Life Cycle Assessment as a tool to restore Ecosystem Services

Abstract

In the last century, humanity has drastically increased production of goods and services, and this has created a strong impact on the environment and earth’s resources. The sustainability initiatives to decrease environmental impact have long focused on using fewer resources. However, the sustainability paradigm can shift from ‘use less’ to ‘give back’. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) can be used to quantify the impacts a product system has on its environment, and it can serve as a tool for decision makers to select sustainable choices. Currently, LCA studies assess the damage incurred to the environment, but a similar valuation for restorative efforts is still lacking. Ecosystem services (ES) are the benefits nature provides to human well-being and include much more than just the resources we take; ES also represent the regulating and cultural comforts to humanity. Many of the LCA damage indicators can be linked to the ES categories, classified in the CICES system. Land use seems to be especially well correlated, having all 31 CICES categories overlapping with land use impacts. Using ES classification tools like CICES, and the related cascade model, together with the output from an LCA, it is possible to assess the impact on ES from a product system. Inversely, pre-emptive knowledge of a product’s place in the ES cascade can suggest methods to stimulate the ecosystem in the sustainable design. The current work investigates prior efforts to incorporate ES into LCA results and proposes a strategy to combine LCA research with ES conscious planning.