and non-governmental organisations asking for more transparency on the environmental
performance of food and beverage products.
However, among major limitations in doing LCAs on food and beverage products is the lack of consistent
consideration of impacts associated with deforestation in inventory database and impact assessment results.
Therefore, there is a need to develop and incorporate transparent and reliable data on deforestation in inventory
databases and impact assessment results in order to increase accuracy of food and beverage LCAs.
Different approaches exist to address deforestation in LCA: the most common approach is to actually neglect
this issue; the GHG protocol suggests to allocate deforestation to the cultures that have grown in the country
where deforestation occurs; another approach is to allocate deforestation equally to all land cultivated in a
specific area (normally the country); finally, another approach is to allocate deforestation to the culture on
the boarder of the forest being deforested, assuming that it is this culture that causes deforestation.
In any cases, deforestation is most of the time not considered, which can be a significant bias for products
produced in countries experiencing significant deforestation such as those in the tropics. In this context, at
Quantis, we are evaluating the influence of incorporating deforestation consistently in inventory databases
and impact assessment results, using the different approaches as sensitivity studies.
The presentation will show the contribution of deforestation in overall food and beverage LCA studies, using
different allocation systems.
Results show that neglecting deforestation can cause a major underestimation of GHG emissions and other
ecosystem impacts associated with products produced in tropical countries, such as palm oil, coffee, sugar
cane, soybean or beef. In some cases, deforestation can double the GHG and ecosystem impacts as compared
to when deforestation is neglected. For example, if considering the average annual Brazilian deforestation
rate of 0.8% (in ha deforested/ha used for farming), the GHG emissions associated with green coffee production
can double.
In addition - and this is something even more neglected in most LCA food studies - to be consistent, impacts
of deforestation should also be considered in studies indirectly using such products, as for example, potential
impacts from deforestation in LCAs of European milk production where part of the dairy cows fodder is
based on soybean produced in regions where deforestation occurs.
This presentation will highlight the cases when deforestation should be considered with care to evaluate the
actually potential environmental impacts of food and beverage products.
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